Don’t Let AI Destroy Your Brand: Authority Building Tips for Real Estate Professionals

Erik Cabral (00:00)
Don’t just throw it all into GPT, into Grok, into Claude and pray and hope that no one notices because they will notice. If it’s all AI driven, if it’s AI video of you, you’re cloning yourself or I like to say AI-ify yourself. That’s a, that’s a

recipe for disaster long-term. You’re risking your short-term gains. That’s all you’re thinking about and not thinking about the long-term effects.

Scott Bursey (01:59)
Welcome back to the Real Estate Pros Podcast powered by Investor Fuel. I’m your host Scott Bursey. Our guest today is a master architect of influence and recognition. He brings the high octane fuel of authority itself, which is essential for every pro looking to truly dominate their niche. Please welcome Erik Cabral.

Erik Cabral (02:19)
Hey Scott, thanks for having me brother. I appreciate you and this opportunity.

Scott Bursey (02:24)
Erik, we’re so pumped to have you in the house. And what really caught my attention about you is the way you’ve been able to systematically turn expertise into undeniable market authority and credibility. It’s a game changer for scaling real estate businesses.

Erik Cabral (02:37)
Yeah, 100%. I unlocked certain things in my life and then eventually business, discovering that the one true component to build a foundation is trust. without trust, it’s hard to develop a business. It’s hard to build relationships. It’s hard to grow anything. And one of the very first biggest wins

that I built trust on was selling my wife on the idea of marrying me and starting a family. So yeah, when I started to apply the things that worked in my personal life to business, I was like, wow, okay, then trust will get me in rooms and get me in front of the right people and shake hands and build relationships over time, not trying to rush things. Then I started to realize that was an unlock.

And I started to get excited about, wow, I can do this. I could build a business. This is going to be a lot of fun.

Scott Bursey (03:39)
And Erik, for our listeners who may not be familiar with your journey, please tell us how your career began and what your main focus is now.

Erik Cabral (03:48)
Yeah, so I’ll try to make this one short, Scott, because it’s 20 plus years. ⁓ The idea of corporate America was a wonderful idea when I graduated many, many moons ago in college. The idea was to stay loyal to a corporation and get your steak knives and the gold watch after your 40 plus years invested in that company.

But then I started to lose faith. started to you know, luster of it all was starting to leave me especially when I got to the the degree or the area of managing the teams and growing the teams and having access to the numbers which is helpful for us as real estate investors and When I recognized my last stint in corporate America after 21 years, I took a half a million dollar

business and turned it into a two and a half million dollar business. Not obviously alone. I had a team, but I was instrumental in orchestrating and building that. And it gave me the confidence to go off and do it on my own after I was laid off from that opportunity. Can you imagine, Hey, half a million dollars turned our company into two and a half million. Thank you, but you know.

We’ll see you later someday in the future. But I took all of that knowledge and also naïvetivité. I always messed that word up. But I was naive and I wasn’t sure what I needed to build a business. And I had to figure it out on my own. But I had enough knowledge and enough chutzpah and enough confidence and enough not knowing, ignorance to help me go do that and invest a lot of my own capital.

into building a company.

Scott Bursey (06:33)
That is quite a story, Erik. Wow. And that kind of leads us into this question that I know our listeners are going to want to hear from you. What is the biggest limiting belief that holds pros back from claiming their authority?

Erik Cabral (06:47)
man, I would say number one for me personally, at least, I mean, many, many, many listeners here is, are you worth it? Are you worth the success? ⁓ I didn’t feel like I was like every time I, I reached a milestone, a pinnacle, ⁓ I would have to reflect on my life because ego started to eat at me and insecurity and imposter syndrome and all the things.

so yeah, a lot of work internally had to be done in order to reach the next level. so yeah, finding out if you’re worth it, doing that inner work, ⁓ to understand where this comes from, typically from childhood trauma, right? fail fear is, you know, fear is not an option or failure is not an option. That was, that was totally embedded into my psyche as a child.

My dad grew up in the NASA era, getting a man on the moon. Failure is not an option for sure, because that means death. But in our life, as Tony Robbins always says, we’re not living a life where a tiger is going to eat us. So why do we have this false fear? What is that acronym? Anyway, I’m not even going to attempt it. But you guys know what I’m talking about. Yeah, that was just reprogramming.

fear of failure into fear is success and progress. And once I unlocked that and wanted to actually tattoo it on myself, Scott, I was like, fear is success and progress. my gosh, it encouraged me to go out there, break things, make a mess, not worry about what people think. So yeah, that was for sure a big unlock for me.

Scott Bursey (08:30)
Recognizing those internal hurdles is the first step, I think. And Erik, I know that you have at least one or two books. Could you give us the rundown of your publications, please?

Erik Cabral (08:36)
yeah.

Yeah, for sure. I believe everyone has a book in them. There’s a statistic that 80 % of people want to write a book. 1 % actually take action to do it. And 1 % of that actually publish the book. So I understand that it’s difficult. And I thought I wanted to write a book and didn’t know exactly what it should be about.

So I started the process very early on in my entrepreneurial journey, didn’t have a whole lot of success to leverage and talk about. So when I initially started the draft of my book, Your Brand in 2021, say, I was encouraged by my peers, a bunch of really cool real estate investors that I looked up to. They’re like, hey, when are you writing your book? It should be about podcasting, right? I’m like, I don’t want to talk about podcasting. What about personal branding, right? And I’m like, maybe.

So that’s when I leaned into like, okay, I’m going to document my journey, tell my stories. How did I build my business and myself to get to where I was? And when I went back to the draft, Scott, I sat on it for two years, you know, that whole unworthy thing. It was terrible. was like, the first chapter was great. It was a lot of fun. And then everything after that was not valuable to any reader. It was serving ego for sure.

⁓ and it was just writing for writing sake. So then I sat on it for years, Scott, until I had to do a lot of inner work, which led me, you that was yoga, meditation, Tony Robbins, all the things. And then after that, I realized, ⁓ I didn’t realize God basically found me through that process of being in the quiet. and when I found my faith and he found me, ⁓ I realigned and recalibrated and downloaded.

a new operating system that brought me back to my faith. Cause I was living, I was a man living in sin and drinking and smoking and doing all the things ⁓ that, you know, we partake of in this world. And then I started to realize I need to be better for not just me and my business, but for my family, for my wife, for my little girls. How can I be a better man, a better father, better husband? ⁓ And then so everything got recalibrated, realigned, and then I dedicated the book to my faith, to God.

to the Lord that now it’s be your brand to glorify God. So it’s not about us. It’s not about me. It’s not about you. It’s about a bigger, bigger, bigger, bigger picture. And a lot of people are always finding that they’re always like, what’s the big what’s my mission? What’s my why? And it typically starts with money. And it typically starts with fame. I want to be famous. I want to be rich. And then you go ask all the millionaire and billionaires that have accomplished those things and they’re empty. They’re unhappy. And I didn’t want to be that.

So that’s when I realized there’s something else. What else is there? And this was for sure ⁓ my why and my everything. So yeah, thanks for asking, Scott.

Scott Bursey (12:19)
Erik, you just moved the needle for a lot of our listeners. Thank you. And if you could walk us through, what is the biggest, most untapped media opportunity for a pro to achieve authority right now in your view?

Erik Cabral (12:32)
Yeah, so thanks for that question. As I mentioned earlier, before the cameras and the lights turned on, in the green room, so to speak, you and I were chatting. My company was acquired, Honor Brands was acquired by Advantage Media, which holds the rights exclusively to legacy brands such as Forbes, Entrepreneur Magazine, and South by Southwest. So these are premium brands that we have access to, that we can publish books under.

which build authority for sure. So you know, any brand through association is powerful, especially if you’re up and coming, especially if no, you haven’t really built up all the street cred as of yet in your career. I always experienced trying to get into the rooms with all the thought leaders and people that I wanted to be like, and then have them on my podcast, publish books, articles and things around the conversation. And then

⁓ it started to kind of spill onto me their reputation. So when you write a book, when you publish content, ⁓ it’s definitely, it puts you on a higher sort of level to those who are looking for what you do, looking for your expertise, looking for, answers. And if you publish a book that has answers, has solutions to their problems, man, what a wonderful vehicle to.

walk into a room and now not have a business card, but actually have this jam packed book ⁓ that unlocks potentially a lot of things for the listener, for the reader, for your potential prospect or client.

Scott Bursey (14:07)
100%. And on that note, Erik, what is the fastest moving market shift that threatens an established professional’s brand?

Erik Cabral (14:14)
what threatens a potential brand? Is that your question, Scott?

Scott Bursey (14:19)
Yes, yes. What would Threaden put at risk of their brand?

Erik Cabral (14:20)
⁓ yeah.

Yeah, for sure. And I’m sure that everyone’s answering the same way. ⁓ AI is for sure disrupting ⁓ all industries, some more than others right now, over time, potentially everything. ⁓ I liken this to, know, everyone’s saying the same thing, but I’m going to try to say it in a different way. They’re tools for sure, right? They’re tools that can make us more efficient, that could make us faster, can augment our bodies and our minds to win the race.

But I see this as, and I’m going to throw this out there for the younger generations, the gen A’s, the gen Z’s and Y’s where Mr. Beast, know, ⁓ Jimmy Donaldson, he loves to put on episodes and shows where he pits people against each other to win money. And they’re usually physical aspects or physical feats. So imagine a show like Mr. Beast where he’s put a set of tools, like five sets of tools, all the same.

toolbox with a tool belt and there’s five of them spread out and then he says, okay, contestants run to the tools and go build me whatever it is you want to build. That’s valuable. That could be a house that could be a store. could be a car, whatever it is that you and your intellect can build. I’ll be back in three weeks and whoever built the best fastest thing wins a billion dollars, whatever it is. Think of it that way. These tools

are set out there for everyone. It’s the same for everyone. And it is up to you as a human being with your intellect, your knowledge, your experience, everything that you view the world through, the lens that you view, it’s up to you to go build the bigger, better thing by leveraging the tool, not by taking shortcuts to, I’m gonna have that tool build me the house, right? I’m gonna go have someone else go take the tools and build the house.

So I highly recommend that if you’re going out there and you’re creating content or you’re creating your brand, you have to be involved. It has to be your voice, has to be your thoughts, has to be your experience.

Don’t just throw it all into GPT, into Grok, into Claude and pray and hope that no one notices because they will notice. If it’s all AI driven, if it’s AI video of you, you’re cloning yourself or I like to say AI-ify yourself. That’s a, that’s a

recipe for disaster long-term. You’re risking your short-term gains. That’s all you’re thinking about and not thinking about the long-term effects.

So I highly recommend you don’t do that and you invest your time, energy and money into building your brand personally versus trying to set it on autopilot. Cause it’s going to hurt you in the long run.

Scott Bursey (17:04)
us.

Erik, that was masterfully broken down. And we need to know this. If a pro is already doing one million a year in revenue, but is struggling to break through to the, let’s say 10 million mark, what’s the single most critical shift they should make right now to create that massive jump?

Erik Cabral (18:11)
Wow, so this is huge. And this is hopefully something that is relatively new to someone out there that’s listening to this. There’s only so much you can do on your own. As a business owner, you do realize very quickly, I need to hire people. I need to hire somebody that can do the thing, replace me, do it better, faster than I can. And that’s why we’ve been leveraging AI. But people are still necessary. The human is still necessary.

When you get to the next level where you’ve maximized your output and your efficiencies with the team that you currently have, what is definitely a needle mover game changer for me, and I think for a lot of people is finding strategic partners. Having partners that are aligned with what you’re doing or compliment what you’re doing or you compliment what they do and creating some alliance, creating some synergy that you all win.

in the end. So I think that getting in the room with a tribe of millionaires, a tribe of billionaires, whatever it is, business owners and breaking bread and building trust over time. Don’t go in there, you know, trying to hawk your product because people will smell a commission breath, sales breath on you and they will run for the hills and you’ll find your way out the door anyway, if you walk in with that mentality versus walking in the room and saying,

How can I add value to this room? How can I just love bomb this room? How can I share everything that I’ve learned and just add value to you? Even if it’s a little thing, I used to walk into the room. I knew nothing about real estate, Scott. And I would, I knew about video. I knew about social media. I knew about building brands. I was like, Hey, I’d look at their business cards. And I go, that’s terrible. Like they used wing dings or they use terrible fonts or they used clip art. I’m like, let me do this for you. And I would do it for free. And I would stay till 10 30, 11 o’clock at night.

putting the chairs up after the real estate meetings. And what would that do? It would get me in the room with the Brandon Turner’s, with the Josh Dorkins. It would get me in the room with the guys that I wanted to be like, because they saw me as a giver and not a taker. So that’s where I would highly recommend like get into the room, change your mentality and think about how can I add value to their life versus how can they add value to me, me, me, me, me? So yeah, I said a lot, but strategic partners is the answer in the end, Scott.

Scott Bursey (20:35)
Erik, you’ve given us so much value already, but what unique nugget or advice would you be able to leave with our listeners today?

Erik Cabral (20:43)
Be very intentional with the brand that you’re developing, the brand that you’re putting out there. And when I say brand, I’m talking about your voice. I’m talking about your image. I’m talking about ⁓ your reputation that you’re building because if you hurt people, if you take from people, if you don’t deliver on what you promised, it will get back to you and that will spread very quickly. And then you have a terrible reputation.

and your business won’t go anywhere. Your reputation is everything. And that’s why I say be very intentional with how you build your brand, but then not just building your brand for the sake of optics, but actually doing the work inside as Scott and I were discussing earlier in the show, know, the inner work, why, you know, what is, what’s holding you back? Why do you feel like you’re not worthy? Why do you feel like an imposter? Build these muscles so that you become a better person. One of the best quotes is from James Clear’s Atomic Habits.

And he said that, entrepreneurship and, and, and building a business is personal development in disguise. And if I had known that Scott, probably wouldn’t have done it because I was a hot mess. And, being a business owner was the best thing that could have ever happened to me because I had to become something else. And I didn’t know that. I just thought I could be the same jerk that I was, but no, I developed into this bigger, better version of myself as a result of trying to serve.

others ultimately, because I wanted to make sure that I was stepping into every situation with integrity, high integrity and value and just continuing to deliver and build a reputation ⁓ that was good and that was going to benefit not just me, but the people that work for my company and their families and their children. So it was a bigger, bigger, bigger sort of picture that I had to adopt and accept into my life.

Scott Bursey (22:39)
And as a result, the world is a much better place. Erik, this has been an absolute clinic. And before we sign off, for the listeners that I know are gonna wanna follow your journey or collaborate with you, what is the best way for them to reach you?

Erik Cabral (22:54)
Yeah, check out our company, theauthoritycompany.com. There you can find everything we do in terms of helping you publish your ideas. But yeah, find me, DM me on LinkedIn and let me know that it’s not a bot because I get so many DMs via LinkedIn. But yeah, hit me up on LinkedIn. Find me there, Erik Cabral. And yeah, I’m happy to answer any questions that you have.

Scott Bursey (23:19)
Erik, thank you for joining us today.

Erik Cabral (23:21)
Yeah, thank you. Thank you for having me, Scott.

Scott Bursey (23:23)
And for our listeners, we appreciate each and every one of you. If you got value from today’s episode, please subscribe. We’ve got a lineup of exceptional guests, just like Erik, who are not only making huge moves in the market, but in the world. Until next time, keep your standards high and your vision clear. We’ll see you in the next episode, everyone.