The Strategy Of Teaching
Have you ever wondered how professionals profit off of their own personal branding and expertise? What stands as a mystery to many of us is common knowledge for popular experts.
Recently, our CEO Stacy Jones sat down with Terry Hale to hear about how it's done. In this blog, Hollywood Branded learns how to build your expertise by providing education from the expertise of Terry Hale, a master of commercial real estate investing.
A Little More About Guest
Terry is a commercial real estate wealth trainer and an expert in commercial real estate investing. An author of educational curriculums, numerous trade and business magazine articles, and speaker at live events attended by up to 200,000 people. With over 20 years of real estate investing related marketing training and teaching experience, he's been featured on such radio broadcasts as CBS radio and CNBC. In other words, he knows commercial real estate, but he also knows marketing.
Interview Transcript Highlights
Question: What got you to the point you are at, this guru of commercial investing, today?
Answer: Being the fact that I'm a native Californian out here, it's one of these places where you got to make money to survive. It's a very expensive place, like many places around the nation of course. I come from a long list of contractors who are swinging the hammer out here in the hot California sun and started doing a ground up development project for a very wealthy individual. It wasn't so much the actual vehicle that he drove or the clothes that he wore or the jewelry that he had. It was the freedom and lifestyle and the security. That's something that really I gravitated towards. Asking that person for help and him becoming a mentor, showed me some ways to get into commercial real estate. I started working with this gentleman and working for this gentleman, supporting him in his dreams and endeavors.
Unfortunately, it brought me down the path of conventional wisdom of getting bank financing. I did get my financial legs and everything was great, but here shortly five years or so, I went to a bank and was all independent on my own. They just told me, "Sorry, Terry, we like you, but we can't give you a loan." I asked why. They said, "Because your debt to income ratio, it's no good. You support too much debt, not enough income." The reasons for that is because I was fine using standard retail knowledge. I was not using a non-conventional methodology. Where I was at that point was I had to actually reverse engineer everything that I was doing. I started using different strategies and techniques. What's brought me to where I'm at today - they say there's riches in niches and that's exactly what I did. I've authored many books, self published.
That's a little overview, a quick little summary of how I got to where I am today. People really wanted to learn what it was that I was doing. I got introduced to this information marketer and I always looked at the people in information marketing, like guys on late night TV and stuff, and I was like, well, I don't want to be that guy. A teacher, trainer, coach, mentor. What's all that?
I was negotiating millions of dollars worth of commercial real estate and tens of millions of dollars in commercial estate for my past mentor or so. I was very comfortable anyway. I got pushed out onto a stage in front of thousands of people and it was in Jacksonville, Florida. This gentleman introduced me because I helped them negotiate this deal. After that, he took a liking to me flying around on his private plane and ended up co-authoring a book with him. He showed me how to actually put together a manual. This was back in the day where I told everybody, I said hey, my goal is for you to have an MBA. They're like, what? Yeah. Manuals, books and audio. That's what I'm selling you.
Question: There is training, there's practice, and there's honing the skill. How'd you go about that? How did you become the best performer besides your natural proclivity?
Answer: I've been around celebrities pretty much my entire adult life. I do have a lot of skillset because I've been practicing. When I started off, I wasn't so great. What I did was I started going to events and started watching people. I started looking at their mannerisms, how they're walking and talking and watched how they're performing. It is a performance. It truly is. I went to this one gentleman's performance. I'll never forget. It was at the Jacob Javits Center in New York. That's where I was living at the time. This was very early in my career. I remember watching his talk and he was telling a joke. As he's telling the joke, he grabbed a water.
At that point he took a sip of water and put the water down. I went and I watched him. I watched his performance the whole entire day. I went back as he was on at like 11 o'clock, then at like two o'clock, then at like four o'clock. I went to each one. He told the joke at the same exact time and took a sip of water at the same exact time. At that point, I realized that it was just a scripted pitch. If you do it over and over again, you can get really good at it. Just the way actors do it.
They study their script, they practice, and then they go and do it. Then, obviously, you got to be able to refine it, but at that point that's what I was doing. I became a natural at it. I felt real comfortable in my skin and there was a reason for that. I give that credit to my wife, Lisa. I've been with Lisa since 1999 and at that point, I was a little shaky. She came in and she said, "Terry, there's one thing that you're forgetting."
I said, "what's that?"
She said, "they need you more than you need them," and it changed my world.
At that time, I stopped doing that same type of talk and I started being Terry. If I'm the best at who I am and what I do, I'm going to make a horrible somebody else, but I'll make a perfect me. Once I realized that and I got comfortable with that, people started seeing me as a person and I started being more human and more real.
I do trainings every Tuesday and every Friday. I do Tuesday training and something called deal flow Friday and I actually make live calls to brokers and sellers to my clients that are on the call live with me. The reason why I do all of this is to show them that, hey, you know what, there is room for error and get to the "no" as fast as possible so you can get to the "yes." Do business with people that want to do business with you. It's kind of like you can't sell something to someone that can't afford it kind of a way. You can only offer something to somebody that can actually accept it and that wants it.
Question: What happens when someone says no?
Answer: I don't mind no's. A no just means you need more clarity. A lot of times people don't speak for purpose exactly. They can ramble on and just stay on what it is that they're offering. Sometimes people need to hear it multiple times. I'm not sure how many times you need to touch people before they say yes. Getting clients and bringing new clients in, I got to touch these people quite often to keep their interest and really say what it is that I'm saying in multiple different ways because everyone's personality is different. Some people learn differently. Some people hear things differently. It's just about articulating what it is that you're saying and speaking for purpose and clarity.
Question: He has truly enveloped himself with his branding, his messaging, and it's become his core because his core is who he is. What's outside is reflected inside. You keep on getting that experience with him. That's part of building a brand and especially if you're doing so in a service business or where you're working with people where you are selling something that other people are buying in based on you as an individual. How important is personal branding to you?
Answer: It is so important that you identify who it is that you are. You got to make sure that you hit it right. It's just that you got to identify who it is that you want to be and that you want to represent as yourself.
Question: When did you start extending that out into the writing of the books, the audio, all the different layers. Where did you start?
Answer: I started speaking. I was in the real estate seminar space, and I met this information marketing genius who's done over $50 million in business, flying around on private planes and everything. I gravitated towards that obviously. He actually sat me down.
He sat down and we went through a whole pack of tapes. This was the secret sauce behind the scenes. We talked through it and I thought we were going to be writing and we never wrote. It was talking. Now they have all kinds of dictation software and you can do it on your phone with Siri. But back then, what we did was we actually taped it and then we had it transcribed and then he went through it, read through it, and then he pulled information on topics out. It was really interesting because when people are professional writers, they write like they talk.
It was really genius in that fashion. What we would do from there is we would create that manual and then he would go and hold a four day seminar. I learned how to do this so I started doing it. What I did was I made bullet points of my talk and I didn't record it on a recorder. I would actually go and rent a hotel space. I put hundreds, if not thousands of people into a room and I would get up there and I would have an actual projector and I would have slides and I would sit there and show some slides and then I would have the old school stock projector. I would sit there and I would train for four days. I had somebody in the back recording it. Typically have two, three video cameras on me. I'm showing the audience, bringing people up, doing case studies, doing all this talk. I would turn that into an audio set. Then a video set.
We were kind of joking on our talk earlier about MBA, which stood for manuals, books and audios. At that point, how I would actually monetize that is, and I did eight different events on eight different topics. One on self storage investing, one on multifamily investing, one on negotiations. All these different topics and different niche trainings that I would teach. Like seller financing, master lease, escalation of interest costs, subordination. All these different techniques. I got a mound of stuff and the printing bill was very expensive, but we would print all this stuff out on DVDs and CDs and have these materials.
We'd shrink wrap them and we would sell the material at different events. Now what we would do is go around the nation and we would hold events and we pack the house and I've shared the stage with all the big names of course. What we would do is we'd sell it for five grand. You get all this material sent to you along with two tickets to a future event. Then, at that future event, what I would do is I would offer a high-end mentorship program. That high-end mentorship program, I would teach them one-on-one exactly what it is that I do. Where they don't ever have to even open up any of the manuals. That was kind of the marketing that we were doing and it worked great.
I did a lot of CBS radio and what I would do at that CBS radio show is I'd actually pack the house. It's called a preview event. It was a three and four hour preview of that. At that preview event, that's where I would actually sell the material and the two tickets to a four-day event. The psychology of the human brain, like we just mentioned earlier, is that people need to see you several times before they actually become a buyer. They have to be comfortable. They got to trust you. It's a trust game and that's exactly what marketing for me is all about.
Anything that I put into publication, anytime that I'm speaking or training or doing live events, it's all about the trust game for me. Is to get people to the point where they feel comfortable, that they want to move forward. That has to come with massive amounts of credibility. If you can't show testimonials and proof of what it is that you're doing, people need to vet. One chance at a first impression. If you have one flaw, they're judgmental and they can go the other way. That goes in any line of business, regardless if it's commercial real estate, or if you're selling marketing, or you're selling media buys, whatever it is that you're selling. There's really no competition if you're on top of your game.
Check Out The Podcast!
Terry has even more wisdom to share from his experience in providing education on niche subjects. Check out the podcast below to learn more about how to drive your business from his advice and expertise!
Every week we have a marketing professional on our show to share their tips, tricks and lessons learned from their professional experience. Check out some of our other podcast blogs from earlier this year:
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