Postcards Are Cute; Pixels Pay

We dig into how investor marketing really works, from targeting to funnels to cost of capital, and why visibility beats postcards. Jason shares a clear playbook for using audits, pixels, and regulations to raise money online without wasting ad spend.

• defining investor marketing across ads, content, outreach
• mapping funnels from awareness to investment
• cost per click, cost per lead, and acquisition benchmarks
• quality vs quantity and blended traffic sources
• geo targeting and audience personas for real estate
• competitor audits with Similarweb, SEMrush, SpyFu
• using Facebook Ads Library to study live creatives
• retargeting with pixels and mid‑funnel ads
• scripting, recording calls, and improving close rates
• overview of Reg D, Reg CF, and Reg A structures
• building first‑party investor data and scaling
• growth as discipline, teams over solo, consistency

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Chapters

• 0:00 Welcome And Guest Intro
• 4:47 What Investor Marketing Really Means
• 7:42 Why New Investors Must Market
• 10:47 From Metrics To Cost Of Capital
• 15:02 Geo Targeting And Ad Testing
• 20:10 The Eight Point Plan And Audits
• 27:09 Tools To Spy Competitors
• 33:09 Budgeting And Funnel Basics
• 38:34 Consistency Beats Cold Calls
• 42:29 Jason’s Path To Capital Raises

Transcript

Dwan Bent-Twyford: 1:56

Hey everybody. Welcome to the most Dwanderful real estate podcast ever. I'm your host, Dwan Bent-Twyford. I'm America's most sought-after real estate investor. And I'm super excited to have you with us today. I have such a good guest. I can't wait to get to know him and talk to him and find out what his deal is. And if you are new to me, uh I took my name Dwan and Wonderful and I made a new word. And so you are now in the Dwanderful universe. Our motto at Dwanderful is People Before Prophets. So if there's something that resonates you with you, you're at the right place. I'm your girl. So uh, and you can find me on all social media, just Dwanderful, D-W A N D-E-R-F-U-L, everywhere. Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, the thread, just whatever it is. It's super easy to find me. So I'd like to welcome my guest today, Mr. Jason Fishman. Make sure I said Fishman, yes. I always have to double check. How are you today?

Jason Fishman: 2:57

I'm doing great, Dwan. Pleasure to be able to do that.

Dwan Bent-Twyford: 3:02

So aren't you so darling and handsome?

Jason Fishman: 3:06

It's all the camera, it's all the video phase.

Dwan Bent-Twyford: 3:08

It's all the camera. Yeah, yeah, yeah. They get that nice hair, that nice beard. It's like, oh, you're so cute. So thank you for being on. I'm super excited to have you today. And as I mentioned to you earlier, um, you know, all my followers know that we just talk and we hang out. So just like them, when they see you, they're getting to know you just like I am today. But I do like to throw my guests to the wolves just a little bit.

Speaker 2: 3:34

Sure.

Dwan Bent-Twyford: 3:35

And I wanted you to in like two or three sentences, just to say your name, website, socials, super brief description of what you do, and then I'm gonna ask you whatever questions seem like they would be great questions.

Jason Fishman: 3:51

Okay, I could kick it off here. I'm Jason Fishman, based here in Marina del Rey, California. My company, DNA, can be found at digital nicheagency.com. You can also find me directly on LinkedIn or my YouTube channel, uh youtube.com slash uh at digital niche agency. I run an investor marketing agency, have worked on over 500 capital raises that have collectively produced nine figures of funding across content marketing, advertising, and outreach channels.

Dwan Bent-Twyford: 4:20

I love it. Sweet and simple. I love that. So I did uh take a look over you, I did actually look at your bio today. So I saw that um do it, but I don't like to like read, and it's like, ah, let's just talk. Um, so digital marketing. So for someone that is maybe new to what does that mean?

Jason Fishman: 4:41

We use advertising and outreach, advertising on channels like Meta, Google, major media websites, apps, real estate sites, full spectrum of different websites and apps, uh, as well as uh LinkedIn and uh email for outreach. And we we target investors, we bring them down through offerings into what we call marketing funnels. So pitch deck, video content, uh, you know, webinars, articles, all around the actual opportunity. Uh, and we're able to measure with analytics, with digital reporting. So, you know, so much of our lives are you know lived online at this point, and we can use advertising, you can use different content, different outreach to connect people to opportunities. Uh, we raise capital for a variety of different industries, uh, real estate being in there and uh different asset classes within. So you can be very targeted with digital whites, which is why it's been so effective for us.

Dwan Bent-Twyford: 5:40

Now, see, I so I mostly uh I do a lot of live workshops and webinars and podcasts and stuff like that. And so I'm I I gear more towards like brand new investors, like brand new, you know, like fresh meat coming in, they don't really have a lot of experience. And I try to explain to them like it is really important that you have a presence. Like you need, you know, even if you don't have a website, you have a Facebook page, make a business Facebook page on there, learn how to run ads, learn how to like learn or follow someone or take a class or learn something, because you can't just go, okay, well, today I'm gonna become an investor, and that's it. People, people have to be able to find you. And we specialize in working with people that are in foreclosure. So the things that they're public record, foreclosure, uh, bankruptcy, probate, divorce, people that haven't paid taxes, landlords that have evicted tenants. I was like, well, how are you gonna reach them? And I mean, you can mail postcards, but you know, we all know you mail a thousand postcards, you're gonna get five people to call you back. So I'm always like, you got a target, and everyone is like so afraid, like, oh, I'm just me. I don't need to market. It's like, but you do need to market. People have to know, and they need to see that you're like, for example, with in my end, they're dealing with a lot of people in foreclosure. They need to see some testimonials from people that you've helped. They need to see you, you know, writing some kind of a blog or doing a video or talking about real estate investing tips or something. And you gotta figure out how to get yourself out there. So I feel like from the people that I work with, if they feel like that's too much for them.

Jason Fishman: 7:28

We work with everything from solopreneurs to companies with you know hundreds of employees and serious marketing departments, and they all have different goals. You can build algorithms using these digital marketing tools. You could systematically scale them up as well, which is why I love digital so much.

Speaker 2: 7:48

Yeah, yeah.

Jason Fishman: 7:48

So we work with funds that say, hey, I can make a few calls, fill around, but we're we're opening up these new products, we want to bring more investors in. How do we do it? And I have to be able to answer with numbers, with algorithms, speaking to ranges. Hey, if you spend you know 5K, 100K, anything in between on advertising, what is it physically going to produce? Let's not just advertise, let's not just market to create pretty things and have people feel like, hey, the branding is out there, our clients are demanding you know, physical results. So I have to look at those numbers. You mentioned for that mailer, hey, if I send out a thousand, maybe I hear five people back, I hear back from five people. I could tell you for some of the ad channels we use, it's a 1% click-through rate. So if I'm reaching uh, you know, uh a thousand people, uh, maybe you know, 10 people are clicking through on the ads, but probably cost me $10 per click.

Dwan Bent-Twyford: 8:47

Yeah, exactly.

Jason Fishman: 8:48

If I'm sending people to uh a lead form, hey, I would like to learn more information about this investment opportunity. Here's my name, my phone number, my email address, maybe I'm answering a few questions around my investment portfolio or background or anything like that. A number used in the industry is $50. If one out of every 50 people, two out of every hundred are then converting on that lead form and you're paying approximately $50 per lead based on how you're buying the traffic, that's a pretty good benchmark. Obviously, the focus is going to be on quality from there, not just quantity. There's channels we can get leads for, you know, $5, $15. Uh, maybe some of those blended in with channels where it's $50 to $100, and we're testing these different uh traffic sources to see we're getting the best quality. If we see one out of 50 of those leads convert into an investment, that's a $2,500 acquisition cost uh for that investor to come through. That could be very effective for many of these companies, many of these issuers who are uh offering the investment opportunity, they're issuing it. Uh if their average investment's over 100K, let's say it is 100K, it's a 40x return, 2.5% cost of capital. That can work very well for a lot of groups models. And we work on campaigns where it'll be under $1,000 for the acquisition cost, not $2,500. It could take a good amount of testing to get there, but once you're able to crack that code with digital, you could somewhat systematically scale what you're doing.

Dwan Bent-Twyford: 10:19

You can scale, you can see, you can know, like, okay, but I'm gonna spend this much money on ads versus this much money on postcards. I mean, people spend like two grand and they go, I spent $2,000 on postcards. So you just would have been so much better off if you had someone like you that could have done some ads and like, you know, test market done some A-B testing and you know, gotten this and that, you would have gotten yourself in front of more people. But you know, people just, I don't know, I think it's I feel like it's just a lot of um people just don't understand it or don't realize like if you're gonna get more bang for your buck if your face is literally everywhere and you have targeted ads. And especially if you're investing like in Denver, if you're a company like yours could say, hey, listen, we'll help you within 200 miles of Denver. And you know, you don't have to like do the whole country. I feel like people would do more if they weren't so afraid of, I need a website, I need to run ads, I need to da-da-da-da-da. By the time they figure up all the stuff they have, then I need to get an LLC. By the time they figure up all the things they need, it's like, look, you honestly could just run some ads, have someone help you, and you know, and I don't know if you work with like you know tiny clients, but they could still get online, take some classes, follow you, you know, and and get a deal closed and then invest some of that money back into letting people know who you are.

Jason Fishman: 11:40

Absolutely. We we often start with strategy. There's a model I've built called the eight-point plan. We do it over the course of four weeks. I've done it in workshops over four hours with different founders, and it starts with the industry overview and moves to a competitor marketing audit. That's what I want to highlight here. Your investors are going to have deal flow thrown at them from all different places, right and left. That mailer, probably in the stack of other mailers that show up in the mailbox that day. Those advertisements, you know, five posts later on Meta, on Facebook, Instagram, there'll be another real estate opportunity targeted to them. Their email box, maybe there's 10, maybe there's a hundred emails when they open their email that day. So it's very important that you audit what other groups that are going after the same individuals, let's say it's people in Denver, are seeing. Uh, you want to audit their marketing. Sometimes there's too much of an emphasis placed on the company itself, and okay, my offering's better than theirs, and for these reasons. But if your marketing's not better than theirs, the the end uh prospect, the the target investor may not know anything about you, and they're they're gonna win, they're gonna get those investment dollars.

Speaker 2: 12:56

Yep, yeah.

Jason Fishman: 12:57

So success leaves clues. You want to really evaluate, hey, what are they doing on social media? You can go to websites and on social media, what days and times of week are they putting out posts? Where are they getting the most engagement? What announcements, you know, do they speak at a conference? Were they a guest on a podcast? Did they bring in a new anchor investor and got a testimonial? Is it just focusing on the property or aspects of the fun, the IRR? You know, what is really resonating with their messaging to their audience? You then want to go to websites. There's there's ones if you you know want to really get good at this, you can go to a website called Similar Web. There's many others like it, but they will project how much traffic that they're getting and show you the demographics. So similar web location. Yeah, similar webs one. There's there's other ones. I like Similar Web because it'll give me a projection on the traffic, not just a ranking for how high they are as a site. Uh, there's then these search engine tools, SEM Rush, Spyfu, SEO Moz, again, many of them. But you could see, hey, what aspects of their website you're talking about building the site are ranking uh in the eyes of the search engines. What are the search engines saying? Hey, this is the most relevant, these guys are the most authoritative. And you could see it's the keywords, it's articles, it's content that they're putting out using those words. You could see what they're bidding on with their Google, with their search engine advertising, which keywords uh my my podcast is called test optimize scale. That's my philosophy towards marketing. If they're continuing to do the same channels, it's telling me they're scaling it, that it's working for them. It's not just for fun. They're buying those ad placements because they're getting good leads at a strong cost. So there's something in there that you may be able to test out for your own campaign. You could also go to, and this is pretty fun, uh, Facebook ads library. Uh, I think it's facebook.com/slash ads library. You can just Google Facebook ads library and see every ad that every advertiser is currently live with. You have to select all ads and you could put in any brand. You could put in the company that you're you're auditing, this real estate fund. Uh, you could see exactly what they're running as advertising on Facebook. The text above the image, uh, image or video that they're running, the headline underneath it, the call to action. You could click through both on the Google Ads and the Meta ads to their landing page and see what's being presented to investors. Uh, there are websites such as MILD where you can see which email newsletters are talking about the brand, even the email newsletter that the brand is sending out. So you want to have an idea of what's working for them so you can create advertising, content, visuals, messaging that's as strong, if not stronger, than the competition. And so that your your opportunity can be really embraced, really understood, not ignored.

Dwan Bent-Twyford: 16:41

No, I can't agree with you more. I mean, that's one of the first things, of course, when you hire some like a new investor, like, okay, how do I find my first deal? I say, well, I just need to do this and that. And they were just like, oh, I don't know, I don't want to do anything. I don't know about, and they're so scared to do everything. It's like, listen, if you're gonna step out and this, you're gonna try to make this like your way of living, whether you're buying apartments or storage units or single family homes, people still have to find you. At the end of the day, everybody that's running an ad on TV or an ad on the internet, just because they need they want you to see them. If you don't advertise, you're that what's that old saying that like if you don't spend money advertising, you'll eventually run an ad that says going out of business? I haven't heard that one, but that's oh it's something that's like people that don't advertise uh eventually run an ad that says going out of business, everything's on sale.

Jason Fishman: 17:34

I'm gonna quote you on that. That's a that's a good one. Uh and you know, I speak to founders all the time, investors that say, hey, uh I'm able to fill this round just with my network. And if you're able to do that and you're able to keep growing and you're able to keep hitting you know larger and larger uh you know returns and percentage of the market share, great. But but most of the companies I speak to, they want more. And they have very lofty goals. You know, hey, 2030, 2035, 2040, this is how many investors we're gonna have in our email list that have physically put funds into our deals. And I'm gonna be able to send out an email and close out the round in a matter of a day, few days. I'm talking lofty, hundreds of thousands, millions. So there's always more that you could go after. Again, not looking for growth, understood, but if you are playing for larger and larger benchmarks, you're probably gonna need more and more investors and more and more of a brand presence to get there.

Dwan Bent-Twyford: 18:31

Yeah, no, I agree with you. I agree. And I understand when people are like, oh, I'm just a single investor in town. It's like, yeah, but still, even if you put your face on a bus bench or put your face somewhere, people still have to see you. Like you're invisible until people know who you are. And you can't grow anything until, you know, and people still at the end of the day, people just have to know who you are. So 100% someone is listening here and they're like, hey, I just bought Juan's program and I'm gonna start, I'm gonna buy, I don't know, I'm gonna buy a single family home and they want to put some money into some ads. And maybe, I don't know, let's just say they've got a thousand dollar advertising budget. What what would what are some things that you would suggest to someone to do with because I mean I think that's like a very small amount of money. But let's just say someone has just a little bit, and like, hey, what are what are a couple of things I can do besides no postcards with like that much, like a thousand. I know that's really small scale to what you do. But most of the people that follow me are like new. So when you hear them say a hundred thousand, they're like, What? I'm hoping to make a hundred thousand.

Jason Fishman: 19:35

Well, it's your building block. It's betting at a five-dollar blackjack table versus you know a hundred dollar blackjack table. Uh well, or you know, putting a larger wager. Uh, so if you're winning five dollar hands and you know, you leave with $70, or if you're, you know, uh playing five thousand five thousand dollar hands and you're leaving seventy thousand dollars, much different scenario, much different use of 30 minutes, an hour, what it may be. Uh, except with with marketing, you can work off of your results. So you could have a proven conversion funnel. Hey, if I bring this traffic to this landing page, I get these leads, I get these investments, this is what comes out the other side. Uh, for advertising, there's there's prospecting and there's retargeting.

Speaker 2: 20:19

Yes.

Jason Fishman: 20:20

Bringing new people to your your funnel, your digital environment. There's this concept of the marketing funnel taking audiences from awareness to consideration to intent, you know, drop off at each of these points. Those who intend to invest, uh, only a percentage of them actually will. Yeah. There's repeat conversion and advocacy, peer-to-peer marketing at the bottom. That that's the ultimate form of marketing. Those referrals, people who are coming in. It's a done deal by the time you talk to them. Uh, but you can create content for each stage, you can have advertising running for each stage. So advertising to your mid-funnel, retargeting, uh, you're gonna get the best performance. You are limited to your existing audience. Uh, but as an example, you can upload your email list to one of these advertising platforms, and you can run advertising specifically to those individuals, particularly the ones that are not moving forward and you haven't been able to hear from. It may spark the interest. We'll have clients that say, Hey, I haven't been able to get hold of this guy for months. He just put in a six-figure investment. You tracked it with your advertising pixel, the tracking mechanism. This this is huge. He wouldn't pick up my call. So you can be running advertising to people who are in that consideration intent stage. Uh, you can be doing it as retargeting. This is, you know, still basics, but it's a little more sophisticated in the sense that you have to set up an advertising pixel on your page.

Speaker 2: 21:46

Yeah, yeah.

Jason Fishman: 21:46

That tracking mechanism then allows you to bid on retargeting audiences. So people who've already been to your page, you can run advertising just to them. And you could spend very light amounts on advertising.

Dwan Bent-Twyford: 21:59

I have a VA team that like does all that for me. So every week I get uh I get a spreadsheet and I was like, oh, look at this. This and this, like new, you know, retargeted, dot that. And it's just like it's so and and I'm happy I don't have to do it.

Speaker 2: 22:13

Of course.

Dwan Bent-Twyford: 22:14

But way back like a decade ago, I was like, no, I'm gonna try to run some Facebook ads, I'm gonna watch the videos. And I did a little bit, and I thought, nah, for at the point I'm at, just because I I teach, I do webinars, I write books, I also do real estate deals, it's like I'm just gonna hire someone to do to do all that for me, which I'm happy that I'm able to. And I tell even new investors, listen, at some point you're not gonna be able to keep up with all of your stuff, and even just your bookkeeping and your lead follow-up and the paperwork it takes to get to a closing and all the things, at some point you're gonna need some kind of help or an assistant or somebody, or you're gonna be working 90 hours a week.

Jason Fishman: 22:54

Yeah, it's true. Uh, I believe in teams. Uh, teams hit you know the largest goals uh versus just individuals, even brands that I see that look like it's just an individual, there's a team behind them. So if you have experts in different disciplines, you're gonna get a lot further. And to answer the question in uh the next layer deep, uh, I mentioned a competitor marketing audit where you want to go with your strategy from there is target audience personas and then into marketing channels. So with the target audience personas, you want to understand where does my audience go online? If they're on Zillow, if they're on any number of uh real estate sites that have advertising placements, maybe run advertising there. Maybe filter by geographical location, maybe filter by some of the audience uh options they they give you. Uh, this could be Google. Uh you're gonna be bidding for cost per click. Yeah. Some are between a dollar, five dollars per click. Others are gonna be more competitive. They may be $10, $20 per click. I'd be careful if you don't have a proven conversion rate on your landing page and your website for bidding on uh keywords that are more aggressive, maybe $50 to $100 per click. Down the line, that may be the best quality for you, but I'd start with these lower cost clicks, really seeing what's working for you. But that way you're reaching someone who's searching for the exact keywords that you're you're putting in, you know, multi-family for you, Denver, you know, what whatever you put in there.

Dwan Bent-Twyford: 24:24

Yeah, I mean, we do the same thing. We have to run ads because we have the Colorado Ria, the real estate investing group. And it's like, listen, you guys want that to grow, you know, because my husband and my son run it. Like, y'all gotta run ads. You can't just go on a meetup and go here and go there and just randomly put things out. You have to be consistent, people have to see you all the time. Like day in DL. You just so I finally got them to hire someone to like do ads and stuff for them. Like, guys, listen, you can't just email the list and go, hey, there's a meeting coming in two weeks. Hey, here's another meeting. Like, you're giving people zero value. Now, my husband and my son are both like really old school. We just need to call people to tell them to come. And I'm like, all right, but like you can't scale that.

Jason Fishman: 25:10

Sure. Sure. Uh, you know, you go with what's working for you. There are ways where you're like, hey, I'm gonna get more people to call, or we're gonna get more sophisticated lists, or have leads coming through. So you're only calling people who've inquired at that point. But yes, there's gonna be limitations with most channels.

Dwan Bent-Twyford: 25:28

There is, there is, there is. So, how did you get started in this? Because I love what you do. And I think even the smallest investor to the largest investor, it's like, I mean, I've got people, you know, making million, million and half a year. And it's like y'all need to, you know, if you and they're like, how do I make more? It's like, well, get out there, like hire some people to get you out more so people see you. I mean, because they're just like, I've been stoking a million and half for five years. I'm like, oh my poor thing, you know, how do I make two? It's like you need some more people on your team.

Jason Fishman: 26:01

Yeah. More people, more leads, more product, of course, uh, more deal flow coming through, uh, more partners as a whole. Uh, I got started in this as a marketing guy. Um just to tell you the whole story. I I grew up in Southern California. I I got into marketing as an action sports consultant. I actually lived up in the snow uh in Mammoth here in California, and you know, that's what I wanted to focus on. Uh, quickly found there was more opportunity if I was working on uh accounts, campaigns that were targeting millennials. It was actually called Gen Y back then, uh Generation Y. And then uh got into the world of mobile ad tech and was working with a lot of Fortune 500s uh at this mobile ad network, so we've seen product marketing, overseeing sales, before creating my own agency, DNA. I started as a growth marketing firm, working with uh companies in all different spaces, all different industries. Uh, we had some niche verticals, but across all of them, I found fundraising to be a common theme, a common initiative. We were working on the marketing section of business plans, pitch decks for groups raising capital, a first campaign that once successful was presented to investors and more money was put in. Uh, I was even being asked to participate in the investor meetings themselves. And then I learned about Reg D506C, which allows for solicitation of accredited investors, high net worth, high household income audiences. And with my advertising skill set, I was able to say, hey, I have data partners where I can target people by their actual income level, by their net worth, and ran our first capital raise. It produced $2.83 million and had a very light ad spend, was introduced to more issuers, companies issuing shares and issuing various types of uh uh investment structures, very investment types. Um and the laws opened up further. There's Reg C F, Regulation A Plus. Reg C F allows you to bring in retail investors and up to $5 million as a total raise, Regulation A Plus up to $75 million as a total raise. Many of these have side-by-side Reg D campaigns. And then beyond our third-party audience data partners, we've built our own first-party audience data at this point. Uh over 1.8 million uh people who invest in these types of deals, I'm able to upload that list. I'm able to segment it, target within it, and the same traffic I drive to campaigns that you know raise $53 million, 57, others that are 12, 20. I I can take to you know a new raise, even a group that's raising, you know, million and a quarter or three million, five million. So have been able to kind of build on what we're doing so it makes it easier for the end client. And as a marketing agency, it's important to have a specialization, a niche. This is what we're known for. I've worked on over 500 of these deals, as I mentioned earlier. I serve on the crowdfund professional association board. Yeah, I saw that with the crowdfunding.

Dwan Bent-Twyford: 29:04

I love crowdfunding.

Jason Fishman: 29:05

Yeah, I saw that. Strength and numbers funding.

Dwan Bent-Twyford: 29:08

I love that.

Jason Fishman: 29:09

Yeah, I I have clients, some of uh one of them has over 50,000 investors, meaning 50,000 people who have invested in them, then get to promote their announcements and updates as a shareholder. And you know, they all sit on one seat of the cap table for the most part. It's not like these companies are giving up control, they actually find they're giving up less control than if they're working with the a venture capitalist and work with many VCs as well, too. It's not to say anything negative about that, as much as there's more of these filing formats that allow you to set your terms, have every investor operating off the same terms, uh, and bring in high volumes of smaller investors. Even on the reg D campaigns, I work with funds that say, you know, 100, 250k, these are smaller investments for us. But but if we're able to bring in, you know, 10, if we're able to bring in 100, it's it's real capital for them. And there's peer-to-peer marketing occurring and their brands growing from the marketing all the way through. So I found this to be where I want to focus, where I get the most introductions, where I'm growing. And actually, as part of that CFPA organization, um, I'm in DC at least once a year, meeting with regulators, meeting uh with uh House representatives and senators and their staffers, and looking to get laws expanded even further so the filing process is easier, groups can raise more. It's uh what I believe will be the primary approach towards capital formation in the years to come.

Dwan Bent-Twyford: 30:45

I love it. So now with all the things that you do, do you offer like syndications and things that people can be a part of?

Jason Fishman: 30:54

No, uh, we're really just on the marketing side. I work with groups that offer syndications, so they would be our clients, uh, and then we market on their behalf. Um, I do have uh our own social audiences growing and they do see the clients that we work with and over time, but we haven't structured our own fund or syndication or anything like that yet.

Dwan Bent-Twyford: 31:15

No, that's okay though. I like I find out that like a lot of people when I'm interviewing, they're like, oh yeah, we do syndication, the minimum buy-in is like 50 grand. I'm like, yeah, let's just talk about like what can a regular person do? So like the fact that you guys are just like focused on marketing, you own it, you keep it, you've got the control of what's happening, and and you can expose people to the right people.

Jason Fishman: 31:36

Exactly.

Dwan Bent-Twyford: 31:37

Yeah, because you know, exposure is everything.

Jason Fishman: 31:40

I've seen some of the uh the best ideas, the best products, the best brands, even best teams with no eyeballs at all. And then other you know, groups in their same space, their same geographical area, with uh, you know, lower tier offerings, getting all of the conversions, getting all the leads, getting all the investments, getting all the customers, what have you. So that's why I focus on marketing. Uh we are at the forefront of performance and have to put a lot of work, a lot of effort into optimizing and being able to manage a campaign to a point of effectiveness. You know, you launch a new marketing channel, there's no guarantee it's gonna work, let alone work the first week, work the first month. Uh I I I put out a lot of content about what to do to find pockets of performance, you know, A B test, variants of different channels within each channel, different audiences, different messaging, different funnels. You may see one of those producing, the rest of them not driving. Down your averages, your return as a whole. So you then hone into that pocket of performance, do more of what's delivering for you, and you can have uh a real revenue, real capital driver for for your marketing initiatives. Where if you stop it early, it's essentially a total loss in many cases.

Dwan Bent-Twyford: 33:04

Now it doesn't do something like that. You have to commit to a budget and a time period.

Jason Fishman: 33:08

Absolutely.

Dwan Bent-Twyford: 33:09

I that I know for a fact. It's like no.

Jason Fishman: 33:12

They don't, or they cut it off early. And again, it it it shows me they weren't working with the right experts, people who had been down that path and have been able to say, Hey, you're not getting investments yet off your leads, but you're getting some good leads coming through. You're getting a good response from the messaging, the creative, the marketing promotions you're sending out there. We need to focus on getting a higher closing rate from the leads you're talking to. Let's start recording the calls. Let's start seeing the key moments when you're getting the most engagement. Let's start asking questions you would ask on call three, on call one. There's gonna be some things we could tweak here, but turning off the marketing channel, that's gonna hurt you. Uh, it's really gonna set you back long term in the sense of your growth and how you get there. Where if you're able to really refine this channel, there's something here for you, and it could allow you to take on more market share, uh, more capital, uh, more of a presence in the years to come.

Dwan Bent-Twyford: 34:13

Yeah, I'm with you. All right, so we're gonna switch to we're gonna we're gonna switch topics. I love everything you do, so I'm excited to be able to promote this and share videos and and send people your directions. So let's talk about some you personal some personal stuff. What is your favorite band of all time?

Jason Fishman: 34:32

My gut response. I grew up listening to to punk rock here in uh in Los Angeles. Uh there's a band called No FX that comes to mind first. Uh they they just played their last show uh end of 2024 after 40 years of playing, and uh they closed it with the decline. It's a 16-minute, excuse me, 17-minute song. It was one album, one song. Uh they're they're an inspiration to a lot of other punk bands, and that's maybe not popular and I love punk when it came out.

Dwan Bent-Twyford: 35:01

I was like, oh, this is so fun. I feel like kind of disco was there, and then like punk came like kind of after, and sure I'd get like in hip-hop or whatever, but I I've always liked punk rock. I I have so much music from all the the punk bands way back from from the day when I was.

Jason Fishman: 35:20

I used to love going to the shows.

Dwan Bent-Twyford: 35:21

You're one of the first people I've interviewed that name like a punk band opposed to like a rock band or something.

Jason Fishman: 35:27

Yeah, yeah. There's some more popular ones I could tell you about seeing the Rolling Stones here at SoFi Stadium in Los Angeles, but no, I've seen the FX play a lot. I've seen a lot of punk bands play a lot. I go to the shows, I see people I've been uh running into for decades. Uh that's that's my true answer.

Dwan Bent-Twyford: 35:46

I I love concerts. We go we go to everything. Like we go, uh I've seen them films like five times. We I mean, I don't even if it's a band, I'm not like I'm not that crazy about it. So you know what? They're a big band, they're coming. I'm gonna go because I wanna I want to see I've seen everybody. So I love that. I'm gonna go listen to some of their music today and see and catch some uh catch some tunes and see what it is you're listening to.

Jason Fishman: 36:10

You know what you may like? Uh the lead singer is part of an all-star punk band called Me First and the Gimme Gimmies, and all of their albums are cover albums and then different categories RB, country. It's punk, but it's covers of those songs. So it's easy listening in that sense because it's songs you know, but played in that style.

Dwan Bent-Twyford: 36:29

Oh, I would like that. I actually like people. There's a few people that cover like um uh opera, but it's done in like rock.

Jason Fishman: 36:39

Yeah, you know, somebody and I exactly love it. Freaking love that it's creative, it's fun, you know. It's awesome.

Dwan Bent-Twyford: 36:46

The first time I heard it, I heard the song and I was like, God, that sounds like uh it was like Ozzy song. And I was listening, but they were doing it in classroom. I'm thinking, what am I listening to right now? And I discovered that was like a thing, and uh it's one of my favorite things. That's so much fun. What's your favorite food? When I come out to LA and we go have lunch, where are we? What are we having?

Jason Fishman: 37:07

Well, in LA, it's gotta be Mexican food. Yeah, uh, I don't say no to Mexican food, I could eat it every day. Uh, a lot of good spots here on the west side, Marina Del Rey, Venice Beach. Although some of the uh the fan favorites are uh just these taco guys on the street and long lines, and they've got the El Pastor spit and they're cutting right off it and giving you the tacos, a little pineapple on top. It's uh it's an LA favorite.

Dwan Bent-Twyford: 37:32

Yeah, one of the things like so I I live really remote. So we only have we have uh like um a diner. We only have a couple restaurants. We have a diner, we have a Mexican food restaurant, we have a Chinese, but just in the last year, we have four or five food trucks. I'm just like, oh my god, this is the greatest thing that ever happened to the mountains because you can just stop and get and the taco one. Oh my god. I probably stopped by like three times a week now because they're there and they're just we had such little choice up here. Like you gotta drive to Denver to go, you know, get something. And we've got three or four little food trucks now, and they're open year round. They've like poured patios, they've got lights, they've got heaters. And I was like, oh, finally, finally, Bailey's getting some things.

Jason Fishman: 38:14

There you go.

Dwan Bent-Twyford: 38:15

But the Mexican one everything that girl cooks, I'm telling you. Um, what's your favorite part of the day?

Jason Fishman: 38:24

Favorite part of the day. Depends which day. I don't know. Um kind of like right before sunset.

Dwan Bent-Twyford: 38:33

Like early.

Jason Fishman: 38:34

A lot of creative ideas, get more mental peace, done a lot of the heavy lifting for the day.

Dwan Bent-Twyford: 38:40

Um, it's odd because most of people that say, oh, I get up at six in the morning and they love mornings. I agree with you. I felt like the end of the day in the early evening, I feel like, especially in the mountains, like it gets dark now at 5 30. It's like throw a log on the fire and just like oh it's I feel like that's the I personally have always felt like that's the best part of the day. But 99% of people go, I get up at five o'clock and go to the gym. And I'm like, but why?

Speaker 2: 39:09

Yeah.

Dwan Bent-Twyford: 39:10

I get that you like that, but like, why? Why would you do that?

Jason Fishman: 39:14

Even when I'm on that routine, and a lot of times it's an hour, two hours after that. Uh it's not my favorite. It's not my favorite part of the day. I like connecting with people. I'm usually not with too many people first thing in the morning. You know, I'm going on a run by myself, something like that. Yeah. So uh have more fun with others uh right around that sunset time.

Dwan Bent-Twyford: 39:35

Yeah, me too. That's that is it's funny. I mean, honestly, I've done almost 500 podcasts, and probably like 10 of us have just said that time. And I'm always like, am I the only person that thinks that's the greatest part of the day?

Speaker 2: 39:48

Yep.

Dwan Bent-Twyford: 39:49

It just really is. I don't know. I think it's just a relaxing, whatever thing. Okay, one more question. Um, I would like you to first of all, I want to thank you for being on the show. You've been super fun. I've learned a lot of neat things. I took all these notes about some fun stuff, and I actually want to talk to you for about myself personally on another private call. Um, I'd like you to leave us with a word of wisdom, but just one single word.

Speaker 2: 40:26

Growth.

Jason Fishman: 40:29

Okay. I can give an explanation, but that's very good.

Dwan Bent-Twyford: 40:32

No, no, not yet. Say the word again.

Jason Fishman: 40:34

Growth.

Dwan Bent-Twyford: 40:34

Okay, growth. Now hold on, I'm gonna have you, but just in a minute. Growth. Okay, so in my wonderful world, we have about two million people that listen to the podcast, and I always say, listen, we're gonna all have a word of the week. We're gonna put a little sticky and put everybody in your bathroom, so you're brushing your teeth, you're seeing that word, and you're just repeating growth, growth, growth, growth. Because, you know, people need to have some motivation. So after we have the word, I do like to know what does it mean to you.

Jason Fishman: 41:04

Forward momentum. We have limited time, you need to be growing. Stagnant is really declining, and you know, having that relentless approach, that relentless focus, that grit towards that ongoing growth, regardless of where you're at today, uh, is what separates you know, market leaders from those that uh disappear or or are just not relevant.

Dwan Bent-Twyford: 41:31

I love your answer. I think too. If you you just I don't care how what you're doing, even if you're like 75 and you're retired, you still just have to just always be growing. Even though it's always growing, you just like you're dead.

Jason Fishman: 41:46

Yep.

Dwan Bent-Twyford: 41:46

I mean, that's kind of how I live.

Jason Fishman: 41:48

75 growth looks different, although we work with business owners that are older than 75, so it doesn't have to be, but uh, I feel there's different layers of depth. Uh of course. They may be more around legacy, more around family, uh, more around slowing things down, but you're growing into it.

Dwan Bent-Twyford: 42:06

That's what Belle and I at this point. So I'm 66. So we've been married 25 years, so we are now working on uh making sure everything is generational wealth and getting everything in the right entities that pass down, pass down, pass down. And the key is um, because we own a bunch of buildings, and so the key phrase is like, hey, you can take whatever you know, salary off of this and that, but if you guys just said, hey, we're gonna sell everything and just go live happily ever after, and they sell everything, 100% of the money goes to charity. They don't get anything, so they either work and keep it going or they lose the whole shebang.

Jason Fishman: 42:47

It's a uh a good game. I love it.

Dwan Bent-Twyford: 42:50

Well, I talked to a really wealthy guy, and he said he found like when his brother died, he goes, he had about $20 million worth of properties. He says his kids sold everything, and just that was it. And he goes, I was so disappointed because that the person was trying to create generational wealth. He goes, So I talked to a few people, and I'm like, you know what? If you want to do it, don't I just knock myself out? I hit my button on my video. Hang on a minute, bring my face back on. And he goes, and after that, I just talked to some people and said, Everyone can use it, utilize it, take care of it, grow it. But if you want to sell it, you don't get a dollar. I was like, I like it. I'm not working all my life, so my kids can go run off and buy a bunch of Ferraris, you know.

Jason Fishman: 43:31

They need to be growing themselves, absolutely.

Dwan Bent-Twyford: 43:34

And they do, they're all in real estate.

Jason Fishman: 43:35

So there you go.

Dwan Bent-Twyford: 43:36

Yeah. So we sat them down, told them all that, and they were just like, That's hey, don't give me that face. Like, you know, I'm not gonna work my whole life for you to go sell everything and just like live on the hilltop in Hawaii. You if you want to keep it, you gotta work it.

Jason Fishman: 43:50

To give you added resources, not to be what keeps you going.

Dwan Bent-Twyford: 43:55

But my kids won't do that anyway. They're also involved in real estate and investing, and we're kind of rehabbing a whole town together. And even my little grandkids, my little eight, 10-year-old granddaughter, when she meets people, she's like, Someday I'm gonna be your coach. My meme's teaching me everything. I'm gonna coach you. So I've already got this little like little mini me growing up right now.

Jason Fishman: 44:15

Amazing.

Dwan Bent-Twyford: 44:16

It's cute. All right. So, first of all, I want to thank you for being uh on and spending time with me. All of you listening, I want to uh appreciate you all spending time with us too. As you know, time is our most valuable asset because when we're out of time, we're dead. So uh I appreciate that you take the time and you spend it with us. Uh, I want you to do me a favor if you enjoyed today, if you've learned anything, you know, even a new word. I mean, he talked about so many things I know a lot of you don't know about. Give us a follow and a five-star review and write out a um message. And from time to time, when I do podcasts by myself, I'm not interviewing, I will call out your name and read out your little testimonial. So if you'd like that to happen, you gotta do it. So we can't do what we do if y'all don't don't help us along the way. So we'll be back, everyone, sex next week. Same bad time, same bad channel. And remember that the truth is in the red letters. So bye, everybody. Thank you so much, Jason.

Jason Fishman: 45:22

My pleasure.

Dwan Bent-Twyford: 45:27

Okay.