We are in the age of social media, so how do you use that to your advantage? How do you create a platform that helps you reach your career goals? What content should you create to target your desired audience? Today’s guest, Kerwin Donis, shares how he and his brothers have built the platforms that have helped them partner in over 600 units of apartment syndication deals.

The Donis Brothers have a wide range of platforms, from YouTube to TikTok, where they document their journey and share their wealth of knowledge. They have about 12,000 followers on Instagram and 63,000 on TikTok, but their main focus is their podcast. Kerwin, the head of their social media, says their initial goal was to document their journey and build credibility as young investors. While that is still their goal, they have become more strategic about what they post and the audience they post for to grow their platform and their online community. 

So how do you begin? You begin now—stop waiting! Kerwin emphasizes that when you start, it won’t be perfect, and that’s okay. Create the content you’d want to consume, aim to entertain and educate, and the rest will come. The benefits of building your platform are endless because you never know who you’re reaching—whether that be a future mentor, partner, or client. There is no better time to start your social media journey and no better place to start than this episode! 

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Ashley: This is Real Estate Rookie episode 199er.

Kerwin: If you’ve been posting for a year consistently, and somebody’s been following you from the first post, and it feels like, even if you don’t know, they’re watching, they’ve been building a relationship with you just in their head. So when they meet you, they already feel like they know you, even if you don’t know them. At that point, you just have to develop the relationship so that you understand who they are, but the hard work has been done because they already trust you.

Ashley: My name is Ashley Kehr, and I am here with my cohost, Tony Robinson.

Tony: And welcome to the Real Estate Rookie Podcast. We’re our favorite movie and the only movie we watch is Tommy Boy, but we also give you really good information on real estate investing, whether that’s the inspiration, the information or the education you need to kickstart your journey.

Tony: Well, we got a really good podcast lineup up for today, right? One of my favorite things to talk about is social media, building your platform, because I really believe that if you want to scale to a big level at a certain point, you’re going to need a big enough platform to find the right people to partner with. It could be private money. It could be equity investors. It could be deal finders. Could be construction crews. Whatever you need, if you have a big enough platform, you can go out there and find it. And today we’ve got Kerwin Donis, who joined us before, him and his brothers were back on episode 173. His brother Jeffrey was on episode 193. But now Kerwin joins us today to talk about how, in their early twenties, they’ve been able to amass over 600 units. And a big part of that is because the platform they were able to build.

Ashley: Yeah, I think this is great for anybody that’s not even investing yet, or is just starting out, just starting some kind of platform to share your story. And we had Lili Thompson too, on the podcast where she said her YouTube channel, just talking about what she was doing, what was going well, what wasn’t working well. And now she’s become this expert investor sharing what she’s still doing, but also teaching people and helping other people get started in real estate. So building your platform now is almost, it seems almost as important as building your systems and processes early on in your business too.

Tony: Yeah. You guys are definitely in for a solid show today. But before we bring him on, I just want to give a quick shout out to one of our recent reviews on Apple Podcasts. This one comes from ZeissyD. And Zeissy says, “Informative and fun to listen to. This is now one of my favorite BP podcasts, along with On the Market. Keep him coming.” ZeissyD, we appreciate you. And if you haven’t left an honest rating review for the Rookie Podcast, yet, please, please, please do. Every new review helps us reach new people. And our goal is to help and inspire as many new investors as we can.

Ashley: You’re so kind by saying an honest review. Just say that we’re super great and your favorite podcast [inaudible 00:02:50].

Tony: Five star reviews only.

Ashley: Yeah. Kerwin, welcome back to the show. Thank you so much for joining us.

Kerwin: Thanks so much for having me.

Ashley: You were on episode 173 with your brothers, and we brought each of you guys back on and we’re releasing one episode with each of you. Today, what are you going to dive deep with us on?

Kerwin: Yeah, we’re going to talk about content, creating content, having a funnel and the importance of doing that, especially if you want to raise capital and just build a brand in the real estate space.

Ashley: Why are you the one here talking to us about that today? And before we get into that, actually, if anyone wants to learn more about you, please go back to episode 173 and you can get the history of how Kerwin started with his brothers and what they’ve done so far and we’ll really dive into content creation today.

Kerwin: Yeah, absolutely. I love writing and I’ve always liked storytelling, reading books, watching movies, things like that. So a lot of content creating and creating content on social media, it really ties to developing an emotional connection to the person you’re trying to reach, because a lot of times that’s the best way to connect with them and have them take away something from the content that you’re making. And so I have a natural inclination to storytelling and things like that. And so that has correlated with my role as the host of the podcast and the person creating our content, writing our blogs, writing our emails and things like that.

Tony: Kerwin, before we go too far, I know we already talked about your backstory, 173, but for those that didn’t hear that episode, just give us a quick snapshot of where you and your brothers are at today in your business.

Kerwin: Yeah. We’re three brothers. I’m 20 and I’m an apartment syndicate and investor. We’ve been a part of three multifamily syndications. We have about over 600 plus units that we’re partnered on. And we’re currently looking to take down our first lead acquisition as well.

Tony: That’s amazing, right? That is absolutely amazing. And I have a slight hunch that your ability to market and build this platform for yourselves has played a pretty big role in that, which is why I’m super, super excited, Ashley and I both are excited to chat with you today. Yeah, like you said, Kerwin, you and your brothers, each of you runs a different role and you’re all about the platform building. So let’s dive into it. I think the first point I want to hit, you just mentioned it, you’re 20 years old, which is crazy. Right? But you’ve got this platform about real estate investing. And I know people in their thirties and their forties and their fifties who feel that they’re not experienced enough to talk about real estate investing and be the source of information for other people. Do you feel that’s true? Or I guess why hasn’t that stopped you guys from going out and building your own platform?

Kerwin: Yeah, well, when we were first starting, it was really just documenting our journey. We wanted to show people what we were doing and it was almost like a form of accountability. Max Maxwell, he said that he did that when he was starting out, he was just documenting his journey as he was learning stuff, he would explain what it was to audience. And so that’s how we started out. And when it came to the podcast, that was a big limiting belief for myself, because I didn’t think I was experienced enough to be interviewing people that were thought leaders and experts in this space. But really, I just saw it as I could have these really smart people on my show and I didn’t have to have the answers, because they did.

Tony: Kerwin, just give us a quick overview of what all of your different platforms look like, where are you guys at? Where are you pushing content out at?

Kerwin: Yeah. We’re on Instagram. We have almost 12,000 followers on Instagram. We’re on TikTok. I’m not exactly sure how many followers we have there, but I’m pretty sure it’s more. I want to say upwards of 50,000 on that platform. And we’re also on LinkedIn, Facebook. We sometimes post on Twitter. But we’re mainly big on Instagram. And we also have a podcast and that’s available on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. And we also have an email list.

Ashley: How do you manage all of these platforms? Are you taking the same content and recreating it?

Kerwin: Yeah. For a long time we were creating unique content for each platform. And one of the big takeaways that has been a learning lesson for us has been just trial and error and learn as you go, because we didn’t have a social media or content mentor who could help us. But we quickly realized that it wasn’t scalable to be on every single platform that we were on and create unique content for each platform. So now what we’re focusing on doing is creating one video, for example, Jeff and I will sit around and talk about inflation or something like that. And really, we just do some research beforehand and then we record that video and I’ll repurpose it for Reels, TikToks, a YouTube video and I’ll make it a podcast episode. So it’s just about creating one piece of content that leads with value. And then you can repurpose it for all the platforms you want to be on.

Ashley: You didn’t go to school or you weren’t trained to be a social media content creator, or even to start a podcast. If someone here listening wants to start their own podcast, how can they actually do that? I mean, I don’t think even Tony and I have the concept of how to… Well, I guess Tony does, because he did his own. I don’t have any idea of how to start my own podcast, I guess.

Kerwin: Yeah. Well we went to YouTube University and we learned a lot there. And we just really just did some research. And at the end of the day, most of the influencers that we were learning from, they just said to start putting out content, it’s not going to be perfect, but you have to get over that initial bump of thinking everything you have to put out has to be perfect, because that’s the best way you’re going to learn. And also, you might think it’s perfect, but then your audience is going to have a different reaction to it. And that’s what the end goal should be, to build your community. And so that’s why we were really focused on just putting out content, seeing what people were responding to and then continuing. And really the key was to be consistently putting out content.

Ashley: Kerwin, what about the back end of stuff? That’s, I guess, what I would be confused about. How does even someone find out how to even create a Twitter account? Or if someone is older and didn’t grow up in the age of social media, what are some resources that people can look for and use if they want to start building their own platforms as to how to actually start those platforms?

Kerwin: Yeah. Just to reiterate it, I would just honestly start by looking it up. And you can do some research. It doesn’t take that long to really find great videos on that and it can walk you through it if you’re more of a visual learner. There’s also a ton of blogs that we used. I read a ton of blogs and I did my research and I also, a great example would be just to listen to other podcasts and see what you like. And the kind of podcasts you like might be a good indication of what you might want to create. And so that’s what we did when we were first starting out.

Kerwin: In terms of the backend stuff, I am a little bit privileged in the way that I grew up with social media and all of these things, so it came as more of a second nature. And I was already using these platforms when I decided to tweak my use of it from being a consumer of the content, to being a creator of the content. But I will say, if you have anybody in your life who might be younger, you can ask them. If you have your kids, I’m sure they’re savvy when it comes to that kind of thing. If you don’t, you can just post on a forum online, BiggerPockets could probably help you out if you go to online at BiggerPockets. Or honestly just connecting with young people in an online community. Or even YouTube, a lot of influencers create content like that, and they also want to create a community. So if you comment a question, they’re more likely to want to respond.

Tony: Ashley, I just want to follow up on your point about how to actually put the podcast together. There’s a guy, his name is Pat Flynn, P-A-T F-L-Y-N-N. He runs a digital marketing website called Smart Passive Income. And when I looked to launch my first podcast, he has a free multiple video length playlist on YouTube about the exact steps you need to follow from a technical standpoint to get your podcast set up. So if anyone out there is thinking about starting a podcast, I would highly recommend that. I think he has some paid stuff that you can do that’s more in depth. But for me, when I launched my podcast, I literally used the free videos that he had online.

Tony: Kerwin, going back to one of the points you made about picking a style that resonates with you. A lot of the listeners, you guys may know that I had my own podcast before I joined BiggerPockets, and it was called your First Real Estate Investment. And I did exactly what you just said, Kerwin, where I thought about, okay, what is the type of content that me as a new investor that I would want to consume? And I was like, man, “It’d be really cool just to hear about how people got started.” Because there’s a lot of podcasts that talk to really successful investors, but they always breezed over the beginning portion of that journey. So for me, there was a strong, emotional connection to that first part. So I said, “Let me just interview people about their very first deal.”

Tony: And I didn’t have to be an expert to do that. Right? I was able to be honest and open with people to say, “Hey, I’m a new investor myself. I’m going on this journey of educating. And I want to take you along with me. And I was able to connect with so many people because of that. So I think that’s a really, really important point, Kerwin, about picking a niche that speaks to you. I don’t even think we’ve talked about it, what is your podcast about? What was the angle that you guys took that made it resonate with you?

Kerwin: Yeah. We’re one on the third season right now and I break it up into seasons just because we’ve been experimenting, testing and trial and error. The first one was really just interview based. We were bringing on people and we were, I would say more novice investors at the time. We didn’t really know about multifamily and it was very multifamily based. Because we had these people on our show and the platform, so we wanted to learn as much as we could. So we were just asking really beginner questions and things like that. And we would dive into how they got started and then maybe some failures along the way. Maybe some takeaways. What I like to do is I always listen to some podcast interviews they’ve done in the past, just to understand what questions I might want to build off of.

Kerwin: And then season two was a narrative structure. So I’d go back and add narration and things like that. But really getting into the story, the first step was to entertain my audience. And then after that, it was to educate. Because if people get an emotional connection to the show and the person that they’re listening about, then they’re more likely to take away something and actually remember and retain the information that you’re trying to cross the bridge to get to them.

Ashley: On that platform is the podcast like the platform, like your, say leadership platform, like the platform that you’re using as the one on top and then the other ones trickle down around that? Or what’s your platform where you’re really trying to connect with people and really provide value?

Kerwin: Yeah, I would say the podcast 100% is the main platform. Right now, we’re season three, we’re interviewing just some investors and bringing them on to tell their story and also share some gold nuggets with our audience. We also repurposed that video and that interview, we’re starting to now on YouTube. YouTube is also a new platform, but that’s just beginning. So really, the core platform for us is our podcast.

Ashley: And do you recommend that that’s what everyone use as their core platform? Or can it differ?

Kerwin: Yeah, that’s a good question. And that’s something that we contemplated, what platform would be ideal for us? I think there’s a lot of different factors that can go into it. I do recommend that you pick one platform, just to really master one platform and then you can branch off into the other ones. We started off with the podcast because it’s a great way to establish credibility for yourself and for, in our case, we’re multifamily investors, but in any space. Sometimes I walk into a room and people just know who I am from my podcast, or they’ve seen my content online. And so things like that, that’s the benefit of it. But if you like being on video, maybe YouTube is good. If you don’t want to be on video, but you think you have a really good radio voice, then a podcast might be good. If you like making quick gold nugget content, ten second content, TikTok, or Instagram might be ideal. It just really depends on the kind of person you are.

Tony: And I think you can start with one and then eventually branch out. When I first, first started in the world of digital marketing and platform building, I started off with writing. I had a blog, because I enjoyed writing. And I do have that radio, “Hey, this is WBBK FF…” I got the radio DJ voice, right? So for me, the podcasting was the next natural progression. And now like you, we have the email list, we have the podcast, we have the YouTube channel, we have Instagram, we have TikTok. And it’s, I think picking the one that resonates with you the most to begin with, and then knowing that as you get comfortable and confident on that platform, you can always branch out later. But there are still people today that all they do is blog and they’ve built massive, massive platforms. There’s still an audience for that out there.

Ashley: Tony, I’m going to put in my letter of resignation, unless you agree to only talk in your DJ voice from now on.

Tony: I don’t know if I can hold that up for a whole 60 minute. Maybe I’ll do our intros in my DJ voice from now.

Ashley: Okay. Okay. Well, I have something that I want to know is, okay, we’ve talked about the different platforms that you’re using, why it’s important to have a core one. And you’re providing value, but what is the benefit out of this? How does this correlate with real estate investing specifically? When I started an Instagram account and I was just sharing my story too, and then it scaled from there and turned into education. But what are your suggestions as the best way to tie into your real estate investing and how has that actually provided value to you as an investor?

Kerwin: Yeah, it depends on the kind of investing you’re doing. I can talk about how it’s worked for me and how some of my friends who are also in… For me, I’m a multifamily investor. We are aiming to obviously raise capital. And we’re also aiming to just build our thought leadership platform so that if people want to look us up and see if we’re credible, they can do that. So it does provide instant credibility. When somebody wants to look me up online, they can see that I’m very present. I actually practice what I preach and I’m somewhat knowledged, I like to think so, knowledged in this space. Also, like I said, we find potential investors and we connect with people online.

Kerwin: I have a friend who came from a wholesaling background and he is able to find wholesale leads through Instagram. And he generates wholesale leads in his DMS and people reach out to him. So you can generate leads, if you’re looking for property leads. I’ve also been able to build my network that way. I’ve met realtors this way. I’ve met people that were able to deal source, partners, equity partners. There’s just different forms of value you can get. I think you have to be intentional with what you’re looking for, but of course also lead with value and don’t really expect something in return when you’re making the content. Just keep an eye out. And I think when people reach out, you can understand how they might be able to bring you value or how they can bring someone in your network value and you can make that connection. And that’s something that we’ve also done as well.

Tony: Ash, before we move on, I just want to point out, we both have a mutual friend, his name’s Derrick Acuff, he was on episode 103 of the Rookie Podcast. And he’s got a pretty big following, both on Instagram and TikTok. But he says he consistently gets off market deals from his Instagram profile. So if you’re looking for a way to source good deals in today’s market, imagine having 30,000, 40,000, 50,000, 100,000 followers that all are out there looking for potential deals for us.

Tony: There’s a big benefit there. I think this there’s a caveat here, right, because I think the platform depends on what your goals are. If your goal is to buy one single family house every year, you can probably do that by yourself. Right? If you’re working hard, saving money, collecting your cash flow, stacking it up, you can probably buy one single family house a year.

Tony: If your goal is to syndicate apartment complexes, right? Or maybe buy 12 houses this year. That, most people can’t do by themselves. I’ve shared on the podcast before that our old goal was to get to 1000 short term rental units. Our new goal was to get to $1 billion worth of short term rentals. There is no way on earth that I could get to $1 billion worth of short term rentals by myself, right? There has to be some level of working with other people. And when you have a platform that’s big enough and you can get people to know you, to like you and trust you it becomes a little bit easier to kind of find the right people to connect with. I mean, I’m assuming Kerwin, that for a lot of those syndications you guys have done a lot of those funds have come from your platform.

Kerwin: Yeah. And absolutely. And I think maybe more relevant to your audience might be somebody who might be looking for a private lender for a single family property. I know that’s very common and a lot of people on social media, you can just connect with someone on Instagram and they might be looking to private lend, and you can make that connection just by producing content and maybe documenting a flip you’ve done and things like that. It’s the small things and you don’t necessarily understand how it might generate some kind of lead right then, or some kind of value to yourself. But if you’re just providing that online, people more than what other people do that are looking at your content and they might want to learn more and over time they might understand that private lending is an option for them. And then once you guys build that relationship, they might learn to know, like, and trust you. And people invest with people they know, like, and trust. And you did that one sidedly just by putting out content.

Ashley: Isn’t that crazy how that know, like, and trust is based off of you on social media, in what you post in the content you create and how many likes you have and how many followers you have? I mean, I think that is just crazy. But it’s true. If someone’s out there putting out, they need an investor and this person has 100,000 followers, lots of likes, they’re always talking about the deals they’re doing, how successful they are. Then there’s another person, maybe 250 followers. They post a couple of their kids. They post pretty pictures, but nothing really about real estate investing. Don’t have a ton of likes, a ton of followers. And then they ask, they need money to do a deal. Who do you think people are more willing to invest with? They’re going to go with the person who has 100,000 followers and shows all of their stuff online.

Ashley: And actually, we could do this as an experiment one time, is pick some random hobby or something and pretend we are an expert on it on social media and create content, like we do for real estate investing, and see if we can build some kind of following and become credible at this fake hobby we have or something. But it’s so true. And that’s why it’s worth putting in the effort, the energy, because you do become credible, people trust you, they like you. I share a lot of like my family and personal stuff I have going on in my Instagram stories too, so people feel like they know me and it’s not just content I’m pushing out as real estate strategy too.

Kerwin: And to build off of that, I think it’s also, if you’ve been posting for a year consistently, and somebody’s been following you from the first post, then it feels like, even if you don’t know, they’re watching, they’ve been building a relationship with you just in their head. And so when they meet you, they already feel like they know you, even if you don’t know them. At that point, you just have to develop the relationship so that you understand who they are, but the hard work has been done because they already trust you.

Ashley: Yeah.

Tony: Yeah. We just finished up the Rookie Bootcamp weekend, what, like two weeks ago, Ashley. And I had so many people that came up to me joking about the house in Shreveport. So many people. Right? It’s like, it’s been this running joke since I came on the show. That’s just the power of sharing your story.

Ashley: Yeah.

Tony: I want to talk a little bit about the actual kind of content that you guys are putting out. You have the podcast you’re interviewing guests, you have this narrative piece as well, but if I’m not mistaken, you guys have some core values that you work into your content as well. Can you walk us through what those are?

Kerwin: Yeah. Every single piece, we try to get some kind of value to our audience. So whether that’s entertaining them or educating them or inspiring them, things like that. We are big in fitness. So sometimes on my story, if I’m at the gym, I’ll post a motivational tip at the gym or things like that. Fitness is one, family is another one. Of course, when it’s Mother’s Day, I posted a picture of my mom. And my audience is well aware that it’s part of our why, to retire her as soon as possible. We posted a Reel on that, that was about us retiring her because she’s working really hard. And that was by far, our most viewed piece of content and it got millions of views. And so that’s one of it.

Kerwin: We also provide a lot of real estate education, like when we’re doing property tours, things like that. Sometimes we like to talk about economics and questions we have. And so we’ll sit around and record that and then post that. It’s really just real estate, fitness, family and real estate and things like that. We try to have different pillars and categories of content so that it doesn’t get repetitive and redundant. And it also provides a holistic approach, because no one’s just one thing. You’re human and it helps the audience relate to you when you can provide some more of the human side of things, rather than just focusing on real estate.

Ashley: Okay, Kerwin, when you are posting content, do you have any set guidelines, like gray area or lines, or even controversial issues you guys won’t cross when you’re putting out content or things that are too guruy? What are your core values, per se, that you have when you are putting out content?

Kerwin: Yeah. Well, in the multifamily space, we try to avoid breaking any SCC guidelines. So we don’t advertise any deals or anything like that. We don’t pitch any deals or anything like that. We also try not to be too salesy. We always try to make sure it’s some kind of value or there’s a reason to be posting it. And we also try to not just post something just to post something. I do think it’s important to be consistent, but at the same time, we try to take time to look at the content, make sure that somebody’s going to get something out of it. And sometimes it doesn’t do well, but that’s okay, as long as we had the right intention. But yeah, I do think it’s important to make sure that you think of the audience first, because it’s about the other person on the other end of the content, not just what I want to post.

Tony: Kerwin, I know a big challenge for a lot of people, not just real estate investors, but anybody that’s trying to create content, is actually being consistent with it. And it’s easier for me and Ashley on the podcast, because there’s a whole team at BiggerPockets that’s like, they’re a well oiled machine when it comes to making podcasts. But the average person doesn’t have that big team behind them. When I started my own podcast, The Your First Real Estate Investment Podcast, I made it a goal of having a certain number of banked episodes before I went live. And I think I ended up recording, I don’t know, 50 episodes or something like that before I ever even went live. Is there, I don’t know, are you guys leveraging something like that too? What kind of tips, resources do you have to be able to consistently push out such a high volume of content?

Kerwin: Yeah. One thing I do is I make two pieces of content every day and they’re short clips and it’s typically repurposing something I’ve already recorded. I’ll take that one piece and I’ll post one of them. And then the other one I’ll add to my vault of content. And for me, it’s a Google spreadsheet. There’s different platforms and softwares you can use, but for us, it’s just a Google spreadsheet. I’ll put the caption, the link to a Google Drive video, if it’s a video or an image. And then I’ll write a description of it, so I know what it is. And that way I’ve built out a vault and every single day I’m adding to it. So if I’m at a conference and I can’t get content that day, I know I at least have something in my vault that I can post from before.

Kerwin: We’re always taking action. And a lot of these people, let’s say you’re a flipper, or yeah, let’s say you’re a flipper. You are in the field, that’s content right there. Just literally take your phone out and record and explain what you’re doing. And typically that content gets more engagement from the audience anyway, because they’re able to see it. A lot of these people are visual learners, especially on social media. A lot of people want to learn and see what you’re doing. They don’t want to just see you sitting at a table talking about it. So I think that is even better content, honestly.

Ashley: And how are you choosing what content or what topics? Do you have somebody that’s feeding that to you? Are you going on YouTube and looking up keywords? How are you selecting what people are actually interested in learning about?

Kerwin: Yeah. All of the above honestly. We do keyword research. Just like, for example, if you want to see what a BiggerPockets, what kind of keywords you guys use, that’s great, great insight as well. But for us, sometimes I’ll ask my audience, “Hey, if you guys have any questions, what are your real estate questions?” And a lot of times we get DMs from people asking real estate questions, like how to find a mentor, what markets were you looking in? Things like that. We’ll make videos about that. We also we address the question directly, but we also like to make a video because a lot of times it’s the same questions that we’re getting. And so things like that. And also questions that we had starting out, things we wish somebody had taught us when we were first starting out, we share that with people.

Tony: You, you talked about putting out at least one post a day, so I want to get your opinion on this, Kerwin. Is there too much in terms of posting? For example, for me and my social media profile, initially I was posting once a day. And me and my team made a decision to switch to twice per day. And we’ve seen a lot of growth on social once we made that and my wife was initially hesitant. She’s like, “Ah, you don’t want to bug people,” and this, that, and the other, but it has had a positive impact on how we’re growing. I mean, what are your thoughts on that? Is it better to post like one amazing Reel per week and just try and push that a lot? Or is it better to post multiple times a day? Or what’s the rhythm that you found has work best for you guys?

Kerwin: Yeah, for us, daily is absolutely the way to go. We just want to be present every single day. And if the person gets irritated or doesn’t like the content that you’re making, or they get annoyed, then they probably aren’t a good follower for you anyway. So they should probably just unfollow you. And that just helps you because that way it’s one less person and you can focus on the audience that you’re actually serving. And like I said, if you are always delivering value, then your audience isn’t going to get tired of your content because you’re giving something to them and they get something from it.

Tony: Yeah, Kerwin, I think that’s amazing advice, especially the piece where, if they’re not the right person, they’ll unfollow you. And I think so many people are afraid of losing followers or losing email subscribers or losing YouTube subscribers. And obviously, if you’re bleeding those kind of people, maybe you need to change something up. It’s natural to lose, I lose a couple hundred followers every week, but I’m gaining a thousand or two, right? So there’s always people coming and going, but the ones that stick around are the ones you really want to build that relationship with.

Ashley: What’s that song? “Beep beep come and go, but I’m here to stay.”

Tony: We [inaudible 00:28:20] on your soundboard.

Ashley: That’s me on your Instagram, Tony.

Tony: It’s so funny, my in-laws, my brother-in-law and my sister-in-law, they were telling me that when they wake up in the morning, before they see each other’s Instagram posts, they see my face. They’re like, “You’re the first face that we see every morning.” I was like, okay, cool.

Ashley: Kerwin, how are you managing all these platforms? I mean, remembering to post and you have this vault of content ready to go. Are you using any kind of software to schedule posting or anything like that to manage it all?

Kerwin: Yeah, we’ve used softwares in the past. I can’t the name of them because they just, weren’t very good and they’re not very efficient. Some of them will automatically post it for you and they will post on Instagram, but not other platforms. I use a Google spreadsheet right now and we’re big believers of the book, Traction, and having that organizational system. So every morning I’ll tell them, “Hey, we’re releasing a YouTube video today on this.” And I just have a spreadsheet. We use Google spreadsheets for everything. So I’ll just include everything that needs to get done that day, it’s like a to-do list. And every single day I’ll update it. And at night I’ll update it right before the evening, the evening before the next day, so that way I know what’s on my plate for the next day.

Ashley: Okay. And then let’s talk about actually building an audience. Do you have any tips or tricks that you can give out? Are there certain algorithms that you know of on different platforms? Or how else do you get a good following besides just putting out good content?

Kerwin: Yeah. Well, I will say one thing to not do is don’t buy fake followers. That can hurt you. And a lot of people do that, but I think I’d rather have 2000 loyal followers that actually like my content and engage with it than 100,000 people that don’t comment. And don’t like, and don’t actually get anything from it, because that’ll just hurt you. And people can tell too, I can tell when somebody buys fake followers.

Ashley: There is this one guru, I guess, that he had, I don’t know, maybe 20,000 followers. Then all of a sudden, next day or whatever, he had 100,000, but it was like 12 likes on each post. It’s easy to tell when people do buy followers

Kerwin: And it just takes away from your credibility. And I don’t think you need to do that,.like I said, I’d rather have real followers that actually engage with my content. Can you remind me what… you said the initial question was?

Ashley: Just what are tips and tricks that people can use to maybe beat the algorithm on different places? But yeah, to get followers?

Kerwin: I follow a lot of influencers because I’m always learning about how to develop my community and things like that. And one thing that this guy always says is, he says, “focus on the community and focus on the specific person you’re trying to reach. Instead of trying to speak to a room of 100 people, really focus on the one person that you want to reach. And the more narrow you get with your content…” Let’s say for us, it’s our listeners on our podcast, for example. They tend to be men in the United States that are under 35 years old. And a lot of the people that I met online, in person, they tend to be from a Hispanic background. So in my mind, I’m framing my content for somebody that would fit that demographic in that role. But in reality, it’s going to connect to a lot of people.

Kerwin: The more you ground it into something specific, and a particular avatar is what it’s called, then it’s counterintuitive, but it actually ends up breeding a broader audience. I would say really focus on the person you want to speak to, what’s their job? How old are they? What’s their socioeconomic status? What are their fears? What are their desires? What do they want out of life? Why are they listening to real estate? What are their problems, their biggest problems that your content will solve? And if you think of it from that perspective, then I think the content will filter itself naturally and you can create really high value content.

Ashley: Are you doing anything else to track how well content is doing? Like if you post a video, are you looking actually at the analytics of it and is that actually important to track, to figure out what does well and what doesn’t?

Kerwin: Yeah. We do look at the Instagram analytics and our Anchor. Anchor’s the platform we use to upload our podcasts. We do listen to that, just to see the retention rate for the time, what time people might tune out over podcast or for our Instagram clips and things like that, what kind of content is getting more engagement? And I just do use that, honestly, just for personal note. That’s one thing that we have been really focused on building content and really focused on just generating a bunch of content and building the vault, that we haven’t really focused on the system side of things. And that’s something that we’re honestly, we’re working on now and I’m going to start building that out.

Kerwin: But in general, these platforms, they typically do have analytics and you can go to the settings on Instagram and there’s an analytics tab and you can track what’s working. But I would say too, that you can get into a dangerous territory where you’re trying to focus on the algorithm and what’s going to go viral and things like that. And that’s not what the intention should be. You should really be focusing on if the same people are commenting and engaging and you can tell slowly it’s growing, that’s the right way to do it. Because you want organic growth.

Tony: All right. Kerwin, you dropped so much knowledge, man, but there’s an important part of marketing that I think a lot of people miss and I want get your insights on this. I guess, is it safe to say that the best result of your marketing efforts is someone investing in one of your syndications? Would that be one of the ideal outcomes for you guys?

Kerwin: Yeah. We just want to make that relationship, start building that relationship, but finding somebody who might want to do that, that would be an ideal outcome for us.

Tony: Yeah, totally.

Kerwin: Yeah.

Tony: And not that it’s your only goal, right? But that would be an ideal outcome, right? Is that someone finds your content, they consume, you guys build a relationship. And then when you have an amazing opportunity for them to invest in, you can reach out to them. They say yes, because that relationship is there. You said you’ve got 50,000 followers on TikTok. We know that not all 50,000 of those people are going to invest in your deal. Right? If they did, you’d be one of the best indicators on the planet right now. Right? So there’s a certain number of people that make their way through to actually get to that end result. What I want to know is, you’ve got these 50,000 people here on TikTok, however many people on Instagram, all of your listeners on your podcast, what steps are you taking to move them through those different steps to get to that ideal end result?

Kerwin: Yeah. Something that I’ve heard people saying, we believe in as well, is you don’t own any of you’re following on any one platform, and you can lose your access to your YouTube at any point, if YouTube deems you unworthy and they’ll shut down your account, so you no longer have access to that audience. That’s why it’s important to own your own audience and move them off of those platforms onto an email list, is what we do. And so I have a lead magnet, it’s The Five Mistakes Investors Make, and that’s in my bio for-

Tony: Sorry, Kerwin, before we go too far, just define lead magnet for me. I think there’s a lot of people that might not know what that term is.

Kerwin: … Yeah. For us, it’s a playbook. And it’s just anything that will incentivize. In exchange for an email, they get a free document or a free resource that you provide for them. And so for us, it’s a playbook. It’s like a magazine that we just walk them through some of the top mistakes people make in multifamily.

Kerwin: And so in exchange for that, we give them that for free in their email inbox, they give us their email. And after they get that initial email with the playbook, the PDF, we explain who we are. We send a consecutive of four to five emails after that spread out per day. So it’s one on this day, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, they get one for about five days and that’s just walking them through who we are. And the end goal of that is to get them to book a call with us, because for us, we have to build a relationship with these people before we can even talk about investing. And we want to make sure that we understand their financial goals and things like that. And the first step to that is just to get face to face time. And typically we’re not going to go out and meet them for coffee. If we can, that’s great. But you can just hop on a Zoom call and do that.

Ashley: Are you taking the investor calls or you pass those on to one of your brothers?

Kerwin: Yeah. Jeffrey is the investor relations side of things. I’m mainly the one kind of in doing the behind the scenes and things like that and the marketing.

Ashley: Okay. What are some lessons learned that you have, just from building these platforms? If you were to go back and you were to start fresh, are there any things that you would’ve done differently?

Kerwin: Yeah. I would start with video content earlier. At first, we were doing mainly podcasting and short clips and pictures and things like that on Instagram, but we weren’t doing video content and going along with the build relationship with people and get them to know, like, and trust you. People want to see your face. And so giving them your face, talking to them on camera, whether that’s at a flip, a property tour, or just sitting at a table, creating that content and showing them your face, they’re going to, A, recognize you in person. And you get that celebrity status. And Joe Fairless talks about that in his book, the Best Ever Apartment Syndication Book, where you don’t want to have… maybe you do want that widespread fame, but if you have industry fame, that just gives you that credibility and people will already know you and trust you before they really even meet you in person. And so that, for us, has been a big game changer and video content is really important.

Ashley: So you want to be able to walk through an airport without your sunglasses on and a hood off? You don’t want to have to hide in an airport, but you want to walk into a real estate conference and know everybody. Is that what you mean by celebrity status in your industry?

Kerwin: Yes, yes, yes. Because investing is really big on trust. And so people aren’t going to invest with someone they don’t trust. And especially coming from a young age, I think if we can do it, then I think that’s proof anyone can do it. Because we are able to develop that trust with our audience. And it’s even more important for us because we’re young, I’m in my twenties. So people are going to automatically assume that I don’t have the credibility. But if I’m producing content that counters that thought process, then it works for me.

Tony: Kerwin, I mean, you’ve dropped so many, I think, golden nuggets on the ability to build out your platform and the value that it’s had on your business. And again, I don’t want people to miss the fact that you and your brothers are your early twenties, you’re GPs on over 600 units, which is just absolutely amazing at any age, but even more so in your early twenties. And obviously, the platform you guys have been able to build has been a really big part of that. Ashley and I talk all the time about the value of having a platform. So to bring a guest on who’s living this out, I think is super, super valuable for our listeners. Ash, before we move on to the rookie exam, anything else you want to pick Kerwin’s brain on?

Ashley: I don’t think so, but I do want to change up our rookie exam question, since we had Kerwin on pretty recent. For the first one, usually we do one actionable thing rookie should do after listening to this episode. But what is one actionable thing that rookies can do today? Say they already have one platform started already, what is one thing that they should start doing today on their platform?

Kerwin: Yeah, I would say make two pieces of content, post one and store one in your vault and start building your vault over time. And that way you’ll be really happy you did that. Because let’s say in 30 days from now, you’ll have about 15 pieces of content that you can just rely on. If you have to go on a trip or something comes up and you can’t make content that day.

Tony: Awesome. Question number two, Kerwin, say that you have to start over and you only got one platform to choose from, could be a podcast, could be a YouTube channel, could be Instagram, TikTok, what’s the one platform you would choose and why?

Kerwin: I would do YouTube because it’s a great way to create that content and have both the audio and the visual, so people can see my face. And the podcast, that’s what we were doing, but we can create so many different kinds of content. And YouTube is its own search engine, like Google. So you can reach so many different people on YouTube. And I think that’s where you can really have the most growth right now.

Tony: Yeah. That’s what I love about YouTube is that it’s searchable. On TikTok, you can grow fast, but I don’t know, we post stuff about real estate investing and we mention Joshua Tree. And then we get people that are all about the national park and this, that, and the other. Or we’ll talk about we had a bad guest at our short term rental because there was dog hair. And instead of real estate investors commenting, it’s like everyone that loves their dog telling us how bad we are at being an Airbnb host. But on YouTube, someone’s literally searching for, “How do I become a better host on short term rentals? Or how do I manage my short-term rental from afar?” So the quality, in my mind, of the audience on YouTube is exceptionally higher than some of the other social media platforms. So I’m really glad you mention that.

Ashley: And on TikTok, if I’ve seen a TikTok, I’ll never be able to find it again.

Tony: Yeah. That’s so true.

Ashley: Unless I remember the name of the person, but you can never ever find it again.

Kerwin: 100%. And Google is something that when people are using it, they’re typically not going to be scrolling mindlessly. But on YouTube, they’re going to be just scrolling, so they’re more likely to come across your content.

Ashley: Yeah, that’s such a great point. Okay. The last question is where do you plan on being in five years? But let’s change this a little bit, and how do you see social media impacting entrepreneurs in just business in general in five years?

Kerwin: Yeah. I mean, influencers are proving it right now, it’s becoming an industry and it’s only growing. So I think the more following you have, the more you can do. Grant Cardone, he’s talks a lot about being omnipresent on a lot of different platforms, but the power of that, not only for real estate, but I think it just opens a lot of doors for any entrepreneur, no matter what you want to do. And I think you can only help yourself by being on social media. And so I think in five years, it’ll only become more powerful, only become more important. And right now, it might be an option to be on social media. But I do think that the more social media becomes present in our daily lives, it will become more prevalent and even more important for every investor to do that.

Tony: Yeah, Kerwin, I couldn’t agree more. I mean, I think the importance of having a platform to any business is only going to continue to increase. And the number of… like our handyman in Tennessee, right? He’s super old school dude. Doesn’t have Venmo. Wants us to mail checks out when we got pay him. I think as that generation starts to retire from the workplace and you see more people of our generation and the following generations taking the reins, everyone’s going to be looking like, “Okay, what do you look like on social media?” Right? “What’s your Yelp reviews look like?” So that digital presence, I think is going to become more and more important. Glad we had you on here, man.

Tony: As we wrap things up, Kerwin, I want to just highlight today’s rookie rockstar. If you want to get highlighted as a rookie rockstar, get active in the Real Estate Rookie Facebook group, or you can slide in my DMS or in Ashley’s DMs. I’m @TonyJRobinson, she’s @WealthFromRentals. And sometimes we’ll pick folks from there.

Tony: But today’s Ricky rockstar comes from the Facebook group and it’s Ian Wilson. And he flipped a property for a $66,000 profit. So just really quickly, it took a total of eight months to get this deal done. It became a nightmare because the property had bad tenants who weren’t paying, but they wouldn’t leave without being evicted. And then he suggested to his partner that they’d get creative with how they put the deal together. But anyway, it took two months, but they were finally able to get those tenants out. And with that, they were able to flip the property for a $66,000 profit. So Ian, congratulations to you. I never buy properties that have tenants in them because I don’t want to deal with that. So I’m happy you were able to figure out a solution there, man.

Ashley: Ian, that’s awesome. Congratulations. I don’t think we’ve had too many people come on the podcast and actually talk about flipping mobile homes so far. So congratulations. Well, Kerwin, thank you so much for joining us. Can you tell everyone where they can reach out to you and find out some more information about you?

Kerwin: Yeah, we’re @DonisBrothers, D-O-N-I-S Brothers on every social media platform. And you can also check out our YouTube channel, same @, and The Real Estate Monopoly is our podcast. And we also have a playbook that we give out to people for free, it’s www.donisinvestmentgroup.com/playbook.

Ashley: Okay, well, thank you guys so much for joining us this week. Kerwin, it was great to have you back and doing this special series with you and your brothers. If you guys love the podcast, please leave us a review on your favorite podcast platform. And let us know when you leave the review, what’s some value you have taken from the podcast that has helped you get started in real estate investing, or even just take action towards getting that first or next deal. We’d love to hear about it. I’m Ashley, @WealthFromRentals, he’s Tony, @TonyJRobinson on Instagram, and we will be back on Saturday with a rookie reply.

Ashley: (Singing).

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