How Realtors Can Build Predictable Income by Serving Real Estate Investors

Matt Brunner (00:00)
Like you’re always looking for your next client. You’re always looking for your next deal, all the things. But when you’re working with investors, you guys are always buying. Like you want more and more deals, right? And now I could go earn this client and I could get 10 deals a year instead of just one, right? And that’s maybe one deal every 10 years, right? And so like, that’s one school of thought is like, you know, we chose this niche like intentionally because I’ve just been in the world for six, seven years, right?

Micah Johnson (01:59)
Hello everyone. Welcome to the real estate pros podcast. I’m your host, Micah Johnson. And today I’m joined by Matt Brunner, who’s been making some serious moves in real estate for quite some time now. Matt, welcome in man. Glad to have you. Absolutely. I’m excited for our talk today. have a, you have a viewpoint that I completely agree with as a background with a realtor and how to really be effective for investors where real service and value can be provided. So I’m pumped to dig in, man.

Matt Brunner (02:11)
Thanks for having me, dude. ⁓

Micah Johnson (02:29)
But to kick it off, for those who aren’t familiar with you yet, tell us some more about yourself. What do you got going on right now?

Matt Brunner (02:33)
Love it man. Yeah, thanks for having me. Real estate agent and investor out of Spokane County, Washington. And then dude, I just have like three main goals. So we’re trying to sell a hundred houses. We’re trying to make our investor clients a million dollars. And then I want to be the number one agent per units at my brokerage real broker.

Micah Johnson (02:54)
Okay. So take us back then, man. What led us to here? What led us to those goals? Take us on the journey with you.

Matt Brunner (03:02)
Dude, to make a really long story short, thought like cream of the crop salespeople got into real estate. I thought like you like evolved into this, right? Long story short, found out that the best salespeople are not in real estate, but that’s a different story. So I got a real estate when I was 22, started with getting my real estate license. And to be honest, man, I had to do the whole part-time job, you know, just trying to figure stuff out.

And then I remember sitting in my real estate office one day and it was the first time I heard about flipping or wholesaling or something like that. And this agent was like, yeah, I’m only going to make 25 grand on this. me being like a 22 year old kid, was like, what do mean only? first of all, Second of all, what do mean 25 grand? yeah, exactly. So like that kind of spurred my mind of like real estate investing. Cause I kind of knew about it, right? I feel like everybody knows about it, but

Micah Johnson (03:47)
Please hold.

Matt Brunner (03:58)
just the weeds of it. then, to be know. Yeah, exactly. They know a guy who knows a guy. And then the brokerage that I hung my license at, that guy, dude, I made like this really funny like sales landing page for like a real estate agent business. Like I just, I partnered up with a lender and I just poorly Photoshopped their faces over like SpongeBob and Patrick, Clay Thompson and Steph Curry.

Dwight and Jim from like the office and his name was Ted. So then I did Bill and Ted, right? And I made this whole ad campaign of like Matt and Ted’s excellent adventure or Matt and Ted’s excellent home buy in a venture or something. And I ran ads on it because like, dude, when I was getting my real estate license course, I didn’t study the license at all. I was just like, how do I build a brand? How do I build marketing? How do I like sales, right? ⁓ That was maybe a bad choice because it took my exam seven times. besides that.

Micah Johnson (04:54)
But hey, you got persistence, man. That’s good. Prove something yourself there.

Matt Brunner (05:47)
Dude, I ⁓ mean I was like in debt getting into real estate too like whole different thing, but either way So yeah, I built out Matt and Ted’s excellent home buying adventure and I showed the broker Jonah and I was like he’s cuz I got my first deal in like two weeks and he was like What are you doing over here? Like that’s like uncommon and I showed him

Micah Johnson (06:08)
right there a second, let’s dig back in on something, because I want the listeners and viewers, just to think, what I want you all to see and think about is what you really just said. You’re in debt, you’re doing this thing, you’re trying to make real estate come to life and you’re taking exams, you’re doing the studying. Where, based on where you’re at now, how important now to you is the work you did then? How valuable is it to you now of

Man, stay inconsistent, stay in persistence, study in those things.

Matt Brunner (06:40)
Dude, I’ll give you like a quick overview because I think I’ll hit your point over. So I started part-time brokerage help at the brokerage. Then that guy introduced me to his investing company. Then I started part-time working for him and his investing company. Him and his partner split, felt like my parents got a divorce because I was kind of like working for both of them and I had to like choose who to live with, right? ⁓ That was exactly when COVID hit. So he was like, hey man, like COVID hit like changing stuff.

So I went off with his partner. I helped him start a brokerage from scratch and a real estate like acquisitions company, investing company from scratch. Then I left that company and got recruited to go run a company in New York. We built a franchise model of like an investing company. We sold that into five markets. We were about to go into our fifth market. And then I was like, dude, I can’t be number two anymore. Like I gotta go do my own thing. Like

So happy I moved across the country to figure this out, but either way. And then I came back to Spokane, had a doomsday date. Cause like, I wasn’t making a lot of money throughout this whole process of like doomsday being like, Joe’s gone broke, right? Got a part-time job working for Stephanie Betters with Left Main REI. Did some consulting stuff for her. Cause she was like, dude, you built out like this whole CRM for this franchise thing. Like, can you tell people how awesome Left Main is? And I was like, absolutely I can.

Micah Johnson (07:50)
Right.

Matt Brunner (08:06)
⁓ And it gave me the freedom because they were on Eastern time. So I would work 6 a.m. to 2 p.m. there. And then from there, it gave me the opportunity to go do real estate stuff. At that same time, I was helping run. was the director of operations and sales for a real estate team. That guy, we ended up starting an investing company together. And then like that one south. Then I started selling real estate with a girlfriend at a time, which was like a great thing at the time and then wasn’t.

Micah Johnson (08:34)
It was awesome until it wasn’t.

Matt Brunner (08:37)
It’s

always all right. Then I went and I started my own company and then I started a real estate team, a house flipping team, a contracting company, raised a bunch of private money, lost a ton of money trying to do everything. And then finally put my head down and just said, you know what? I just want to be a really great real estate agent. And that was about two years ago. So like to get back to your original point, man, if I didn’t have those four years of just like almost getting paid to learn.

Right? Like I could not do what I’m doing today without skip, without having those like three, four years. And I think a lot of people, they see where people are at, you know, six, seven, eight, nine years into the business, but they try to skip that like five years. And like that’s where coaching comes in and mentorships come in and all the things, right? Like, dude, people just try to skip that part. And there’s no way I could do a hundred deals today if I didn’t have those four or five years of just like learning.

really great people to be honest.

Micah Johnson (09:36)
The process is the shortcut and the only way to the only way to get a shortcut to that is like you’re talking about mentors coaches folks who know like Nobody’s trying to do anything. Nobody’s ever done. Well, most of us aren’t if someone knows how to do that part go get the information But you can’t if you want to seat at the table, it’s earned You don’t get to just sit down. I tell a lot of folks that you’ll meet people, know, I want a thousand units Okay, but if I gave you a thousand units today

you’d lose them in a heartbeat. You would have no idea what to do with them. You wouldn’t make any money for sure and nobody around you would either. It would be a great catastrophe because you haven’t become the person who can own a thousand units. You gotta have massive amounts of experience to pull that off. There’s connection after connection, time after time and you’re right, so many want to skip that. However, that’s the fun part really. If you’re willing to live that section well like you’re experiencing now, what’s possible later?

mean, there’s no ceiling. You can do whatever you want. What do you want to build? What do you want to create?

Matt Brunner (11:13)
Yeah, there’s like two quotes that come to my mind. Like one, like somebody said this on a podcast one time of like you dramatically underestimate what you can do in, you know, six years, but you overestimate what you can do in six months or something like that. Right. And then the second thing too, I’ve been stuck on this quote lately of like your best ideas are already in someone else’s process. And I’m like, man, I love that. Like when I wanted to go sell a hundred homes, I went and found

three, four, five, six people that were already selling other homes. Like just sought it out, man.

Micah Johnson (11:49)
Because the nuts and bolts of it are the same. Right? How you build a business is how you build a business. And so many entrepreneurs up front, me included, you think work hard, do more is the solution because you can. And it’s rewarding you. You’re building golden handcuffs, but it’s rewarding you because you show up, you can outperform everybody else. You’re super smart. can do the things. However, it’s doing the opposite of what you really want to do.

You think you’re building a business, but you’re not. can’t escape it. It all dies on you. If you leave, the phone don’t answer. What are you going to do then? However, like you’re saying, somebody else has built it. And what I love about real estate is how high level people are willing to talk about it. They’re really good folks. They’re abundance mindset. They’re not worried about you because like you’ve learned in real estate. And I remember I was I did a live real estate ⁓ license class.

in Florida and I was hanging out with a guy who an older guy, old guy that was teaching it and I was hanging out with him after class and he said, Michael let me tell you I said what is it? He said, there ain’t no competition in real estate. I said well what do you mean? I was looking at all the people in the room. He goes, nope. He said, if I want you to remember anything, there ain’t no competition. He said, if you show up each day and just do your job, you will make more money than you know what to do with.

And it was the best thing I ever heard out of the gate, because that’s what I did. I just showed up. I got, I asked for expired listings list, old customers list and just boom, just make the calls, make the calls. And that led to get invited onto a foreclosure team and that led to 29 closings in less than 12 months and just bang, but bang, but bang. That’s truly what it does though, is you control your own future. It’s beautiful that way where it opens the door.

Matt Brunner (13:39)
Yeah, I think there’s some truth to like an object in motion stays in motion too, right? it’s like, to just keep doing stuff. I mean, you got to know the right stuff to do, right? That’s the hard part.

Micah Johnson (13:49)
That’s what the mentors for. That’s why you go to the person that’s built the Hunter deal machine because I can’t remember the guy’s name, but it’s the owner Rakitan. He calls it the rule of three and 10, where anytime your business three X’s or 10 X’s, anytime along the way, your whole systems and processes change. The tools you need changes because what it took you to make 300,000 is not what it’s going to take to make a million.

especially what it’s gonna take to make 30 million, right? As it goes up, the tools have to change, but the right thing at the wrong time is still the wrong thing. That’s one of my favorite quotes I try to live by, sequence is everything.

Matt Brunner (14:28)
Yeah, man. The unfortunate thing is like the people in your business might change too. That’s hard, but…

Micah Johnson (14:34)
And it is, it’s guaranteed. It’s the part. And it’s not always, I just got back from a live event here in Dallas and I was listening to a presentation from a business owner and he was talking about an employee that left, but it was not a bad reason. You just don’t think about it. It’s things are chugging along and then all of sudden, bang, she met somebody that now she’s getting married to and now she moved to Australia.

And you were like, whoa, whoa, whoa, that’s, hold on, that was like my right hand part. Whoa, what just happened? And it’s, that’s the stuff. But that’s what all the other hardships prepare you for along the way. Cause it teaches you, hey man, I can handle this. The faster you believe you can handle hard, the better you’re going to do. Cause it’s, it’s okay that it’s hard. It’s, it should be hard. If it’s super easy, you’re not doing anything cool. Like it should be, it’s okay. Handle it well. Freaking out doesn’t help. Ask me how I know.

Matt Brunner (15:34)
Yeah.

So true,

Micah Johnson (16:19)
let’s go deep on the vision. So you built something pretty particular that I really want to talk about, which is a way of doing real estate where realtors, investors get tons of value. Take us into it, man.

Matt Brunner (16:31)
Yeah. Um, okay. So kind of a couple of things here, right? So I want to be the really great investor agent. Like we literally almost renamed our company to the investor agent company. It’s just cause I was like, dude, it’s simple enough to work, right? Um, but either way, uh, okay. So what we tried to build is there’s a couple of schools of thought that went into this one as a real estate agent, it’s impossible to create like a predictable, like revenue, right? Like it just is.

Micah Johnson (16:44)
Right. Right.

Matt Brunner (17:00)
Like you’re always looking for your next client. You’re always looking for your next deal, all the things. But when you’re working with investors, you guys are always buying. Like you want more and more deals, right? And now I could go earn this client and I could get 10 deals a year instead of just one, right? And that’s maybe one deal every 10 years, right? And so like, that’s one school of thought is like, you know, we chose this niche like intentionally because I’ve just been in the world for six, seven years, right?

But at the same time, like it’s a repeatable scalable niche that, you know, we can really scale. Right. So that was like one school of thought is as a real estate agent, like, do we have predictable income? I can tell you where my next 32 transactions are going to come from. Like that’s insane. Right. So like one, that was that. And then we just really like took a step back and we’re like, what sucks about like the realtor investor relationship right now? Right. Like what sucks about it?

Well, realtors don’t understand the investing world. Okay, cool. Well, we can solve education, right? Like I’ve done this. I’ve had my name on 23 properties or something like that. So it’s like, we’ve been there. So we speak the lingo, right? Like I always say, like, you have to explain what ARV means to your realtor. Like, dude, that’s probably not the right realtor for you, right? So one is we just tried to like peel it back and we said, okay, well, like, what do they need? Well, they need education.

Micah Johnson (18:17)
Hopefully.

Matt Brunner (18:24)
So like to go deep on education for a second is we start doing like monthly meetups, right? So like we have monthly meetups where like they’re not like your traditional like RIA, like we might bring in like a panel of like four wholesalers or four house flippers, or we might like teach a class on it or something like that. And we do those twice a month. So we do one in the afternoon, cause that’s when like most real estate people can go.

And then we do one in the evenings because that’s when most people that are stuck in a W two that want to get out of it can go, right? ⁓

Micah Johnson (18:55)
Right?

on

for realtors man you ever go to gym at lunchtime you know it’s realtors

Matt Brunner (19:03)
Jim’s had happy hours, man, I swear.

Micah Johnson (19:05)
That’s it. And open houses, brokers. Yeah. I want to go back to one of the points that you’re making though about the ones that realize the value of volume, where when you can sell one customer 30 houses instead of 30 customers, one house, it’s a completely different experience. It’s not the retail experience, but if volume is your thing and you want predictability, which was the hardest thing to find, especially as a realtor, it is a very intentional action to create

predictability in that world, just like you’re saying and showing, it’s predictable. not going anywhere. When you spend the time to build these kind of relationships and you provide value to them, I remember my first one. I went from one night having one house to sell to the next day having over 30 and me and like, whoa, that is the value of having these in your life. So I love that you touched on that for the right person out there that’s listening. If it’s for you, check into it. All right.

Keep going man, so education, you’re doing events multiple times. I like how you’re hitting both of the kinds, because you’re creating your own pond to fish from,

Matt Brunner (20:11)
Yeah. Well, and just like, uh, two other points with the events. One, it puts me in like an authority figure of, in like the marketplace, right? Like, want somebody when they think of real estate investing in Spokane, they think of Matt Burner Homes or depending on when this comes out, it’ll be called something different, but either way. Um, so like, I want that. Right. And then the other event that we do is dudes we’ve done, we, it’s been called a couple of things, but now it’s called the invest with Matt bootcamp. Right.

So this bootcamp is completely free. It’s six days long, like 12 hours in total. And I came up with this idea because like, dude, I’ll never forget. like posted on Facebook one day and I was like, Hey, if I set up a class where I introduce you to every lender you need, every contractor you need, every property manager you need, every financial management company that you need, the bookkeepers that you need, and then a couple of local mentors to like help you along the way. Like who would be interested in that?

And then I fell asleep because I was sick. So I took a nap and then I woke up and I had like 70 comments on like my Facebook and I wasn’t like quote unquote popular back then. Right. And so I was like, okay, now I have to do it. Right. Right. We had, we only had eight people commit in our first one. We’re in the middle of our fourth year doing it. I think this is our fifth bootcamp in total. And we have 39 people registered just to like help them start every step of the way. So it’s completely.

Micah Johnson (21:41)
powerful man

Matt Brunner (21:42)
Yeah, it’s free. We cater it. And then every week we just bring in local guest speakers that can like help you. So like during the bootcamp, you learn how to buy deals, finance deals, renovate deals, property, or like choose an exit strategy, like should you sell it or rent it, how to financially manage you and yourself. And then day six is all about how to like start or scale, right? So it’s like, man, by the end of that, we’ve removed, somebody told me this, they said, Matt,

You’ve removed every possible objection I’ve ever had to get into real estate investing.

Micah Johnson (22:13)
Right? Right. You’re cutting years off of relationships at that point. Those are the because that’s the it’s the things that you don’t understand when you’re only when you’re at the beginning, only watching videos and you’re only learning is this is a team sport where you can’t do anything on your own in real estate. It just doesn’t work that way. And no one’s good at like all the things. There’s always a part of the process that’s going to bug the fire out of you. But you can find someone else.

that they love it and they hate the part you love and now we’re best friends because that’s really how that goes and I love how you’re actually showing the real deal because that’s what there’s so many gurus out there’s so many things and it’s so frustrating because half of them aren’t even doing deals they’re just good at selling coaching and I firmly believe if you’re out there listening and getting ready to start this only learn from people in action real estate changes too fast this is not a

stagnant industry. is very much in motion. Laws change. If someone was doing it two years ago, whatever they were doing, it ain’t working right now. I promise you that. Like if it’s not growing, you got to meet with folks like that. And the fact that you’re introducing them out of the gate, because how many, how many horror stories have you heard with contractors? Sadly enough, it’s one of the areas where a new person is

Matt Brunner (23:33)
myself but yeah right

Micah Johnson (23:39)
very exposed to risks they do not even know exists because you have no idea if the person is telling you the truth or not you’re just talking this stuff and you don’t want to sound stupid so you’re just kind of going along with it because you want them to think you’re good at this because you’re brand new but when you have someone that’s explained it to you or even you jv on the deal I’m really big on that do the first ones with partners learn the process best money you’ll ever spend I promise

and your deal won’t drive you nuts. Like you’ll be able to sleep at night, okay? Because it’s very handy until you can do it on your own.

Matt Brunner (24:15)
Yeah, dude, it’s a game changer. Just knowing what to do and who can help you. It’s awesome. I mean, my first, I think eight deals, I was partnered up with people.

Micah Johnson (24:27)
It is and now what I hate for folks is how many try it but they do it they thought they got education but they really didn’t and then they never tried again and you close the door to the access the number one wealth generator in the history of the freaking universe the American real estate market all because You were using the wrong information Right. I was I made a video this morning of I was just reflecting on my time at the event path this past week and you actually said this one of y’all’s

Core values is chase progress, not perfection. And I love that. And what I was thinking about at this event is high performers are willing to be wrong. You’re willing to be wrong. It’s OK. It just shows you what to adjust. That’s the thing. It’s not about your ego. It’s not about you at all. It’s about actually building that machine and process out what creates the outcome we want. If you’re taking it personal, that ain’t helping.

And the proof is look at these people. And that’s why I like getting around folks and you exposing those people in those rooms to somebody moving at scale, man. It’s game changer.

Matt Brunner (25:33)
Yeah, man. mean, proof is we’ve had 104 people go through our boot camp. 62 people have actually bought houses.

Micah Johnson (25:42)
That’s killer. Congratulations.

Matt Brunner (25:44)
Yeah, it’s been cool, man. Like, yeah, it’s been cool. And like the last week we introduced, so we run like, it’s called our VIP investor experience. And so those are our investor clients, right? But they’re also guest speakers throughout the whole bootcamp and or week three. And then like, Micah, guess what those investors get to say week three or week, yeah, day six. Hey guys, if you want help on your first one, let’s do it together.

Micah Johnson (26:12)
There you go.

Matt Brunner (26:13)
Guess who the real estate agent is.

Micah Johnson (26:15)
Thank you.

call that vertical integration if y’all are wondering.

Matt Brunner (26:21)
What?

But yeah. So yeah, man, like just doing like embracing the community and like just like picking my role and like sticking in my role. I think that’s been like a huge thing. And then kind of like where we started with this whole thing of just like really sitting there and being like what like sucks and what’s really great about like the investor agent relationship and then just picking it apart. We literally white boarded it out and like it came down to like

three things, like investors want deals, investors want capital, and investors want contractors slash like processes, right? And we were just like, okay, let’s just solve those three. Like what’s every little thing that an investor client would need. And that’s all we do all day is we just go try to find deals, capital and contractors for people. And we just fulfill and fulfill and fulfill.

Micah Johnson (27:17)
It’s a beautiful thing, I’ve when I made the switch over the investment world, I always encourage people go get you a team of realtors. One, they already agreed to work for free. And two, what as a realtor, when I when I started working that invest with that investor, I felt the feeling shift of I’m waking up with money to spend every day. I can now exercise my skill. I for the first time, I was like, I’m unrealist. I’m on offense now in real estate.

I’m not playing defense, which was sitting open houses or sitting desks waiting for phone. I wasn’t waiting. It was now it was like, let me go find. And that door opens up to folks like yourself and the ones that you’re teaching and bringing on, man. Now the game, now what do you want? Right? Cause it’s, you nailed it. Those three things are what they’re after. You make that a shortcut. Everybody’s moving.

Matt Brunner (28:12)
Dude, to like put a, just more proof to it or whatever. like you’re catching me. So trying to be more active on social media or whatever. So like we’re doing this video currently where I’m in the middle of a 48 hour challenge to go find a deal for one of our investor clients. like, but like how many other agents can be like, I’m going to sell a house in the next two days. Like just point proven. I know I can, I know I can, I know I can.

And like, dude, I’m literally like, told you I have a hard stop because we have to go sign the deal that we found in the next 48 hours to go sell it to one of our investor clients. And it like tried to record the whole thing, like all the things, right? But like how many agents can just wake up and say, you know what, I’m going to sell a house today. Right. Just like, I’m going to do it, you know? And like agents think if they niche into like, I’m just helping investors, right?

Micah Johnson (28:48)
heck

Matt Brunner (29:06)
Guys, you still get the referrals from your friends and family. You still get the one-off sign calls. You still get everything, right? Like 62 % of our business last year came from nine people. The other 38 was still referrals and everything else. like, that’s not counting, ⁓ you know, referrals from like GCs and stuff like that. But it’s like, so many people are afraid to like niche in and like, this isn’t like investing related, but like, dude, you can niche to whatever, right? Like, I almost…

So like my whole team and I like golf, I see your golf clubs. ⁓ so I almost challenged our team. was like, Hey guys, we’re going to sell eight houses to people that want to live on a golf course this year. And it’s like, how would we do that? Well, we’d post content about golf. We’d go join golf leagues. We would go join memberships. We would go sponsor golf memberships. Like we’re hosting a golf tournament later this year, just cause it’s fun. ⁓ But it’s like, you can niche into whatever one, you just gotta make sure it like matches, right? ⁓

It’s like large enough, like first time home buyers. It’s like so many people are afraid to be like, I’m the first time home buyer agent. Cause they’re not gonna like get the luxury listing one day. It’s like, no, you still will.

Micah Johnson (30:16)
Or you won’t. Who cares? It’s the mindset of… And really when you’re new at it, you think that’s what you’re supposed to do. But the reality is if everyone’s your customer, no one’s your customer. You don’t need everyone. You don’t even need that many. Really, like when you really start to backdoor, this is a fun practice that the first brokerage I did would put us through is they’d make you map out how much money you wanted to make.

so that you can actually see here’s your daily activities if you really want to make a hundred grand here’s how you do it and when i could see it like man that’s really not that much it’s not that hard to actually pull that off right and it’s dude it’s powerful

Matt Brunner (30:58)
fully believe it, dude. I mean, it depends like what your goal is, whatever, right? But like, um, so I run our young professionals network here in Spokane for like the realtor association. And we’re hosting this mastermind on social media next month. And I was talking to the panelists and I was like, all of us have different avatars, but we’ve all identified those avatars. And like some of them, they’re like, dude, I just want to sell 15 to 20 homes a year. And it’s like one of them, she’s really, really good. And she’s very dialed in of like,

She wants to help like other moms with young kids that are between the ages of 24 to 40 that are higher income earners, like sell their house and buy their new house because their kids are growing up. So it’s like all of your content is just based around that. And it’s like, dude, you’re telling me we can’t find 15 people a year that match into that. Right. That’s crazy. You know, there’s

Micah Johnson (31:51)
And you can find way more. There was an old book written about this. I say old, that’s relative. ⁓ It was called A Thousand True Followers or A Thousand Raven Fans. I don’t remember how it went, but basically the guy was saying if you can get thousand people to pay you ten bucks a month, you got ten thousand dollars a month, right? Like you don’t need the whole internet. You just need a thousand people that really believe in what you do. Well, how are you going to do that? You got to talk about one thing.

You gotta get really specific so that they’re actually interested, because if you’re not, it’s just noise. No one cares. It’s like everything else that we all scroll by already.

Matt Brunner (32:25)
Yeah,

dude, I’m like itching to like interrupt you because like that’s my entire model. Thousand true fans, entire model. Like when a new employee starts with us, which I mean, you we’re a team of four and just support staff or whatever. Okay. And make them read that article because they say this is how our business is built. Like we are on a mission to find a thousand true fans that support what we do and like see the good that we do for the community. And like every single time. And then like, I don’t know if you’re like

The Savannah bananas. my team hates me because I talk about Jesse Cole every single day, but like we do so many events that like, just makes sense. Right. And Jesse Cole always talks about, well, it’s not about selling tickets. It’s about getting fans. Right. So it’s like, whenever we do our events, I always tell you people I’m like, guys, like we’re meeting new fans today. We are getting closer to our thousand true fans. Like I was dating this girl for a little bit and I always told her, I was like, I’m going to have a thousand person wedding. She was like, that’s too many. I’m like,

That’s the goal. Like I want a thousand people that have a relationship enough with to say like, man, I want you to come to my wedding. Cause what would that do for your business, man? Every single time somebody thought about real estate, said, ⁓ man, you got to call Mike. Mike has awesome. should see what he’s doing. Like a thousand true fans, dude. What would that do for real estate wise? It’s insane.

Micah Johnson (33:45)
How you doing? It’s how a good friend of mine leveraged a YouTube channel in Tampa to do it. Just you pick a thing. You pick a lane and you become the expert. And the key is, it’s a lot of little tasks day after day after day. And that’s the part that gets most people is can you be not just consistent, but persistent, right? We think consistency is really doing the same stuff every day.

It might be, but it’s not at the same level. Some days you barely get it done, but you just got it done. Some days you get it done in a second. But it’s like that old, was the, what is it, the 20 mile march, I think, that the story’s told about where up in, or in the Arctic somewhere, they had to travel a long ways and they only would go 20 miles a day. Some days they’d get it done in six hours. Some days it took them all 20, it took 20, but they never went more on the easy days and they…

it balanced it out over the other ones. it’s just this idea of as you’re going along, life’s happening. We all got stuff at the same time dealing with all that well, staying patient because real estate is a get rich slow game. And it’s almost guaranteed to work if you’ll stay in it long enough. It’s getting in a hurry that knocks most people out.

Matt Brunner (35:01)
Yeah, somebody asked me one day, they were like, Matt, what’s the secret? I said, doing the right things over a really long time.

Micah Johnson (35:09)
Right, right. And there’s not that many you got to do. I mean, you literally nailed it down to three things you’re trying to serve an investor for. Because at the base levels, it’s basic. We’ve known it. People have known it for a long time. Hey, Realtors have been around in America for more than 100 years. It’s the longest written, it’s the oldest written code of ethics for any industry. Like we’ve been doing this a long time. And it’s the basics are always the basics. We get fun tools at different times, right? I’m glad we didn’t have to look up.

The MLS isn’t still printed out. That’s pretty good news. ⁓

Man, like imagine that it’s like a whole different world. However, this the same thing still stick up building your processes, lay out your systems, build for growth. Have a target. If you have no idea who you’re going after, that’s step one. That’s step one. Who you going after? And what I love about real estate, it’s an interesting industry where it doesn’t matter what your life experience is, it’s relevant.

It will plug in directly to it somehow. It will connect you to your people. So it’s like, who are you? Who are you willing to be? And real estate will reward you.

Matt Brunner (36:24)
I love it man. It’s powerful.

Micah Johnson (36:30)
Well, Matt, man, for those that are listening and watching that want to find out more about what you’re building, the real estate team that you have, how you’re trying to serve investors, learn more, what’s a great way for them to find you.

Matt Brunner (36:43)
Facebook, I like to say I use my Facebook like Trump uses Twitter. just like tweet my thoughts into existence. Or how Kanye uses Twitter, whatever way you want to roll that joke. But yeah, just my Facebook, if you just look me up, Matthew Brunner, an extremely handsome man will show up and that’s probably not my profile and you should look below that one.

Micah Johnson (37:07)
Nice, well if you’re listening and watching and check our show notes, we’ll have all Matthew’s links there or Matt’s links there. Again, Matt, thanks for joining us today, man. Appreciate your time and your story. I think we need more folks out there doing it like you’re doing it. Really serving an audience as best as you can.

Matt Brunner (37:23)
Yeah, just ⁓ believe you have good ideas. I think that’s the best thing I ever did. It’s just say, know what? I think this is good and… …squirt. Let’s go find out.

Micah Johnson (37:34)
Take action, man. I love that. If you’re listening and watching in today, if you got value out of today’s episode, please like this episode. Share it with someone else you think you get value out of it. And if you’re not a subscriber yet, you know what to do. Click the button, subscribe, follow along. We’ve got more conversations coming up with operators just like Matt, folks out there building a real business in the industry. Thanks for being with us today. We’ll see you on the next episode.