WS1056: Ways to Grow Your Social Media Presence with Jeffrey, Kerwin and Kenneth Donis

EPISODE 1056

[INTRODUCTION]

[00:00:00] ANNOUNCER: Welcome to The Real Estate Syndication Show. Whether you are a seasoned investor or building a new real estate business, this is the show for you. Whitney Sewell talks to top experts in the business. Our goal is to help you master real estate syndication.

And now your host, Whitney Sewell. 

[INTERVIEW]

[0:00:26.9] WS: This is your daily Real Estate Syndication Show. I am your host, Whitney Sewell. Today, do I have a treat for you? I hope that it’s kind of a good kick in the pants are motivating to you, especially if you are one of those that are procrastinating, getting started in this business or just can’t figure out how to promote yourself online. Well, we have three brothers on today, the Donis brothers, Jeffrey, Kerwin and Kenneth, and they are crushing it in the syndication business, even at one’s, 23, and the other two are 19, and so I hope that that motivates you just in what they are accomplishing and they’re just pushing themselves. They come from a low-income, single-parent household, they started in single family real estate, wholesaling, fix and flipping and buying lease option rentals, they’re currently under contract on a 100 plus unit department complex in Florida. So, I just want you to think about that. I want you to hear what they have to say today, I know that some things that they are doing on social media, how they’re helping promoting themselves is also going to help you if you just implement one or two of these things that they are doing. So, have a blessed day talk to you tomorrow.

[0:01:27.4] WS: Jeffrey, Kerwin and Kenneth, welcome to the show, interesting trio here and looking forward to getting into that. And what each of you do for your business and how you’re gonna help some of the listeners today think about how they can do the same… Well, let’s back up a little bit though, man, you all have to be related to tell us a little bit about your partnership and what each of you do. 

[0:01:49.9] KD: My name is Kenneth, I’m 23 years old. And we’re apartment syndicators. These are my brothers. 

[0:01:54.9] JD: Yeah, my name is Jeffrey, I’m 19 years old.

[0:01:55.9] JD: And my name’s Kerwin, also 19 years old. Were from Toronto, Carolina. We were born in New York, but now we’re doing multifamily syndication fast forward after we got it.

[0:02:04.7] WS: Yeah, 23 in 19 and 19 again, I think we talked about that show a while back, but it… Man, love highlighting young guys and gals that are out making it happen amongst all the pushback of how you’re too young, or you should do something else, or whatever the pushbacks are, I received them as well. Even getting into it, older than you all, and so I can only imagine, but man, congratulations just right off the bat for making it happen, give me a little bit though about each of your skill sets and how you all work together. Yeah.

[0:02:34.3] JD: So I’ll go first, this is Jeffrey, I focus on the investor relations side of the business, also capital raising, so I build relationships with investors by going to events local as well as just in the country, we’ll fly out and we’ll go to a multifamily events specifically, and I also call it a strategic partnering is something where I’m intentional with networking, 

[0:02:55.3] KD: I’m in acquisition, this is kinda pretty much called brokers, build relationships with the brokers, go on property tours, underwrite the deals and submit offers on apartments. 

[0:03:04.3] KD: And this is Kerwin, I’m in charge of the podcast, The Real Estate Monopoly, and we have guests come on and I’m the one in charge of our social media presence and sort of telling our story there.

[0:03:13.0] WS: Awesome, well, tell me a little bit about how you all have the confidence to move forward in the syndication business as young as you are, tell me just a couple of things, and we’re gonna jump into a couple of key things that you all are really good at to help listeners with.

[0:03:27.0] JS: So I can start us off this is Jeffrey, first thing is that we spend a lot of time educating ourselves. So obviously, most people in the multifamily space are a lot older than us, but we of course, approach it with the same mentality that most people do. If not, we try to be even more tenacious with it. We spend a lot of time listening to podcast, reading the right books and join a lot of different masterminds. We spend a lot of time with people that are in this space. Just rubbing shoulders. Like Kerwin said, we have a podcast, so just by building that education, in my opinion, it overcomes that fear, in my opinion, the fear is just a lack of education, so that’s where we are able to overcome that with the education, and when we’re talking to these multifamily operators they might think I’m young and they can think what they want, which is good ’cause I am young, yes, but it’s not because of a lack of preparation and my opinion is in the room.

[0:04:12.0] WS: I love what you just said, Fear is a lack of education. A lot of that frustration begins where knowledge ends is another quote that’s very similar that is saying a lot, ’cause it’s so true, and you all are just models of that, but you mentioned reading books and joined some masterminds, any recommendations around… Any couple of books or a masterminds, both, that have been crucial to your early success?

[0:04:35.2] KD: Getting into syndication, we knew that we needed experience and we part of people going straight to the big deals, which called our attention, so we decided to join in multifamily group. They’ve been very helpful with the experience end of it, kind of showing us the ropes and just having a family that everyone’s willing to kind of pour into me as far as books though I’m a really big Napoleon Hill, and so I Think And Grow Rich out wetting the devil. And I think my brother is also reading on a plane… I look right now. Yeah, and I was gonna say regarding syndication, Joe Fairless’ book the Best Ever Apartment Syndication Book, that was my favorite for apartment syndication, and we read that like a textbook and implemented a lot of what he said into our business.

[0:05:18.5] WS: No, that’s great, this… Some great suggestions there, especially around the mindset and the riparian as well, I think multifamily, I knew Mark and to me personally, I’ve known them for a number of years now, and I just think very highly of them. A great, great, by the way, that I would encourage anyone to look up… Yeah, and the best ever syndication book, By Joe, man, I know Joe personally as well for a number of years and great book, great book, what a few around syndication, there’s not many around our industry that lay it out as simple as as he was able to… Alright, so let’s move into a couple of your expertise, what is social media and the way you all have grown, the way you all have marketed yourself… Let’s jump into that a little bit. Give us a little bit about the marketing strategy or branding and how you’ve leverage social media to grow quickly, your presence? 

[0:06:03.5] JD: Our approach to it is kind of just documenting our journey and taking people along with us, also, I think when people meet us in person, they might not believe that we’re actually doing what we’re saying, so when they go back, I like to say it’s like the receipts, it’s kind of proof that we have been doing this for a while and we’re gonna continue to document it.

[0:06:19.3] KD: I like to say money goes where attention flows, so just putting yourself out there, I don’t track people that have either what you need, someone that you can partner with or someone that might invest with you, it’ll just attract good things, I believe. So if you just put in content out and things of that nature.

[0:06:38.3] KD: We’re trying to post consistently as possible, a daily, most times, because a lot of times people come up to us in advance and say, Hey, I saw you on tiktok, or, Hey, I saw you on Facebook and we’re just always trying to be omnipresent, and we believe that being everywhere, or at least trying to is gonna have a good impact the long term. 

[0:06:54.3] WS: Nice. Being omnipresident that’s difficult, right? That is hired takes a lot of work, a lot of planning. And especially just online. There’s so many different platforms, I don’t wanna talk about that. How did you know what platforms use and which ones are focused on right now, where I’m focusing on LinkedIn, Instagram, and we also have Facebook groups that we post in LinkedIn works because a lot of times there’s a… Where we find network with brokers, also the potential investors and just people in the multifamily space, we try to make a post there.

[0:07:19.9] KD: I would say Instagram is also a good place to connect with other people, and it’s more on a personal level, but those are our main two primary platforms.

[0:07:27.9] KD: We like to connect with other people that are very like-minded as well as in the real estate space, and syndication, just kinda learn from them, pick their brain and also core that information to our audience as well.

[0:07:39.3] WS: How many shows have you done now with your frequency of shows?

[0:07:39.3] KD: For the podcast… We just release that 34th episode, currently building a vault of episodes to eventually become a daily show, and so we’re working on that, we have about 24 recordings right now, and then we are making some changes to the show that I think will make it more of an engaging story by an episode for our audience to follow, and I think they’ll get more out of it. 

[0:08:02.1] WS: Awesome. (Yeah, trying to be like you.) Alright, you need a lot more gray hair to be like me? Just kidding. That’s awesome, congratulations. And a daily show is no small feet to say the late most of our listeners have heard me talk about it. But yeah, I had 60 shows in the bank before I actually launched, and I was thankful that I did. Yeah, things are gonna happen, right? 

That you can’t foresee it. And you need that space. But online, give us a little more detail about how you plan for posts or do you… How far out are you planning? Are you scheduling them? What does that look like? 

[0:08:30.9] KD: I have two main strategies I use when I’m creating a post. One is for social proof, and …Wilson gave me that advice out of an event I met him at, he said that when you post social proof with other people that are major influencers or successful investors in the space, it kinda gives you that credibility as well, because you’re in the same room as them. And so we take pictures with as many people as we can, we also take as many pictures as we can when we go to events to maximize and have that content long-term, so I create a vault of pictures, and then I also sit down and write captions and then I’ll just kind of see what pairs together, and that’s how you build out a vault, so if you pick a few hours from one Thursday, that’s enough content for the week, and I could just go ahead and make a daily post, and it’s quite simple at that point, it’s just a system. 

[0:08:30.9] JD: Everything is content anywhere we go, If I’m touring properties, that’s really good content, if we’re going to events, meeting people who are just taking videos, pictures of everything we do and just document everything and…

[0:09:23.3] KD: Yeah, and the second type of content I like to put out is just when I’m educating people, so for example, is I have a new podcast episode out, I’ll also make a post about that, and also if you have a YouTube video out, things like that, you kind of like to reuse and rinse and repeat if I’m posting on YouTube, about post about that YouTube video on every other platform as well.

[0:09:41.4] WS: That is incredible. Hey, I love how you all just made it very simple to, We’re just documenting our journey and we’re really showing everybody, Hey, we are doing this through documentation, through social media as you’re going, but also the social proof, I’m glad you explain to what that is. We hear that every once in a while, I’m not sure listeners always know what that means, but ultimately social proof, you’re showing that you’re out socializing or some of that rubbed shoulders are some of the best in the business, and you’re learning from them, you’re educating yourself is so important, give us any details to around managing all that content, I mean, you say like on a weekly basis, you can create those things, are you the one that posting it, Do you have virtual assistants helping you, how are you all doing all that…

[0:10:19.2] KD: Yeah, so that’s pretty much all of me… We have an outsource that yet, and like I said, it’s not too hard one, if you just sit down, dedicate an hour to create captions, and through my captions, I like to have some of them related to real estate, so educating my audience. I also like to have a mindset, some tips and tricks on how to personally grow, also just in general entrepreneurial facts and things that maybe will inspire people, that’s our goal, we aim to inspire first and then also educate.

[0:10:43.8] WS: How often are you all posting and is it different per platform?

[0:10:47.2] KD: We’ve experimenting with different things on LinkedIn, I try to post a few times a week, we were doing daily, but at a lot of times, I’m starting to find that it’s better to have quality over quantity, especially on platforms like LinkedIn. So on LinkedIn, I mainly focus on having, like I said, educational posts, and then also just social proof, another tip that Bronson Hill taught me was when you make a post, we should tag people at the bottom of a LinkedIn post and you tag them, and then that’s more like we also use emojis at the beginning of your post, and that’ll get people to like capture their attention and get them more likely to engage with the post, and on LinkedIn, that’s what the algorithm wants, I want other people to engage, so that’s a like or a comment or a share, and that’s what you’re trying to do and try to create a community of raving fans. I know a lot of other influences in this real estate space talking about having a community of rating fans. 

[0:11:33.3] WS: Emojis, man, I’ve heard so much about them over the last probably six months, how we should be using them, and I’ve definitely not done a good job at that personally, but I’ve heard people talk about like studies that have been done, like the increase of a number of clicks and views and things like that, just if you have a few emojis in the beginning, and so that’s neat that you are finding that as well.

[0:11:51.3] WS: Any other tips around the way you post to the Facebook groups or the way you post to LinkedIn or Instagram, maybe the platforms individually?

[0:11:51.3] KD: On Instagram. Something I do before and after I post is out engaged, so there’s this Instagram growth strategy. If you engage with ten hashtags that are popular in your space or in your niche, then ten influencers in the space, you also engage with their content, so for example, go and find broad Cleef posts, and I’ll comment and engage on his posts, and then I do that with nine other influencers in the space, and then I find 10 hashtags like a real estate investing shares, take like an engagement, those other posts under that hashtag, and that I find a lot of people coming to my page in terms of traffic engaging with my content, following me, and that’s a good way to have that organic growth of pretty much putting yourself in front of an audience that you’re a content might also appeal to…

[0:12:43.1] WS: What platform was that?

[0:12:44.6] KD: That’s Instagram.

[0:12:45.5] WS: Instagram. Okay, and what about LinkedIn or Facebook? Any tips there? 

[0:12:50.8] KD: Yeah, I just post, I have a Facebook group and I’ve been posting consistently. We also… For real estate, the real estate Facebook groups to post our content into, and sometimes people will come and join our Facebook group from those… I think this is a growing wave in a growing trend, but we’re pretty big on tiktok as well, and we’ve had a lot of people come up and we’ve caught a lot of people’s… Attention, surprisingly on tiktok, and I think my brother Jeff, can I touch on tiktok? 

[0:13:12.8] JD: Yeah, it’s not like you’re gonna find a lot of investors on tiktok just because of the demographic tends to be younger audience, but it’s a newer app to the organic growth that’s possible. That’s a lot cheaper, you don’t have to pay for growth, it’s really just how engaging is the content we were putting out three a day, and on one of our videos, we got over 4 million views and we had like 40000 followers in the span of seven days, to our account, following doubled or tripled in one matter of one week, so that’s how quick you can grow, and the cool thing is that the followers will then follow you on Instagram, LinkedIn, YouTube, etcetera.

[0:13:46.9] WS: Good for you. Well, I have not used tiktok… Maybe as you consider it, what about just educating yourself on all these different platforms… I mean, it’s a lot to take in. Right, somebody’s getting started, they’re thinking, Wow, how do I figure all these platforms out what is best… Was it books, did you all find somebody to help you think through this? Did you just educate yourself, or see what’s working? What was your all’s path to figuring all these different platforms out.

[0:14:09.0] JD: So we’re still learning every day about them, but I will say I look on what is working for other influences, usually, for example, on Instagram, there’s Instagram accounts that make content solely focused on growing your Instagram account YouTube is a great place to look for how to grow your social media presence, but anyone looking to start and then social media, I would recommend to focus on one form, whether it be the podcast, Instagram, LinkedIn, they focus on it, master and get really good. And when you do that, you can funnel people into your other platforms, and that’s how you create that credibility and that dominance in that one space. 

[0:14:43.0] WS: Nice. I think that’s great advice almost with any part of business, right, don’t try to tackle everything it wants, and you probably can eat an elephant or a long as you do that one by at a time. So what about tracking? What is working? How do you know what’s working, whether it’s social media or anything else, helping promote yourself…

[0:14:58.8] KD: I’ll speak on Instagram because I’m not familiar with how they track, and you go to the settings, I believe, and there’s insights, and when you pass on there, you can see which posts that you’ve made have gone the most likes, the most comments, the most shares, and actually which post led to the most follows, and I just look at that and I kinda looked for trends and patterns like, Okay, I know, for example, my podcast episodes that I was posting on my feet weren’t getting as much attraction, so now I started posting them on my story, instead of that and things like that, we’re picking up on trends, if you’re not engaging with your audience and creating content they like, then you’re gonna lose your followers and you’re hoping to … to sustain and have a positive growth long-term. So I would say look at what people like also, if you post on stories, and I perform to platforms to have a story feature now, but you can just post and ask questions and see what kind of content they want, Lancia Ember her last name, but I just had on my podcast, and she said that listening to your audience is really important, ’cause a lot of times they’ll tell you really great content ideas…

[0:15:55.0] WS: When I say audience, I mean 200 people, 100, even 50 followers. That’s an audience. And that’s where you start. So if you listen to what they want and you give that to them and you’re responding and engage and create a community of raving fans, they’ll tell their friends about it, and that’s how you get organic growth.

[0:16:08.6] WS: That’s a great suggestion. But how do you really know what they like or want… How you talk about listening to them, how do you know…

[0:16:15.0] KD: Yeah, well, like I said, you can have a story posts where you push your question and I ask them… I asked my audience the other day, what are your burning real estate questions, what is keeping you from getting into the real estate space? Just ask questions and have them respond. And you can pretty much make any tines, and also a lot of times the DMU and ask you questions, and one person will direct message you and ask you a question, and a lot of other people in the audience might also have that kind of question, and there’s certain apps, I can’t remember the names, but you can look up keywords on certain websites, and when you look up that keyword, it can also generate content ideas for you. So to say, What is real estate investing? How do you get into last investing, and the key word is real estate investing, things like that, there’s so many opportunities and resources for you online, they’re free for you to come up with content ideas. So that’s a good place to start. And once you start creating content, you can engage with your audience, ask them for feedback and see how you can improve your as you continue.

[0:17:05.8] WS: Nice. No, it’s incredible, it’s almost like if you don’t have an online presence these days, you almost don’t exist, how can people know who you are, and that’s where most people are at, right, is online surfing… At least Facebook or Instagram or LinkedIn, one of those that may be tiktok, but obviously a bunch of people are in there as well.

[0:17:24.8] KD: I said, especially during Covid, and a lot of people weren’t leaving their house, so they were just surfing online, and if they couldn’t find you, I think having an online presence is a form of credibility, and it just shows that you’re a real person.

[0:17:37.8] KD: Like I said earlier, money goes where attention flows, and the person that kind of speaks about that as Grant Cardone, he’s raised over 600 million to fund some of his real estate deals through social media, and he’s on every platform, He’s on LinkedIn, Clubhouse, Facebook, Tiktok, Instagram, Snapchat, He’s everywhere, but he spends very, very little in ad budget, and he touches a lot of people, so he’s able to raise a significant amount in just days. It’s really, really cool.

[0:18:07.9] WS: Wow, what about any other tips before we move on about just your social media presence and managing that and doing it well, that you would leave the listeners with before we move to a few final questions?

[0:18:18.1] WS: Yeah, I would say including pictures of yourself and your face, that’s a big thing but there’s a lot who don’t do, but people like to see who they’re engaging with and who they’re following, and also just trying to be as authentic as you can, and it’s gonna take a while before you kind of get comfortable and find out who you are, but I would say to avoid trying to be more than you are or somebody different, because a lot of people, they wanna feel like they can connect with you, and another big thing that’s changed our approach to content is, make sure you focus on the elements of story-telling, people wanted to get an emotional connection, and they can do that, the stories, and I think that it doesn’t matter what platform are using podcasting, YouTube video or an Instagram post, telling the story is gonna get a lot more engagement and that will inspire people and also just be more likely for them to get more out of your content. 

[0:19:02.8] KD: Yeah, and one thing that … really well is being very consistent, so at the end of the day, you’re not gonna be perfect every post, but consistency is key.

[0:19:07.2] WS: What’s a way that you all have improved recently or something you wish you had known six months ago or a year ago.

[0:19:14.2] KD: We read a book Traction by Gino Wickman a year ago, but we’ve been re-reading it and we’ve been implementing it, and so we’ve gone into our own lanes, and we pretty much don’t step out into each other’s toes, we have our own roles within, we do with them very well, and we’ve identified our own strengths and weaknesses, and I aligned our paths to correlate with that. 

[0:19:33.2] KD: Yeah, I would say two things. One, it’s important to focus… When you kept looking, we get necessarily chasing, there was two rabbits we were trying to chase to rabbit at some point, and we found that would be more successful if we just chased one. 

[0:19:33.2] JD: The other thing is, you always hear people say, Your network is your net worth, but we really didn’t understand the meaning until we started multifamily and I actually started meeting with people that their net worth was very high, but you could tell by the way they spoke by the books they read, the people to hang out with their actions and the knowledge that they had, like you surround yourself with those kind of people, they will pour into you and you’re going to learn what they know.

[0:20:11.9] WS: No doubt about it. That’s one of the beauties of podcasting as well, just like this, getting to know people, getting to speak to people face-to-face that you would normally not get to, and that’s part of exactly what you’re talking about, but even the group that you’re a part of or other Masterminds or going to conferences? Same thing. It is so true. I’ve seen to happen personally, many times. Many times. So what about a few daily habits you all are disciplined about that have helped you achieve success?

[0:20:36.8] JD: Yeah, I can start us off. So we all wake up early, kinda thinks about four, we make it about five, then we go to the gym, Kerwin make the yoga before we leave, we meditate and then we take colors and then we read journal, let me try to eat healthy, and we work out a lot, so it’s just trying to maintain our mindset, health wealth, everything, we’re trying to make sure that that is keep performance. 

So pretty much we have a daily schedule and we just follow it every day and just try to grow in every aspect of life, every day.

We ran the Miracle Morning. That’s what we got. All

[0:21:07.5] WS: That sounds great, except for the cold shower… No, that’s good stuff. That’s good. It’s that daily habit, especially up early and getting the day started and being very purposeful with that time, and that changed everything for me and just starting to educate myself, I never… Before, what about, if you had to pick one thing, the number one thing that’s contributed to your success.

[0:21:28.3] JD: I would say investing in relationships, we’ve always said investing in relationships will have an infinite return on investment, so that’s pretty much what we’ve poured all of our money into that’s our main focus, is just building relationships because you see them as planting seeds now and they’re only gonna sprout and bring value to that, hopefully everyone. 

Yeah, I recently read the book One Thing by Gary Keller, and I realized that my one thing I was talking to people, so when I try to do all day every day and just be on the son talking to someone, doing a relationship, talking to us seller, anything I could do as long I’m talking to someone. I know that it’s gonna be somehow benefit me… 

Well, I kind of have two things I would say, first Believing in ourselves, believing… Just knowing… Well, first off, of course, believing in ourselves, but seeing that other people can do it and have done it before, I just let us know that it is possible, and then once we knew it was possible, we knew we could do it, or we knew we could do whatever, I guess we would want to. So I’d say belief in yourself and then persistence, one way that we kind of found out through our entrepreneurial journey is that the universe has a funny way of working, it’ll show up and there will be a failure, but it’ll only be a failure if you quit, but if you keep going, you bring through that wall or jump over that hurdle, it always looks better on the other side. Persistence is key.

[0:22:42.7] WS: Nice. How do you all like to give back? 

[0:22:47.1] JD: Well, we had a very humble background, and we went to Guatemala last year. We read a book by, I forget the guy, and everything was done. Wood leaving Microsoft to change the world. He talks about a non-profit that he started it boomed, so we plan on just donating a certain percentage of the income at we make to a non-profit organization, and it’s pretty much an organization that creates libraries and schools and third world countries, like Guatemala. So there’s no chapter there right now, but our goal is to make one, especially in the village where our family’s from.

[0:23:16.9] WS: Yeah, nice guys, it’s been a pleasure to have you on the show. I just hope it’s so encouraging to the listeners, just what you all are accomplishing at 19 and 23… I just think it’s incredible. Again, it’s worth highlighting, you all probably don’t appreciate it being highlighted as much as it probably is, however, I just think it’s so motivating it should be to many others who are just sitting on the sidelines and waiting for something to happen or wishing or whatever, man, get out there and make it happen like these guys are… And I love how you all laid out so many things, from books to being a part of another group, to… Fear is a lack of education. It’s really good. How do you view social media even Tiktok, but other platforms as well. To Grow Your presence. Grow the knowledge, right? So they’re aware of what you all are doing and who you are, so crucial now, I look forward to seeing where you all are out a year from now, and especially two years from me, and maybe staying in touch, but how can the listeners get in touch with you and learn more about you.

[0:24:10.7] WS: Yeah, we’re at Donis brothers. Don is brothers on pretty much every platform, Donis Investment Group dot com is our website. And the Real Estate Monopoly Podcast is our podcast. 

[0:24:22.7] ANNOUNCER: Thank you for listening to The Real Estate Syndication Show, brought to you by Life Bridge Capital. Life Bridge Capital works with investors nationwide to invest in real estate while also donating 50% of its profits to assist parents who are committing to adoption. Life Bridge Capital, making a difference one investor and one child at a time. Connect online at www.lifebridgecapital.com for free material and videos to further your success.

[END]