# From Zero to 2M+: How Josh Dorkin Built the Bigger Pockets Community

Channel: Greg Isenberg
Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tzhXCFn-W1c
Duration: 1 hr 10 min
Language: English
Words: 11257
Transcript page: https://viewrankai.com/tools/youtube-transcript/tzhXCFn-W1c

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[0:13] all right Josh welcome welcome I'm I'm so excited to to speak to you yeah yeah it's a pleasure man it's really weird when you're a fan of a product and then you meet the founder so I'm I'm you know I've been watching consuming Bigger Pockets for years and you're the founder of that um so it feels good to to get to know you yeah yeah for sure well that's that's great to hear I I love when I run across people who I never in a million years would have thought were uh were fans of our product and and uh so yeah it's uh it's always special and I'm and

[0:53] I'm very appreciative to be here one of the reasons why I'm I really like Bigger Pockets and why I wanted to bring you on the show and I'm also just curious what what you're up to these days um Is Bigger Pockets is kind of like the OG Community Based product um it's now like a very in style to be to wrap Community around your product and we talk a lot about it on this podcast but um for folks who don't know what Bigger Pockets is and why it's a community-based product can you just explain what it is sure so Bigger Pockets I founded 18 18 or so years ago

[1:32] I was um I was a new real estate investor trying to be successful um just you know looking for ways to make money on the side while working a full-time job and um I I ran into all these problems um so you know when you when you buy a property as a landlord you have no idea what you're going to face you just you don't have a clue and the books don't really tell you what you're gonna run across and and so 18 years ago I went out and said hey you know I'm smart enough I if you know I graduated from college you know I I

[2:16] pretty pretty reasonably intelligent human being let me go buy some rental property you know it seems like it's it's pretty basic and and so I did that I bought some property in the Midwest and the numbers seem to be very good and I thought I was going to make a lot of money and um you know and and provide a service at the same time and help people out and give them a nice clean um comfortable place to live um but unfortunately like I said things happen right and and so um what do you do when um you have a vacancy it's somebody moves in and starts ripping all the

[2:58] copper out of the walls like that they don't have a book for that answer that question what do you do when you know the the air conditioning uh compressors keep getting stolen how do you handle that situation what do you do when tenants you know are leaving piles and piles of trash in the back room again more questions and and the only way I thought to get answers to those questions was to talk to other people and so I had back in college I started building websites and I I had this Epiphany hey what if there was a community around real estate investing so I went and I looked and

[3:39] there were actually communities but the issue I had with those communities was I believed that they were all built around the upsell they were all built around trying to um the community I I felt wasn't pure I felt like you know if I asked a question maybe I'd get an answer but the the answer was always going to be a lead-in to some kind of sales pitch um not only from the people who were running the communities but also from the participants of the communities and so for me I just felt like I didn't feel like they offered the Purity that I expected in the community so I set out

[4:20] to build my own um started putting together resources that I thought would be helpful uh just tools and resources that I could find collate the information and then I started to build a um a forum and fast forward I'll take you through it really really fast but fast forward um eight years later I decided I was on total burnout from doing this completely by myself in addition with an outsourced uh developer hired my first employee year eight um uh by year 14 I had an exit to private equity and I've been on the board uh for the last you know four plus years now uh helping our current CEO who

[5:07] was my number two uh when I stepped down and so we built a community today I think it's two and a half three million members we built um the most popular real estate podcast on iTunes still a top 10 business show on iTunes and then we built out multiple uh other podcasts and other categories related uh we bought it we built up a book business so I think we've now got 40 to 45 titles and we're one of the largest independent Publishers so Bigger Pockets is all things um for folks who are looking to build wealth um specifically through real estate and and whether you know whether you've been

[5:55] doing it for 30 years or you've been doing it you know just thinking about doing it there's something there there is a community of people uh to help you and and uh be there to to Hold Your Hand and was that your vision from day one like from day one did you envision books podcasts forums or like what was your vision when you started this quote-unquote Pierce there was no vision no it's so the vision was I'm failing I'm not you know like I am failing yeah I I walked into one of my units and there was there was a hole in the kitchen floor like like you know not not

[6:38] like a mouse hole like a hole that a human could fall through and so like like it's absurd absurd stuff that like what do you do so I I needed help and I figured there had to be a way to bring everybody together so so that was the first Vision was like let me bring people together um to help me it was totally selfish from day one um but what happened was over time little by little very very little by very very little um people were actually answering questions people were helping one another out and I was like oh wait this isn't just about me getting help

[7:22] people are helping one another wow this is this is cool so you know when I had that realization I said well we've got a craft guidelines we've got to craft rules around how this community is going to operate because if we don't we will become that which you know I built this to to be different from right and um you know almost instantly when when people see an opportunity to do ad they're going to do bad unfortunately right and and bad is not necessarily bad bad is just being opportunistic right so you know very quickly we had people Shilling and soliciting on on the community and you know bam we had to

[8:07] create a rule for that you can't do that you know we had people doing all sorts of things um so you know as we went along and as we learned we we crafted guidelines to help make the community safe um really starting from you know treat each other well don't be don't be an you know we had a no rule um and really I think one of the coolest and most important things was you know it doesn't because when you run it uh to pretty much any Community you'll see like the experience guys always like there'll be like a new question that comes out and they'll be

[8:46] like well have you gone and read you know all the other Forum questions have you searched you know don't be lazy you know and sorry but it's kind of a dick move in in my view like maybe they did maybe they missed it maybe it didn't come through on search or whatever it was like just answer the question just be helpful right or gently or kindly Point somebody in the right direction instead of being snarky right so I wanted a place that felt good for me to be I wanted a place that felt good for people to hang out on and we got that and we built that and you know it

[9:24] took a very long time um and I had lots and lots of other uh people in the space who as they saw our success would try and replicate it but you know ultimately enforcing those rules is really hard and you get a lot of people who push back against them and you know in order to be successful you have to stand up for what's right and that's what we did yeah yeah and I think you know a lot of people have ideas for products or communities they want to build and they get caught up with okay I need to have this feature and that feature and I

[10:04] need this and you know I need all the rules and and the what you're saying which I think is really important the Insight one of the instance I'm getting from you is you don't need to have all the answers on day one as long as you're open to you know iterating adding changing moving as you learn yeah absolutely and and look I mean I started with like a I'm gonna get a little nerdy here a PHP BB you know open source Forum built in PHP um and was modifying it to kind of have the design and features that I wanted and until I got to a point where I was

[10:44] like oh there's this really cool site called Myspace and they built these profiles wow imagine having profiles in a forum Community wait let's do that right and so um what I did was I went from very narrow and then I I said I'm gonna try and kind of replicate all the features of of what they've got hired a team out of India and um you know I didn't know how to code I was a hack right I didn't know how to code very well and so I hired these guys and they they did what I told them and nothing more and nothing less and that left me with a product that you know had

[11:27] a lot a lot a lot of problems they they delivered it to me and it didn't work and I could have just said all right well I'm out of business I spent all my money and instead I said well let me go back to step one and let me you know let me start iterating what's the next thing I want beyond um just the the community The Forum oh profiles cool so let's just create a basic profile you know and then we added blog software and then we added you know all these other features to it um so to go back to two questions um I did not have this vision of like this

[12:07] big thing that that came with time as I realized what was possible and and what's interesting about that is this um you know probably a year three maybe three or four um I went went and talked to a couple Venture capitalists um in Denver where I was living about it and um you know ask them hey what do you think about this you know what what can we do with this or you know is this something that is fundable and they both tell me to just shut it down they you know they said there's no this has no legs you know there's there's no need for something like this and

[12:49] you know I was like thank you very much it went home thought about it was like these guys are wrong they're completely wrong um you know because I saw it I saw the need I saw the community I saw the um and what they had done was they looked they probably looked at like hey what is the current market of users for communities that are in real estate and they're like well that's a small pile whereas I looked at it as what is the market for people who want to grow their wealth what is the market for people who don't love their job or would like some

[13:27] Financial Freedom wait that's a huge Market we could Target those people we can Market to those people and we can really become something special and and that's what happened I also think you know with community-based products like Bigger Pockets it's not uncommon to sell those businesses for eight or nine figures which is incredible and life-changing for those teams but to venture capitalists who look at it and like okay I'm gonna invest in like you know I'm looking for billion dollar exits I'm looking for billion dollar exists and it's kind of like you know if you're getting if you're listening to this and you're getting no's from VCS it doesn't mean you a lot

[14:07] of people assume you're getting a no from a VC means you don't have a viable business and I think that's completely incorrect absolutely it's you don't have a viable you you potentially don't have a viable Venture scalable business but maybe you don't even want a venture scalable business correct yeah and I I never I never took a penny from anyone um you know I started with my four dollar a month hosting and that was that was the only money I ever applied into that business was the first four bucks and then the next four bucks and the next four bucks but like beyond that I I

[14:42] bootstrapped the entire thing and it took a very which is why it took eight years to hire my first employee um and and you know I I struggled and suffered through a lot I mean building a community is very it's very hard getting adoption is really really hard and and you know one of the things I I tend to rant about occasionally um is everybody today has their own Community hey I've got my community join our community like you know having a Facebook page is not a community it's a Facebook page like it's a social media profile like my to me and again I'm I'm a bit of a purist on this stuff

[15:29] like a community is in a community even when you're interacting with your fans that's not a community either a community becomes a community I believe when you're you're interacting with your fans and they're interacting amongst themselves unguided you know they're starting uh conversations they're they're talking about things between one another I think that's the point at which you've got a community and if we're going to go and look at how many communities actually exist out there it's a very small number yeah I think it's one of the biggest mistakes a lot of people make is the difference between an audience and a community and it really grinds my gears

[16:13] honestly is when I see people using the word Community instead of audience it grinds my gears so much that like we developed a framework for like a test basically for testing what is a community we call it the the tribe test so you basically need five things uh is there togetherness togetherness are there rituals is there a member identity is there belonging and to your point do they engage with each other like could you basically leave like you you've you know you have a team working on Bigger Pockets but assuming even the team left right like Bigger Pockets would people would still be posting about it asking questions

[16:56] answering questions like the momentum is is a it's hard to to stop correct with a community yeah I and I I think a good judge and by the way I love those I wish I knew those five rules back in the day um but um I I I realized that I had a community when I was able to bring on my first volunteer moderator um and then the the next time that I realized that I had a community was when I didn't have to see the questions right like hey you know people are just asking their own questions I think those were the two of the biggest

[17:37] moments for me when I was like whoa this thing's got legs like this could be unstoppable if if we water the seeds a little bit was there ever a point when you know you were managing the community and you're like this isn't worth it because you did mention how hard it is to actually build it like were you ever we're ever on were you ever on the edge and thinking about yeah 14 years until I until I left right I here look I I I'll say the stuff for me that put me on the edge um I hated when people were fighting I didn't like that especially when like

[18:24] there's good members of the community both of which you like who are kind of at each other and you're like you guys like I want you to stick around but if you keep doing this you're gone you know it's when they continue and you have to get rid of them um you know when you kick off your top poster and your next top poster and your next you know when you throw those guys out of the community because suddenly their ego becomes so big that they think that they own the place that's really stressful when you get threats from people that's really stressful when you kick people out just

[19:03] for being you know jerks you know newbies and you know you you get nasty grams that's stressful so um yeah I I think people don't give enough credit to community leadership to community moderators and outside of community let's let's let's uh jump one level up to large-scale social media I mean it is a unrelenting unforgiving job to deal with people's um and people treat these people terribly and the things that these people see who moderate you know Facebook or Twitter or this other stuff I mean they're awful jobs absolutely awful jobs um yeah people do It For The Love A lot of people do It For The Love

[19:55] um but I I think you have to you have to have a certain kind of constitution to be able to deal with that I'm too emotional personally I recognize it like those things impact me they hurt me they affect me um but we built a team eventually you know once we start a hire we built a team of people who were absolute Pros who loved doing that stuff who don't let that stuff get to them um right but again for me it you know it was it was you know probably nine ten years of being you know the the first line of defense against it and it it was brutal for me

[20:35] how important was the name Bigger Pockets to the success of of the business like if it was called something else you think you know I think it would be less successful I think it was an obstacle I think it was I think it was I I think today it's synonymous people get it but I I it took a long time you know there were a lot of better Brands so to speak that emerged well now let me let me take that back I think we have we have and we had the best brand we have the best brand like period I think there were my like yeah there

[21:16] were other sites whose names were directly related to uh real estate investing right and and I think that's easier and more obvious you know from many standpoints of like search engine optimization or or whatever else it is um I think in terms of building a brand I didn't want a brand that was um unique to just real estate investing I wanted something that said hey wait bigger pie we all need Bigger Pockets right everybody wants more money cool so this could be appealing so I take back my first statement um the brand I mean the brand kicks ass today it was always a great name but it

[22:03] was just difficult for me to build the momentum behind it but once people saw it and heard about it you know it caught on here's here's why I like the brand name so I find there's a few reasons actually the first is when you see Bigger Pockets you just Envision a bigger like Bigger Pockets with more money in it like you can see it you can literally see it in your brain you can see it and I think you talked about like the lifestyle and the questions and stuff that you wanted you know answered and you know a big reasons why you created this product and this whole world was because

[22:48] you did want bigger pocket so it makes sense to call it bigger pockets that's that's one reason sure the second is to your point it's it's niche in the sense that like it's grow wealth but it's not um it's not like the real estate you know optimization community.com it's less obvious it's less obvious it's which is cool a less obvious name has challenges so when you're less obvious like people are kind of like okay why am I here but if you beat the activation energy of that then you you kind of win a lot of the time because you create that affinity and trust with the brand and there and

[23:37] uh so that's kind of I feel like the hurdle that you pass yeah yeah and look that I mean it doesn't matter what your name is um I mean there's some bad ones but mostly it's it's a um it's an uphill climb right I mean brand building is not easy it takes a lot of work a lot of I dare I say grind but like grind hustle I mean it's it's it's a lot of um you know it's continuous and constant Outreach it's protection at any cost you know for me the the brand Bigger Pockets was it was my baby I my number one job was

[24:21] to it wasn't to grow the brand it wasn't to grow the business it wasn't to make money it was to build and grow the brand and protect that brand um and protecting it meant again kicking off the jerks it meant making sure we represented something good something that people can look up to um you know something that I I wanted and you know I wanted um I didn't want to be Associated like for example if we had advertisers we had tons of advertisers Outreach to us um who were more than willing to give me money lots of money and I turned many many of them down because I felt like

[25:05] their product um ran against the grain of of what we were trying to do um I would not allow the kind of uh you know get rich quick guys to advertise I wouldn't um put up with them you know I wouldn't even partner with with companies who I thought might potentially damage the brand so I sacrificed a lot of Revenue short term um at one point I remember I had an ad contract that somebody wanted and it would have represented like 50 it was early you know probably a year two or three but it would have represented like probably 40 to 60 percent of our total

[25:43] revenues and I said I can't do it which you know again seems kind of insane but for me you know at that point I had this vision of like hey this brand you know if we start associating you are who you associate with you are who you work with um that's right and so I refused to do it you know it took a little bit longer to get where I needed to get to but when we got there we we we had done done it our way we had done it without sacrifice um without sacrificing you know who we were right hold that thought one second I'm

[26:23] just gonna put on on some lights it's getting dark here I'm in Miami I went to Miami

[26:34] there's there we go there's a uh there's a trend happening right now where creators are moving away from advertising so Anthony pompliano who's a popular Bitcoin crypto guy he's got like 1.7 million Twitter followers a really popular podcast he I think he took advertising money from FTX and obviously you know where that ended up um so he came out a few weeks ago and he basically was like hey I'm no longer doing any advertising on any of my channels and you know he's gonna monetize other ways I saw recently he just announced he's doing an event and he charges tickets to go to the event right and they'll make

[27:29] money that way right so I think you're starting to see um creators uh look at advertising and be like it's it's short term um but I'd rather a lot of them especially with big audiences are like I'd rather just like build my own products yeah and sell them because I can I know what I'm selling there's I mean this is not a new this is not a new thing you know we dealt with it back you know 15 18 years ago the um you know with with the podcast we launched the podcast yeah we certainly screened the advertisers on the podcast but there was a difference between an

[28:12] Advertiser and an endorsement right like I would not I don't I I don't think in hundreds and hundreds of episodes that that I hosted the BiggerPockets podcast I don't think I ever did a single endorsement um and it wasn't because there weren't companies I was willing to endorse it was there weren't companies that I was willing to endorse who at the time wanted to advertise with us um right and so I you know we were more than happy to allow somebody to put an ad up but I wasn't going to read it I wasn't going to say oh and by the way I love that product you know like

[28:50] there is there is so much selling out being done across the board in media and social media in magazines and I mean you name it you know I listen we we had um when we put out you know one of our first books we reached out to a very big name in in um in real estate and their response was yeah I'll endorse it just tell me what to say and I'll say it like are you not going to read it are you not going to look at it no okay um so I'm getting a BS endorsement from you just because you want your name associated with our brand now I'm not

[29:33] going to do it so again we turned this name down which I think would have potentially been helpful to our our selling but it it didn't feel right to me you know over the years I've I mean magazines man pay for play is present magazines are all dying now but pay for play man was a big big thing in paper magazines for a long time I'm sure it is in a lot of other spaces now still but this stuff has been going on for a very long time um and and I think it's wise of of of him and anyone else to to secure their brand a little bit better yeah the FTX

[30:15] blowback on on a lot of celebrities I mean it's it's big it's it's nasty so like I I think it's cool look you know I I think I used to say like if Dunkin Donuts is looking to advertise like come on in I will endorse the the out of that Dunkin Donuts you know you get me some products that I like that I use I will endorse them all day you know because I know that I know the brand I understand their brand and I'm not willing um I know they're not going to do anything that could jeopardize my name my brand and and so people should

[30:51] definitely be careful and building their own products and and other means for monetization is is smart I mean we we did it um we did it to Google proof ourselves because in the early days you know the first ads that I was able to get on the platform were these text link ads um you know they don't even exist today because you know Google thinks they're manipulative and they are to be fair um but like you know back then that was like how we made money we didn't know how to I couldn't make money any other way that was the first way of doing it um and they said all right anybody who's

[31:29] got text link ads we're going to smack them down in the in search results and they did um I chose the money because I needed it to survive and I was like oh my God this big company Google owns me that's that's not good I can't be owned by anybody I've got to figure out another way and and so that's why we launched a podcast that's why we built out a book business that's why I did a conference in 2014 you know by myself and the team now does one annually but um you know and that's why we built memberships and and things like that um ultimately it was to protect us

[32:10] against one stream of Revenue to protect us in case Google or Bing or whomever else Max us down from search engines you know whatever um I I think early on it's harder to do but as you grow you know you have to think about those things a lot of people ask me Greg how do you build products that Foster community well I've got good news that's exactly what late checkout does my company we partner with the largest brands in the world and fast-paced startups to design products that resonate with your community we add a couple interesting clients every single year so if you're interested and that sounds like you

[32:56] email front desk at laycheckout.studio with what you're working on what you need help with and don't forget to mention the where it happens pod thank you yeah and I think the other thing that's changed is it's now so much cheaper to build stuff digitally right so you know if you're creating a platform either a community platform or you're a Creator building an audience and you're thinking about advertising it's like what if you put your energy in actually building a digital product um which you probably could launch in a day or two days or three days um and then the other thing is there's Global Talent to help fulfill and

[33:37] support it right like you can you know you don't need your customer support agents in New York City yeah like they could be in Iowa for example um yeah right yeah yeah exactly so I think uh I think that's a huge Trend that's only going to accelerate um and what you're gonna see is the speed of people creating mostly I think digital products like creators creating digital products is gonna is gonna get accelerated well I mean here's an example like like let's let's go like Niche I thought real estate investing was Niche but we're gonna we're gonna go like hyper Niche here um my brother he is a electrical Electric electrical

[34:25] engineer by trade and he discovered um that these old expired patents on using electricity to improve crop growth and crop yield so speed of growth and yield and so you know he found this thing he's like oh this is really cool and for years was experimenting and playing around and he actually ended up doing this thing with with the university um at test and saw that it actually worked and then he was doing you know uh basement uh experiments seeing that that this worked and so you know he's iterated various versions of like I'm gonna launch you know I'm gonna become this company that that helps pop businesses increase their

[35:12] yields he's tried all these different things but ultimately he ended up writing a digital uh a book right he wrote it like an e-book and um had struggled selling it for a long time until I don't know a year year and a half ago he launched a Facebook group for electrical fertilizer I think the electric fertilizer whatever it was called it is called and it was like the slow kind of same with what I dealt with very very slow very slow going but I I talked to him like a couple maybe a month month and a half ago and he's like yeah I'm at 3 000 members

[35:55] we're starting to sell some books finally it's pretty exciting then I talked to him like three weeks ago and he's like we're at six thousand members like I'm I'm selling a lot now holy cow I talked to him last week not even this week it was a couple days ago uh he hit 10 000 members you know he had 10 000 members and he's starting to sell enough product I mean it doesn't replace his salary yet but it's a really nice supplement and really makes their lives a lot easier by by having that uh that money coming in and and so you know if if you could

[36:37] build a community in electrification of AG you know these and and what's cool is like all the all the people in his little Community are like coming up with different prototypes for their own products and how they use them to make their corn or lima beans get bigger I mean it's it's super cool and um and anybody can can do it if he's doing it is what I'm saying not because he's not smart it's just because it's so hyper Niche and he's very smart by the way um it's it's hyper hyper niche yeah you you said something in the beginning of this pod that I really

[37:16] connected with which is you said you basically were like if there if if you don't have a book for for that there's an opportunity um like you said you created Bigger Pockets because there was no book on uh entering XYZ questions and the same with your brother right there's no book on answering XYZ questions that's why he created that Community I think that you know if you're in a space where there's no book for XYZ you're you're on to something yeah and and you don't mean it's a veritable book you don't mean a proper book no because no a book means like a metaphorical book thank you

[38:02] yeah I'm talking about a metaphorical book I'm talking about like if you can't find your question your answers to your questions easily then there's an opportunity there I had someone on the Pod recently two two people actually these these guys Nicholas Cole and Dicky Bush and they're making seven figures from their community and online course business which focuses on teaching people how to write and he talked about how he was like yeah I could have created you know a community or course on writing but then I would have competed with everyone else so we only focus on start writing it's for people who don't write who want to start and then we

[38:48] create products Services Community for that that's it yeah think about how how hyper Niche it is but here's how that's going to play out by the way I don't know those guys but I I follow them on Twitter at least how I see it play out they're going to start to become successful they are already it looks like you know successful in what they're doing ultimately they will have as they grow their Community they'll have the opportunity to expand um from no they may choose not to but they have that opportunity to expand oh okay now you're started cool now we can do intermediate writing then we could do

[39:25] Advanced writing but like right if you go to Broad I I made the mistake of at one point going too broad and year eight I discovered it um because I said hey BiggerPockets is going to be everything for everyone real estate um and suddenly like I stopped focusing specifically on investors and started focusing on you know consumers you know Mom and Pop buyers and and the product kind of lost its ability to be differentiated and so went back to the roots and said all right this is really going to be hyper focused on on investors and and those people within the community right so that's agents lenders contractors you

[40:09] name it all those folks are part of that world um and regained what little momentum we had lost from kind of losing our way a little bit how did you know that you lost momentum was it a feeling that you had or were people shouting and screaming hey like what's going on um ten thousand hour rule it was I you know it you can't point to what it was exactly but you know you've put enough reps in that that you can um you can spot it so you I mean for those of people for people who don't know ten thousand hour rule is basically you become an expert

[40:53] who is a Malcolm Gladwell yeah yeah Malcolm Gladwell said that if you put your attention to something for ten thousand hours or more you become an expert and I think I'll challenge Malcolm Gladwell and I'll say challenge challenge exactly I'm gonna say that if you put 10 000 hours or more you build intuition yeah I think that's I I love that I love that yeah I I remember hearing you know a few months ago somebody was telling a story about police um they were looking at the difference between like uh you know bomb squad guys who were new and bomb squad guys who've been doing it forever I think it was

[41:43] bomb squad guys and you know they were able the the guys who had been doing it forever couldn't point out what it was about you know potential perps um when they put them through this test to see like could they identify who the bad guys were um but they they just knew when they watched these guys who uh who were who was going to be a troublemaker um you know may not be the best example here but but you know ultimately um that that intuition guides you I I think over time and and for me I'd spent so much time in the community building this forum building The Social Network

[42:26] um it just felt like something had changed something had shifted and I couldn't put my finger on it um and and so we went back to our core the cool thing about you in Bigger Pockets is you weren't an expert when you you weren't like a real estate expert when you started this right no and and I always felt uh what what uh imposter syndrome I I always felt like I had an imposter syndrome and I had a lot of people challenge me they're like who the hell are you to be talking about real estate I was like I'm not the expert I'm the guy who brings everybody

[43:00] together I'm the community uh the guy who who who builds the community and I would always use Cuban as my example um I'd say like Mark Cuban was never an NBA player but he can own an NBA team and and and successfully run that business I I got my hands dirty in real estate investing and I you know realized there was a need for this community I was simultaneously running the community and investing and I realized that I could not do both successfully for me to be successful at something I have to give a hundred percent a thousand percent and so I couldn't give a thousand percent to

[43:40] Bigger Pockets and real estate investing and I chose I picked I picked the uh the online platform because frankly I thought it was more fun and more of a challenge I think you know I mean like how many you know there's there's millions of Real Estate Investors how many people are building like really cool communities not a lot at least back yeah exactly no and and now too I think like and you know cool communities really just means like a community where people can nerd out and get a lot of value and I think like if you want to create if you're listening in this you want to create a

[44:20] community like you don't need to be an expert like you know for I'll give you an example so you know I have a lot of people on my team who are AI experts I would consider myself like an AI expert um I'm a product expert but I'm an AI expert so I tweeted out hey is anyone interested in like joining a free community for people who want to use AI to boost productivity frankly selfishly because I want to boost productivity and I want to do it with other people and I you know said this this you know Community up didn't really you know tweeted it basically went to sleep woke

[45:00] up the next day and all of a sudden there's like almost 10 000 people who want to join wow it's hot turns out there's no book for aim productivity let's put it that way so came up with a name on the spot you probably need a robot.com I like it and now it's you know now it's starting and it's and you know people are talking in the community and I'm learning and I and I'm putting in my reps and I I'm researching and I'm I'm sharing what I'm learning and I don't have it all figured out with this community because I'm still learning um so but yeah my point is you know you don't

[45:47] need to be an expert and you just gotta get started well that was and that was one of the cool things about our our show our podcast um is still right but you know back when we started I I you know I wasn't this guy who had done hundreds of deals dozens of deals you know like I I had very small number of deals under my belt um but I was really inquisitive and I was able to ask questions and and and you know I later started my own podcast called undeniably curious so you know like I am undeniably curious right so um I ended up

[46:28] um you know being able I'm good at channeling people's questions I'm I'm good at uh you know asking people questions excuse me and channeling these answers and really taking the conversation through a place where um other people can learn from it and there's a need for that right there there's a demand for that and and that comes in the form of whether it's hosting a pod or or running a community um you know and and again what what happened over time is when I you know after dozens and dozens or hundreds of of shows like I knew the answers because I had talked to the experts I had one-on-one you know

[47:09] experience with all these experts and academically at least I was I was one of the top guys out there right now in practicality was I know but academically absolutely you know and you could have put me up against anyone and I would have been able to to you know go head to head well I think it's also one of the reasons why you're probably confident then is because if you're building a community it's really hand-to-hand combat of like convincing people and speaking to people and it's like a one by one game basically um and through that it's really the best way to learn like if you want to learn

[47:51] any topic like start a community about said topic yeah I I over the 14 years that I I was you know actively running Bigger Pockets um I talked to tens if not hundreds of thousands of people um about real estate you know either directly in person at events other out on the street and about um by email by social media on our platform um you know I mean it like you said it every single eyeball counted you know whether it was guest posting on somebody else's site whether it was going in other communities ancillary I I I thought there was kind of a gentleman's agreement um yeah at least I I had my own

[48:45] Gentleman's Agreement where I would never go on to a a competitive platform and chill for our platform I thought it was just bad taste bad form um but I would go in like a personal finance site and and certainly talk about who we were and what we were doing but it was yeah it's one by one you know especially in the early days and if if you're not as uh you know Kick-Ass as as uh we all need a robot.com or what whatever it was with Greg here you know 10K members is is no joke in in no time like you know I don't think I had 10 000

[49:21] members for maybe a two years three years yeah I think the other difference between now and then is with social it just and having you know how big these Instagram Twitter or Tick Tock whatever you you can really get to scale quickly like there's people on you know Tick Tock I you know I've been doing some research because of the you probably need a robot Community like there's these AI influencers on Tick Tock that have 120 000 followers 150 000 followers is this guy like I was just looking at Justin Feinberg yeah and he just talks about chat GPT prompts and he just like that's what he does and it's like he

[50:05] went to he went to 150 000 followers chat gbt is like what two months you know a couple months old 100 million right like it's it's crazy yeah it's crazy so the scale that's another cool you know we talked about like no code and the ability to build quickly but also these social platforms being able to distribute quickly is is huge yeah and and the ability to build build you know what what's what's crazy is you know we we had talked about uh the pure form the pure name of community right like you know is me having a social profile on Instagram a community or me

[50:40] having a social profile on on Twitter or community you know there's some semblance of of it you know I think I still I have somewhat of a community still on Twitter um where people know each other they're interacting I interact with you know in in various communities on Twitter and other places but like that ability I mean take Beast right I mean that dude is arguably one of the most powerful people on planet Earth like seriously this guy can do anything because his audience is so big and he you know he's pretty cool about it you know he he's not abusing it there are other people whose names I won't mention

[51:22] who have massive massive audiences who have completely let you know that go to their heads and think they're Untouchable unfallible and you know do a lot of dumb things all the time and so you know but that that power in audience allows you to um they can take that community and and use it for good or for evil um and I think um especially today I mean it's it's a trip man just looking at how people can kind of set their army of followers to do all kinds of things again good and bad yeah I mean on the Mr Beast thing Mr Beast regularly gets more Twitter

[52:16] likes than the president of the United States that's crazy regularly it's crazy so I think if you build a lot of affinity and trust with your audience then to your point like you can get them to do things yeah um you can get them to show you know the reason why you know there's there's that famous picture now of all the people who went to Mr BEAST's grand opening of Beast Burger in this mall like the reason you can get thousands of people to show up I don't know where it was in like North Carolina yeah is like because of all the Goodwill that he's built over the last eight years or

[53:03] whatever right right yeah it's it's wild so I I think there there is something though like you know the people who are listening right now there's probably people who have a community of one right they're mom or their girlfriend or boyfriend or whatever right um and and I guess what what I want to say to those people is like it's really easy to look at a like Mr Beast and say oh well I'll never I'll never do that I shouldn't even start right um I I've I've spoken to you know lots of people who who would be startup uh Founders and what what I always found interesting was

[53:47] like to them to a large portion of them they would not be successful if they did not have a billion dollar business right and if you look at the numbers like there's a reason they call that a unicorn right very few people get there if you have a business that's a five million dollar business you know with you know 20 margins and you own a hundred percent you're making a million bucks a year you don't need a 10 million a 20 a 50 100 a 500 Milli billion you don't need that you know and we get so caught up in this fomo um and and this comparison uh world that

[54:32] we're in thanks to social that you know we've lost our minds when it comes to what is actual success like most people would be really happy you know making a million bucks a year and like having a pretty good life you know like that's not bad that's a really good way to raise your family and go about living I mean a million bucks is a hell of a lot of money to spend every year but if you're comparing yourself to the billion dollar business the 500 like suddenly you know you're like oh this sucks but if you take a second and pause wait that's not bad so to be able to like if

[55:14] you're a founder and think about starting a business like get some perspective and like stop competing with the guys at the elite stop competing with the one percent it it's just gonna drive you crazy and the same with lifestyle lifestyle bloat and and Community like I talked about my my brother right okay he's got 10 000 members I don't know how much money he's making but if he's making you know a couple thousand bucks a month even like and the communities kind of self up self-operating wait a second that's pretty good for the effort that he put in and maybe he'll launch another product and maybe

[55:54] he'll get five or ten thousand members maybe he'll get two thousand maybe he'll get a hundred whatever it is right pivot and try again right like I encourage everyone to have some perspective because we we are way too busy these days comparing ourselves to the biggest and the best so to speak um and it's really easy to think that you're a failure when you're competing against these just enormous odds you know Beast you know I mean it's an anomaly like God unicorns are anomalies you know these these massive followings they're anomalies the average people don't have those numbers so stop competing with with these anomalies uh I I think it'll

[56:38] make you a lot more sane and frankly it'll it'll hopefully lead to a happier life I was talking with one of the top YouTubers in the world and he also manages other YouTubers and he told me Mr Beast is such an anomaly if I saw him let's say in 2008 or 2009 when he started and you would have told me that this was his genre of you know videos that he was going to create I would have told you was 100 certainty that this would not work right and I think the other thing about community communities and audiences is that you never know if it's gonna work or not

[57:22] really um like you can have a a good you know I might think like you probably need a robot might work um but you know you never know you literally never know and so I think like to your point it's kind of just like get going yeah you know get started yeah well your product guy I mean like I think about some of the the ideas that I tried as a part of Bigger Pockets over the years uh some of the products I tried to launch and um there were things where my audience literally straight up told me like oh yeah we will pay for this we'd love this

[58:00] this is amazing and they didn't and they wouldn't you know and and and it's it's a big alert it was that was a huge lesson for me was you know audience testing is to be taken with a grain assault you know until until somebody gives you money you know you can't count on what they say what people say and what they actually do aren't always going to be the same thing so um that's that's where that intuition also comes in right you've got to kind of go with your gut on a lot of that a lot of people say I'm data driven I'm data driven and what I say to them is

[58:44] you don't want to be data driven you actually want to be data you know data informed yeah um you know you don't want the you don't want the data to dictate you because if you look at the data it might say like hey go build this thing and then you go build it and it's yeah like one percent of people actually buy it um data and let the data inform you let the intuition drive you yeah but the problem the problem with that though goes back to what we talked about earlier which is like you don't have intuition if you haven't been doing it for a while so how do you know where

[59:22] Greg how do you know where to start like how do we I I can't use data I can't do this so like that's right that's that is the challenge right and and my answer to that's going to be just try be a curious be a curious idiot this is the answer because why be a curious idiot be an idiot because don't know the answers be the person who's want to enters and be curious meaning you're not gonna be able to fall asleep tonight unless you find that answer yeah and stop being worried about failing I mean like we all fail it's it's one of the questions I ask my

[59:57] kids at night I forget where I heard it from but like we we do it almost every night is like all right you know how was this how is that and cool what'd you what'd you fail at today oh you failed it that cool what'd you learn from it cool like right we have to fail you have to fail to to be successful um and you know you have to be willing to take chances in order to get anywhere in life um at least I I believe so you you really have to take those risks if you avoid risks your whole life you know you're just gonna follow the

[1:00:30] predescribed idea of of what everyone does which is get up go to go to a job that you hate come home go back to work spend Sundays you know Friday is TGIF because you know you hate your job you don't want to go you know you can't wait for the weekend and then Sunday sucks because you're thinking about Monday right like a lot of people live their life exactly like that and I I believe a lot of that comes from fear of Taking Chances you know Taking Chances trying leaving that job that you've had security with for so long or trying that thing that you've always

[1:01:06] wanted to try um doing things that you're afraid of is what helps you grow when you started Bigger Pockets were you working another full-time job oh yeah yeah so I started when I started Bigger Pockets I was teaching special ed in Los Angeles as a full-time job um at first it was you know I was kind of you know a little bit of time here and there and then I became obsessed and every single break I was I was doing Bigger Pockets nights weekends I was doing Bigger Pockets um you know I I I am a uh I'm a cautionary tale I think as well because I believe I I did too much

[1:01:58] um to be honest I was working 100 hour weeks um for eight years um there was a eight year period where I never did not work on my company when I went on vacation I actually didn't go on vacation I traveled when I traveled I had my computer you know and everyone my friends and family all gave me crap about it they're like dude you need to not work and I'm like well I have to work you know this is and and it wasn't true it wasn't true I I you know I was a victim to my own kind of hustle grind kind of idea of like if I'm

[1:02:41] not working harder than everyone else I'm gonna fail I would have been fine if I had worked a little less hard to be honest but you do have to put the time in you definitely have to put the time in um but yeah it's it's um it's interesting and what do you do now Bigger Pockets or you know is sort of in the past like what do you how do you spend your time now uh that's a great question I'm still working on that uh no so um I I'm on the board of Bigger Pockets I'm um I'm an advisor to a couple other startups I invest in in Tech startups I

[1:03:25] invest in uh real estate opportunities I'm always looking for like investment opportunities small businesses things like that that sound interesting I love the advisory I really love helping people um where where I can because I've put in the 10 000 hours in so many different verticals in order to build a successful startup that that went to exit that you know whether it's whether it's Community content um uh you name it you know initial scale product um these are things I'm really good at so um I'm toying with with writing a book um kind of on my life um just because I've had a really interesting life

[1:04:13] um we all have we all have stories to tell right um I I I've been focused uh the last few years on health spending a lot of time and energy on on my health um and and studying of that that that's been really fascinating fun to learn about just longevity and and you know bio hacking stuff I'm not one of the extreme guys but you know I I think each each step is is a step in the right direction I love surfing I love playing tennis um I love just kind of getting out we live in Maui so um just exploring and and having fun and

[1:04:54] and really my primary focus is my family um I've got three kids three little three girls and and um an amazing wife and um you know my job is to make sure that they have the best lives that they can have for themselves um because you know in that period I talked about the hundred hour weeks I had babies back then you know I was around but I wasn't around right you know I wasn't working in an office when I was doing that I was working out of a bedroom or whatever it was but like I was in the room but I wasn't present for my kids and I regret that

[1:05:33] um for me you know I've had this Epiphany Life Is Life Is Short um anything can happen tomorrow and and so I want to make sure I I live my life with no regrets uh for my family specifically um but yeah looking for opportunities and just uh trying to have fun yeah I think I think a lot of people are gonna like this episode because I think you're how you build Bigger Pockets is if you know could be applied to a million verticals and so I think a lot of the lessons you learned along the way people could apply that I think also you had a period of your life or you

[1:06:18] were grinding grinding grinding and now you have a period of Life which sounds like you're a lot more balanced in terms of work and family and friends so I think that always puts things into perspective for people it's very hard a lot of people listening this podcast are more I think on the work really hard because they're trying to you know make something that's why you're listening here um but I'm also a big believer in like balance is is really important so um I do I I like that you you bring that up well yeah I mean look for me I I will tell you the reason I ultimately had my

[1:06:55] exit um we we had this this trauma happened to one of my kids and um it it just I mean it hit me like Mike Mike Tyson shop might might have felt to somebody I mean it was um it was a wake-up call you know and and also I in in the year prior I'd had multiple panic attacks and the panic attacks were like I had to grow this company I got to grow this company it's got to be more successful like I was I had a really successful business at that point but like I was doing exactly what I told you guys not to do because I learned it

[1:07:38] through through taking the blows right I mean it was um it was brutal like panic attack I had a panic attack about this job at this company that I love that's crazy right like totally what it what is that so like I don't wish that on anyone it's it's terrifying to go through and and so I I had this realization that I love my company but you know I didn't any longer need to keep being the guy running it I didn't need to deal with the stresses that kind of came with that and at that point I had had enough right like I had we we were doing well like we

[1:08:22] as long as we aren't stupid we'll we'll be okay and and so like you know what let me step down I don't I don't need a billion dollar business a 10 Bill a trillion you know like who needs that like I I need I wanna I wanna be with my family I want to be with my friends and I want to be happy and and yeah live a chill it's about leverage I think Leverage you know Naval or avocon from from Angels talks a lot about leverage and how you can use media for leverage connections for leverage capital for leverage so I think it's about building

[1:08:58] leverage in your life and once you have that Leverage you don't need to work 100 hours a week um Josh I gotta I gotta run but where could where could people follow you on the internet if they want to follow your you know to get more of you sure sure sure uh my website's joshuaradorkin.com uh I'm at J.R dorkin on Twitter uh just look me up I'm I'm all over the place uh I'm on Facebook uh I I Twitter is really the only place that I actively really participate but uh LinkedIn I'm I'm out there but uh yeah man Hey listen thank you for having me I really appreciate

[1:09:40] the opportunity and hopefully the listeners found found all this stuff helpful they will 100 thanks Josh thanks Greg amazing

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