Leverage Relationship Capital and AI for Business Growth

Unlock practical business and real estate insights in this episode as Alex Nahle sits down with Casey Eberhart, a seasoned entrepreneur and networking expert. Get straight-to-the-point strategies for building wealth, leveraging relationships, and using AI tools to grow your business.

In this episode:

• Casey Eberhart’s entrepreneurial journey and core philosophy for success
• The power of empathy and relationships in business and investing
• Creative deal-making and understanding what people truly want
• How AI can enhance networking, efficiency, and personal connections
• Recommended AI tools and practical tips for scaling your business

 Casey Eberhart’s 120 free tactical networking tips are a game-changer! 🤝 Grab them at powernetworkingtips.com and start showing up smarter. 🚀 

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Transcript

Alex Nahle [00:00:00]:
Welcome back to the BRRRR Investor Podcast, where our mission is to empower aspiring real estate investors in their journey towards building generational wealth. All right. Well, Casey Eberhart, thank you so very much for joining me today. It's truly a pleasure, and I'm looking forward to the conversation we're going to have.

Casey Eberhart [00:00:20]:
I'm so excited, Alex. I've been super excited about this, and I'm glad our schedules kind of aligned and we can have this conversation. I love it. So I appreciate being here first and foremost.

Alex Nahle [00:00:32]:
I know, I know you're very busy. I really appreciate you taking the time out of your day. I know we've been trying to put this together for a while, but I'm glad we were able to make it happen. So again, my guest today is Casey Eberhart, you know, my mentor. I can also consider him my good friend, a networking genius, a marketing genius, a true entrepreneur. So Casey, again, thank you so much for being here. If you can start off by sharing a little bit about who Casey is.

Casey Eberhart [00:01:01]:
Yeah, absolutely, Alex. So first off, thank you for having me on here, and I'm going to basically, you know, send the first part of this to my mom because I've been telling her all those things for years and I'm not sure she ever believed me. So, so, you know, I've been an entrepreneur and a business owner my whole life. I mean, literally when I was 5 years old, I was selling everything from ivy starts. I sold candy out of my locker in junior high. I started working at an amusement park. I quickly helped them grow that. We ended up selling that to a big private equity firm. Moved to Los Angeles, uh, to work in the movie business. Ended up very quickly, um, rising through the ranks. I was a producer. I produced a bunch of movies that you probably see on Hallmark Channel, um, as well as Oscar Award-winning picture Being John Malkovich. And I've bought and sold, advised and consulted companies and businesses my whole life. And so I don't really know anything else. I really consider myself at the core sort of an investor. And that investor is really whether I'm investing in time, energy, money, resources, relationship capital to help make deals happen and help business owners and real estate investors like grow their portfolio, grow their ultimate generational wealth. So that's kind of it in a nutshell.

Alex Nahle [00:02:17]:
That's a lot. That's a lot to unpack there. And it's awesome. I appreciate you sharing that. So what inspired all that? Like, do you feel, you know, the baseball cards, the selling candy out of your locker, did that inspire what you're doing now, or where did that come from?

Casey Eberhart [00:02:32]:
Yeah. So, really, really cool story, actually. So, two things kind of happened simultaneously. So, I'll share both stories and kind of give you just kind of the starting point of this. And I think in every investor and every business owner entrepreneur's story, there's a couple of sparks. It's the thing that like we click and it sends us off in a direction or click here and we send off in a direction. So, I I had two things happen pretty much simultaneously. Um, the first one was I remember as a kid, um, going and shopping for school clothes. And I remember that my mom took us to, to— it was a store called Elvin's up in the Northwest, up in Washington State. And there was this opportunity that we could go school shopping for school clothes. When I say we were given the opportunity, what that really means is my mom did the school shopping for us, and we didn't really get a say. And I remember looking at the clothes that she was pressuring me to get, and I hated them. I was like, this is ridiculous. I don't— I'm not gonna wear any of this crap. And so we would get into this, like, argument, right? She— I mean, she was my mom, so she was kind of helping me make the decision, right? Um, and I remember in that moment thinking, oh my gosh, the only way I'm gonna get to wear what I think is cool and what I want to wear to school is if I buy my own clothes. And the only way I've got to buy my own clothes is to figure out how to make enough money to be able to buy my own school clothes. So that started happening. And at the same time, my grandfather, my granddad out in Colorado was an entrepreneur. And when I say an entrepreneur, like this man had more streams of income than anybody I know. He had cattle, he had a ranch, he had an oil well, a gas well, a water well, he had rental houses, he owned a Ford Model A and Model T restoration business. And then he had an antique store. And I say antique store, If you're listening, I'm doing air quotes. If you're seeing, I'm doing air quotes, antique store, which is essentially in Colorado a garage sale with a sign out front that says antique store for all the Californians to come through Colorado and buy their junk for no money and then move on. And they call it antique stores. Okay, let's call it what it was. And so my granddad, I was always fascinated and we would have these in-depth conversations when I was young, like 5, 6, 7 years old. Um, you know what's so funny? I'm gonna grab something. I know I normally don't do this, but this is important to the story. I didn't know you were gonna even ask this. So I went into the store one day, I was visiting out in Colorado, and he said, hey, anything you sell in the store, you can keep the money for. I'm like, haha, this is the way I'm gonna get my school clothes that I want, right? So he said, listen, I'm going to teach you a lesson though. And that lesson was, um, treat people better than they expect and everything will work itself out. I was like, okay, I don't really totally understand that. And then he was like, well, listen, you always need to add more value than anybody ever expects, and everything will work itself out. And I'm like, okay, I don't really get that. I'm young, I'm just looking at the, you know, what can I, what can I buy? And the funny thing was, I was buying— this is, this is what a nerd I was, Alex. Um, I was using my allowance because I couldn't buy school clothes. I was using my allowance to buy silver coins, baseball cards, and comic books. That I still have literally today, all wrapped up. I don't even think I've ever even opened a pack of the baseball cards. All my comic books, I like put cardboard and covered them. I'm sure they're worth money today, which is, you know, the fantasy that I have. But so anyway, so I remember these two ladies came into the antique store and they were shopping around and they bought these things called insulators. And I just happened to have one. And the reason I carry this around with me, and it was just on my shelf here, is when I do speaking events on stage, if I go speak at events, or even in my office, I always have this as a reminder. So this is an insulator, and an insulator is a thing that sits on the top of a telephone pole in the Midwest, and they wrap electrical wires around it on the top of the telephone pole. And these things are almost indestructible. I mean, they sit that high up, so when tornadoes and windstorms come up, they fall over, they fall to the ground, they literally don't break. That's how dense the glass is on these things, right? So that'll be important here in a second. So these two ladies come in and they bought two of these things and the bill was $2. So it was a dollar apiece. They bought these things for $2. They come up to the cash register and I'm like, this is awesome. Like, so cool. So I ring them up for $2 and I look over my granddad and my granddad is just looking at me like, didn't you hear what I just said? Add more value. Like he's raising one eyebrow. I'm like, "Okay, I don't really know what that means, but I'll like take a guess." So I grabbed some newspaper and I wrapped them up. Now remember, you can't break these things. Like I could probably drop it off the stratosphere and it won't break, right? Wrapped it in newspaper. Look at my granddad, he's still not happy. I go, "Okay." So I grabbed some bubble wrap. I wrapped the newspaper-wrapped insulators in bubble wrap. I'm getting ready to check out, let them go, and he's still looking at me weird. So I'm like, okay, what does this man want? So I then grab a tobacco tin. It was like this— they, they used to sell tobacco in these like jars, but they're tins. So I put the bubble wrap, newspaper wrap, insulators in this tin, and then I just got mad. So then I actually took that and I wrapped that in bubble wrap in a bag, right? Like, I'm like, okay, I'm getting the message. So I was always taught to be, uh, to open doors since I was a kid. So I walked them out to their car and I carried the bag. I opened the door for them. I walked out to their car. I opened the driver's side and the driver was like, this is really nice, you know, the pleasantries, you know, what a great little whippersnapper, that type of thing. I then walked around the other side of the car and I opened the door for the passenger. And by the way, I could still pick these ladies out of a crowd like today, I'm sure. This is how impactful it was. But I then opened the back door, the back passenger door, and I took that bag wrapped bubble wrap, tin can bubble wrap, newspaper wrapped indestructible $1 items, and I put it in the backseat of the car and I literally seatbelted it into the backseat of the car. Right. And the passenger was so taken aback. That she opened up her purse and handed me a $20 bill as a tip. And Alex, I got to tell you, in a nanosecond, I mean, like, literally like that fast, I got it. Didn't cost me anything to treat them well, didn't cost me anything to take in that extra step, didn't cost me anything to seatbelt the thing in. It was just taking somebody that took a $1 item and treating them like a million bucks. And ever since then, That's been my core philosophy, whether I'm buying a business, buying a building, selling a building, bringing on a tenant, talking to investors, talking to capital investors, talking to funds, talking to venture capitalists, talking to private equity groups. It always comes down to a silly $1 insulator. And so when I speak and I train and I work with and I coach, I always am talking about like, what is the thing that will remind you how to really come back to what all of us want is to need— the, the need to be loved, to be treated well, um, and to feel good, right? You know, Maya Angelou always says, you know, people will forget what you do, they'll forget what you'll say, but they're not going to forget how you make them feel, right? And so I think one of the things, like, now we're in a big AI conversation. What happens is sometimes we lose the human connection. And at the end of the day, the human person is on the other side of the desk. So he or she who can make that other human being feel good and have the scary taken away, meaning they've got cash, you've got a project, they're scared. It's our job to make them feel good as people and take away their scary. And if we can just do that, and we can then support all of that using AI and the tools and stuff we have today, um, like, the game is actually pretty easy. So that was a long-winded, long-winded answer, but I think it's important that everybody recognizes and realizes— and Alex, you obviously— I mean, listen, I, I know you're a licensed real estate agent, you're an investor, you are a podcaster, you're an influencer, you are a guy that creates events and creates opportunities for other investors to connect and work with you. And connect with each other. I know you well enough to know that that's what your core value is, is to recognizing that whoever's on the other side of the table is another human being. And first and foremost, that's why you're super successful.

Alex Nahle [00:11:21]:
I appreciate that. Thank you for the kind words. Truly appreciate it. And that was, you know, I wasn't expecting— that's an awesome, awesome answer. And I can really see, you know, we're knowing you now, you know, I've known each other for a few years now and knowing you now, I can see see like, you know, the multiple streams of income, where you learned that from and everything. So that's very cool. Uh, goes back to, to Grandpa. And, uh, like you mentioned, you know, that $1 thing may not be valuable to you or to somebody else, but to the person buying it, it's priceless. It's precious, right? So it sounds like empathy is crucial in this whole, uh, thing, right?

Casey Eberhart [00:11:58]:
I don't know ultimately. So it's really interesting. So let's crack this open a tiny bit. So I work a lot in the M&A space, mergers and acquisitions, and I also work a lot with real estate investors on both sides of transactions and all the people that it takes. And here's, here's what I found just having done this for, you know, 30 years or whatever. There's basically two types of paths that people take. There's either the transactional path which is let me look at the numbers. I only care about the numbers. I only care about the dirt, or I only care about the P&L, or I only care about the banking. I only care about, I only care about, I only care about. And then they list off some component that is a transaction, right? And then there's the relationship-based, right? These are, these are the deals where they're going to talk about what does this look like? How do I get you out of the deal? How do I get you where you want to go? And we talk about the relationship component. First, and then it's backed up by data. So on one hand, you have data that may or may not get backed up by relationships. And then on a different version is a relationship-based deal that gets backed up by data. The transactional folks, in my experience, have a far less likelihood of actually sticking. Deals don't close, deals fall apart. Because someone will say something and not be heard. And when people aren't heard, they shut down. Right. And Alex, you, I'm sure, deal with this when you're dealing with clients that are looking for a house or a home or an investment. If they say, hey, I need 3 bedrooms and you continuously show them studios, they ultimately feel not heard. They're like, well, this guy's just trying to hawk me a studio that, you know, and we live in Los Angeles, everybody. So when I say studio, In your neck of the woods, that may mean something different. To us, that's, you know, a half a million dollar deal minimum, right? Even when people are buying or selling businesses, like, what is it that the person actually wants? And if you just help them get that, the data either backs that up or not, right? Like, I have, you know, I have this story where when I was— I don't know, I was probably 20 years old. I had an opportunity to buy a security company. Like a rent-a-cop business, right? The business wasn't particularly valuable, but the equipment that they had was really valuable, and I knew how I could sell that equipment. Um, and I had— we had a couple of contracts, so I knew what it was going, but the guy kept saying like— and I'm gonna make this number up, I want to say it was $25,000. Like, I, I, I'm, I'm making this up because it was so long ago, but, um, I kept saying to him like, well, what do you want to do with the $25,000? Like, tell me, like, you're going to get this money, like, you're out of the business. What do you want to do? And he said, ah, you know what, I want to buy a sailboat and I just want to have it down in the marina and I want to be able to go down there and tinker around on the sailboat. I'm like, well, tell me about the sailboat. And he's like, oh, it's a Catalina, 30-foot, you know, it's got two sails. And he's like, I'm like, tell me about this. Like, I want to hear, I want you to paint the picture of what you're going to do with this money, right? And so finally I said to him, I said, well, look, it doesn't sound like the money is the important thing to you. It actually sounds like the sailboat is the important thing to you. He's like, well, yeah, I'm going to take the money and buy the sailboat. So instead of working the deal where I gave him $25,000, which, by the way, I did not have, and then let him go buy a sailboat, I went and bought the sailboat. So what I did was I went and I bought the sailboat. I put down a few thousand dollars on the sailboat. I put it in his name on the title. And I said to the bank, the investor, I'm going to make payments to you rather than him making payments to a bank.

Alex Nahle [00:15:45]:
Okay.

Casey Eberhart [00:15:45]:
So he got his sailboat. I got the company. I was able to profit that company and sell off the equipment really quickly, pay off the bank note and the investor note to the sailboat over, over time. It probably took me, I think, 6 months to do, but it allowed me to do that deal when I didn't have $25,000 cash. He got what he wanted. I got what I wanted, but it was only because building the relationship and the rapport and finding out like, what is this guy's dream? What does he really want the money for? What does he really want to do? You know, I think that's the same thing when we talk about investors, right? You know, silly as this is going to sound, I literally just put a little bit of money in this fund, right? This small business fund and the venture capitalists. You know, she kept saying to me like, what are you trying to do? What are you trying to do? And I said, well, I really believe in the types of businesses that this fund is participating in. I just want in the game a little bit so that I can be able to go out and say I'm part of this really cool thing because it's a really big impact fund, right? She played to that perfectly. She was like, oh, let me tell you all the people that are just like you that have got businesses. And you know, I know your heart's in helping businesses ramp up and I know you love helping people do pitch decks and pitch to VCs, so I'm going to have you help 3 or 4 of our companies go learn pitching so they can pitch to higher— like, she understood the relationship component. It wasn't just like, hey, put X amount of dollars in and we're going to pay you 12% on an internal rate of return and da da da da da. Some people that's important to, most it ultimately is secondary if you get them talking.

Alex Nahle [00:17:23]:
Because they miss the big picture there's sometimes something bigger than just that rate. Right?

Casey Eberhart [00:17:27]:
Yeah, almost always.

Alex Nahle [00:17:29]:
Always. Yeah. Yeah. And that's so creative. Like, like they talk about creative financing and all this creative stuff. This is all it comes down to is really understanding who's involved in the transaction, the problems, the solutions, and just be a part of it versus like you mentioned, you know, transaction, you know, if it's a situation of purchasing an investment property, right? My goal, this is my number, this is what I want to do. And this, that's it. I walk away instead. And that's something right now in today's market, it's really working very, very well is You know, understanding the homeowners or the, the banks that are selling off distressed properties is like, why? What's going on? What's the situation? And then be a solution. And that's how you can be creative. That's how you can use more or less of your money, right? You— they want price, you get terms. They want terms, you get price. You just figure it out. And, and, and listening is crucial. Something that sticks to me, and, and just like you, you gave us that example about the lady that bought that $1 item You know, for me, multiple times in my career is maintaining that relationship and just, you know, addressing people by their name, right? Like, I was a business owner prior to getting into real estate investing and real estate, and I ran a multimillion-dollar automotive business, and I saw hundreds and hundreds of people that came in our dealerships. But, you know, the fact that you remember them, you call them by name— I had a lady that started crying in front of my whole team just because I continued to do that consistently. So I can tell That makes a huge difference. And I'm a subscriber to the relationship type of business versus the transaction. I see both being conducted. We have the option to do both. In my opinion, you know, one is going to get you a deal now, the other one is going to get you multiple deals. And whether it's with that person or not, it really doesn't matter, right? It's not about forcing it to happen. It's about, you know, maintaining that relationship because if that person is not ready to conduct business or to transact, They know how you treated them. They'll remember that and they'll come back or they'll refer you to somebody. So it's huge. So, you know, let's talk about it. You know, the importance of networking and relationships and AI now all together. How does that— how do you feel that contributes to growing a powerful business?

Casey Eberhart [00:19:41]:
So let's go back just a second because I think this is really important about the name thing. In today's marketplace, where we are today, most people, whether they have a crappy home life, they've got a crappy business life, they've got a crappy group of friends, they feel unheard. They're not, um, they're not acknowledged, right? So it is not surprising to me at all that you remembering somebody's name and saying their name It's actually she's crying not because of what you did, but because of how you made her feel, because you made her feel heard. Somebody's recognizing a name, right? And for those of us that have goofy names like Casey, you know, we grew up even going to like souvenir gift shops and everybody's name is on a keychain except Casey, right? And so even as something as simple as that societal like non-recognition or hearing a name is super, super powerful, right? So, um, it's one of the reasons why I like to send birthday cards to people. I also like to send half birthday cards to people. Why? Because I like to send somebody a half birthday card because it gets more response than a birthday card. Because everybody goes on Facebook and happy birthday, you get 400 messages and you can't keep up with it all. You go to your mailbox, you might get 3 or 4 birthday cards. Most people, by the way, get zero. Um, you send somebody like a half birthday card, it's, it's magical. They're feeling heard, right? These ladies that I did the, the, the, you know, seat belt thing to, they felt heard. They felt something, right? Um, so there's no doubt that you've— now it's no doubt they felt— she felt amazing, and that's why she started crying. And she, at that moment, by the way, you evoked an emotion which means her referral factor went through the roof. You made her feel a certain way and she's going to refer you over and over and over and over and over again. That's why guys like you and I, a lot of our business is repeat business, right? I mean, I truly believe that all of us in the investing, in the business world, if we were to take a half a step back and just recall something about someone, the referral factor goes through the roof. Right. And back in the movie business, I remember that I used to keep a notebook and that notebook, when I talked to somebody, I would keep track of all the stuff they told me. Right. And there was this guy named Jason who we rented trucks from all the time. And I remember he worked for Budget Rent-A-Truck. And in the movie business, your— my position was all about the money. So my, my job was to get things as low as I could and make them feel good. So I remember one time calling Jason, and he had told me like a year ago that he and his wife had bought a cabin up in Big Bear. They were excited to take their, their newborn kid up there because this kid was going to have all the memories in Big Bear, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Well, I had that written on a piece of paper. I didn't remember in my head. I have too much to remember to remember some guy a year ago telling me about a Big Bear cabin, but I had it in my notebook. So the next time I, I rang him up, I opened my notebook, I saw his sheet, and I said, Jason, hey, before we even talk about trucks, like How's the newborn? He's got to be about 1 year old now. And how's the cabin going up there, Alex? We ended up talking about the cabin and his kid and his wife and the great memories that were being up there. By the time it got to be like, dude, I gotta roll, but I gotta rent a couple of trucks, and he's like, oh, you know what, dude, I've had such a good time, like, just take the trucks. All AI does now is help assist us in that relationship building process. In terms of this, I mean, there's tons and tons of things that we can do with AI, but being able to remind us things, you know, you can go in and say, hey, send me a reminder, um, 6 months from now to wish this person a happy half birthday. You can— I mean, this morning, this morning, so this is really funny, I just did this this morning. This is where I say AI is, is important because it can help us. It's not going to replace us in this context in terms of networking and relationship building. So I'm going to do an event. I'm going to do an event here in a little bit. And in the event, I put it up on Facebook and, and LinkedIn. I set up the event, the description, all written by AI based on building relationships. I wrote one for Facebook and then I had it rewrite it for LinkedIn based on the context of those platforms, knowing what it knows about me, knowing what the people that I want to attract It wrote those. Okay, so people go and attend the event. Hey, I'm coming, I'm coming, I'm coming, I'm coming. Well, I know that they probably are just clicking buttons, but if I can send them a personalized private message, my likelihood that they'll actually come to the event goes sky high. So literally this morning I went on, I used AI, I was like, listen, here's a deal. I have a Facebook event, I have a LinkedIn event. Here's the description for both. I need to send these people a private message making sure that they register for the event. And I, and I had it spit me out a bunch of different private messages. I narrowed it down to the top 4. I asked some people in my community which one they liked. They all were almost unanimous. And now that will be the one that I will go in and use to be able to do that. And I have an AI agent that will go in and say, all I have to do is tell it, say, hey, all the people that respond to this event, Can you please go and send them this private message and personalize it with their first name? Now, here's, here's one of the most underutilized tools, in my opinion, is the direct message. Okay. And I'll tell you why, Alex. So let's just go back to— let's just go back to the car rental, the car sales business, right? One way we can remember this today is connect with everybody we meet on Facebook or LinkedIn and then feed the Messenger the information that we want to remember later down the road. So let's say that I'm, I'm selling cars and a gal comes in and she's looking for a red Honda Accord. Okay, I don't even know if they make Honda Accords anymore, but she's looking for a Honda Accord, right? I could go in my Facebook account, connect with her as a friend, then send her a message to say, hey Jane, it was really great talking to you about your red Honda Accord. Um, let me know if there's anything I can help you do, and I'll reach out to you if I find one. Now, what did I do there? I basically put in that messenger that she's looking for a red Honda Accord, not because I really want to like do a recall in the message so she remembers me or whatever. I would also put some message like, let's say we found out that Jane has a couple of kids and those kids play soccer. I'd probably put that in the message. Hey, it's so great to talk to you about your red Honda Accord. I'm sure it's going to be great for, you know, little Johnny and little Susie hauling them to soccer games. Okay, boom. And I leave that. What am I actually doing there? Yes, I'm making her feel good. And yes, all of that. But here's what happens, Alex. When I go back next time to talk to her, I know she's coming in. Now I can go pull her up. Look in that message, scroll up, see what trigger points I said in that little message. So when she comes in, I'm like, hey, how are the kids' soccer teams going? I didn't have to think that. My brain's too full, it's too fried. I'm 54, you know, it's, it's getting slow, slowing down. So I think AI is just in finding the people that are our ideal customer profile, helping them with proposals. Like when I do, when I do a proposal for somebody or I meet somebody I'm going to ask AI, how do I best talk to this person? So you guys, right before we started this, Alex is going to make an introduction to somebody that he thinks would be a good potential client for me or a good potential person for me to know. So as soon as he sends over her name and if he's got her LinkedIn account or whatever, before I ever call her, before I ever meet her, I'm going to run over to AI, right? I'm saying generically because I want you to use whatever tool you're going to use. People always ask me like, What's better, ChatGPT or Claude or Gemini or Perplexity? I'm like, the only one that is valuable is the one you'll actually use.

Alex Nahle [00:28:04]:
That you use, right?

Casey Eberhart [00:28:05]:
It's the only one that matters. That's right. So I just go over and say, hey, my friend Alex is, is giving me this referral. Here's what I know about her, right? And I would put her LinkedIn profile in there, and I would say, hey, you know, he's already told me that she's, she's new to California, she lives down in Orange County, she has kind of this background. He kind of gave me that. I'm like, I put all of that in there. I say, hey, I'm going to go try to meet this gal for coffee. Can you spit me out kind of a dossier on things I should know or be able to ask her about? Boom, it'll spit me out, spit me that out and call it a day. Now here's another idea in my voice, right? Oh, this is one thing like this is kind of cool. If you guys haven't done this yet, this is crazy. I did 2 Facebook posts so you can go do this today. Go do 2 LinkedIn posts or Facebook posts and what you do is you do one and you say, hey, here are 30, 50, 100 things that most people don't know about me, okay? And just jot them down. You know, I go to Al-Anon, I like Bitcoin, um, you know, I, I was a producer on Being John Malkovich, I used to run an amusement park, whatever, you know, I drive a Honda Accord, red, whatever it is, all the things that people may not know about you, just make a post on it. Okay, you're gonna have a bunch of people go, I've been friends with you for 50 years and I didn't know you did that. Then you could go make a post on all the things that you think are cool. I call this the HIP document— hobbies, interests, and passions. Okay, okay. And go in and write down all the things that you're interested in, your hobbies. I love fishing, I'm into Bitcoin, I want to buy a mobile home park, you know, I love ficus trees, I love indoor houseplants. I love canoeing. I, you know, my favorite animal is an elephant and an otter. You know, my secret dream is to ride a llama, whatever it is. And you drop that in, right? Alex, here's the easy thing. Now you take both of those posts, just copy them both, run over to whatever platform you use, ChatGPT or Perplexity or any of those, and just say, post it in there and say, hey, this is all the stuff that I just wrote out about me. Can you please start answering all my questions and start giving me feedback based on all this stuff of what you know about me? And I'm going to refer to it as my memory bank. It will start feeding you back stuff that is far more aligned with how you think and operate, so that when you do this kind of stuff, it'll put it more in your voice, right? So that's an easy— that's an easy win. Win for AI. Being able to go in and say, you know, hey, this is what somebody has said on their Facebook page. Give me a couple of things that I can create instant rapport with this person.

Alex Nahle [00:30:52]:
So, I mean, efficiency is key, right? It's going to help with efficiency. It's going to, you know, the setting up a process and, and so forth. But it's not going to take away that personal touch, right? AI is not going to be able to do that. You, you know, you have to have that face-to-face or, you know, phone call conversation.

Casey Eberhart [00:31:10]:
I, I think we will get to a point— I don't mean to interrupt you, but I think we will get to a point, um, at least in terms of like online lead generation. I believe we will get to a point where— because we're already seeing it, replacing Google when they're going to ChatGPT and say, hey, my air conditioner is broken, how do I fix it? Um, I believe we will get to a point where our AI assistant will talk to a company's AI assistant and jobs will be booked and services will be provided with or without people's interaction. Humans. Yeah, but people still control the money. So if you sell something, you are at some point going to need to— let me rephrase this— unless it's just a product, you know, I need a key fob for my, for my truck, right? I don't need to talk to a human. I don't need to have a relationship with the key fob, but I still need to trust that the key fob is going to arrive. That's where we start to see the human connection. I mean, I truly believe— I mean, you want me to like go down, I can go down a rabbit hole. I won't, but I believe that we are not too far off from having businesses that you pay a premium in order to talk to a human. I can see a day where you go to your local sushi restaurant or you go to, um, you know, your local rib joint, and it's all being done with AI. Your, your food is made AI, um, with robots. Your server, the food is brought out to you, the cash is cashless, all of that jazz. I believe there will be restaurants where you pay a premium in order to be served by a human.

Alex Nahle [00:32:49]:
Sure.

Casey Eberhart [00:32:50]:
I truly believe that we will have a bit— like, someone's going to make a bazillion dollars starting a companion business where all you do is go show up and walk with someone for 20 minutes and listen to them yammer on, because we're— people are pulling further and further away that human connection. And I think using AI and using our brains, we can start to bring that back together. And it just makes deals happen faster. It makes deals actually occur and stick. There's just no real downside to it.

Alex Nahle [00:33:24]:
100%. That's crazy. Yeah, it's definitely evolving. You mentioned about, you know, the tools. Obviously, there's a lot of great tools out there. I don't want to get too deep into it. Can you just, you know, throw out some names, some of the things that you suggest people, you know, for the most part, like you mentioned, the best tool is the one you're using. However, it's obviously a great idea to get exposed to the other tools out there because, you know, some are a little bit different and it depends on what you're using it for. You might get better results from, let's say, ChatGPT versus something else. Can you just, you know, throw out maybe a couple names of things that you feel that are very valuable someone should start with?

Casey Eberhart [00:34:01]:
Yeah. So, so this is what I've seen. So I run a mastermind program. I consult a lot of clients. I've got my fingers in a lot of, in a lot of pies.

Alex Nahle [00:34:11]:
Right?

Casey Eberhart [00:34:12]:
And what I have found in— for most people is they go searching for a tool before they search for a solution, right? So, oh, I'm gonna go to ChatGPT, and I'm like, okay, well, what are you gonna do with ChatGPT? Well, I'm gonna— I'm gonna ask it how to make chicken, right? And there's— they're searching for a tool. And I think what I've— what we found is that if people like create a— know what the problem is or know what the bottleneck is and then find the tool that unhinges that or unlocks that bottleneck, there's a higher likelihood that it's going to be a good fit, right? So I'll give you, I'll give you a couple of examples. Um, there's a tool out there, trythisbuddy.com. That's, that's an affiliate link, so I'll make 25 cents on that, but it's called TubeBuddy.

Alex Nahle [00:35:05]:
Right?

Casey Eberhart [00:35:05]:
And it hooks up to one's YouTube channel, and you can do a whole lot of things with that. If you're doing YouTube videos, it will help you come up with a title, it will help you come up with a description for your own videos. Um, but it was also great for keyword research and research. So instead of going, ah, today I'm going to make a video on 7 different ways, uh, 7 different colors of red on a Honda Accord, right? It will say, hey, listen, here's a bunch of videos that people already did on red Honda Accord, and here's what performed well and here's what didn't. Maybe you should consider doing a video on this, and it will help you create that. So rather than, um, trying to come up with what you want to do a video on, it'll allow you to see what other people are trying and looking for, to what problems they're solving, and give you that as feedback. So that's one, uh, trythisbuddy.com. The other one is, is called Castmagic. And I, I throw these names out also recognizing that that's only what's occurring today. I mean, the thing that we do have to address, Alex, is that I can give you a tool today and tomorrow it's gone. And we're— I mean, we're just moving so fast. I mean, we're in the dot-com era of AI, right? Like, all of us in Los Angeles, we remember like toy.com, like, bought Santa Monica. Um, Snapchat bought Venice, and now they're nowhere to be found, right? So these things change. Stamps.com was like the— I mean, you know, back in the day. So Castmagic is a tool that you can go load your own video in or go find another video that is in your area, your niche expertise, and put it in there, and it will analyze the entire video for you. It'll give you 10 titles to choose from based on the algorithm that YouTube is currently looking for today, right? So it'll give you the, the breakdown of the chapters, it'll give you the transcription, it'll tell you um, what worked and what didn't work. It'll even go so far as to write a newsletter blurb if you're going to send your video out to a newsletter list, what to say. It'll give you the— it can literally create a workshop based on that. It does a ton of stuff. It's like $30 a month, right? I just, uh, I'm just starting to work with another tool called Marbleism, um, where they've got 6 sort of AI agents in there. One of them basically can do blog posts for you at scale. Based on your topic, and you click a button and it's done. But it's done in a way that answers a question that somebody's searching for in answer engines. So you're going to hear SEO and AEO, um, um, answer engine optimization, which is how do you get your stuff to show up in ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, all those things, right? So it's just making things more efficient. You know, those of you that own local businesses, one of the most powerful things that people don't know, don't understand, don't spend any amount of time on is your local Google My Business page. The AI bots and everything is looking at to see, are you relevant? Are you current? Are you continuously updating? So something like Marbleism literally creates content for your Google Business page every single day on autopilot based on what people are already searching for. So I'm, I, I, I'm working with a small gym here in Los Angeles. The more relevant content that they can put on their Google Business page that talks about 'Hey, we're a gym, we're a boutique gym, we're private trainers. Like, pick your music, pick your, pick your temperature, come in, it's clean equipment.' The more we can create that environment on their Google page, then it starts to get picked up in answers. So there's just a ton of tools. There are also a couple of things like Galaxy, um, galaxy.ai, I believe it is, where there's 4,000 AI agents or tools inside this one dashboard. It's cheap. It's like $400 for lifetime access or something. I don't even know. But I use it every day and I don't go in looking for a— looking for a tool. I go in looking to solve a problem. So my recommendation for you guys is to write out what the problems are, write out what the bottlenecks are in your business. What are your constraints? I don't know what investors are looking for in cash returns. I don't know what I don't know how to create a proposal to an investor to throw cash in a deal. I need to find cash buyers. I need to find deal, whatever, whatever the problems are. Then let's go search for the tool that solves that problem rather than just like willy-nilly, because you're just going to like spend a bunch of time like bumbling around and then you're going to go down like 97 rabbit holes of, you know, oh, well, I didn't know this can find me a date. You know, um, so you're off track from what you originally went on for. Yeah, I mean, I, I went in to try to study the, you know, what cryptocurrency is going to help me get to my wealth goal, and pretty soon I'm talking about, you know, what fertilizer is best for a ficus tree in Oregon, you know, in a non-lit office room, right? Yeah, just, just to throw this out there for you guys, like thinking this out loud, you can use those things when it starts to learn about you. Like, turn the settings off so it doesn't push all your content or all your information into the, into the system. But you can use this as a personal therapist, you could use it as a business therapist, you know. I mean, we have a lot of clients that are using it as almost like a business coach, but it's just spitting out data. One thing you can do is like, great, give me 30 things I can do in under 10 minutes. Um, in small bite-sized pieces, but then take those to a live business coach. So we have, you know, we have our top, our like kind of higher-end clients. What they'll do is they go figure that stuff out, and then they come to me, for example, and they'll say, hey, what do you think about this? How does this plan? Because, because we have a better big picture than just a tool that's going to spit out like, go get a review today, go post something on your, your social media, take your social media post from a week ago and make sure I post it on Google Your Business page. You know, you'll get more juice out of doing a post on Google My Business than you will on Facebook. So for those of you that have local businesses and you have your Google pages, number one recommendation I would give for you, if you don't want to use a tool like Marbleism or something like that, before you post on Facebook, go make the same post on your Google Business page, then go make it on Facebook. Facebook, it loses valuable value in 2 days. And Google My Business, it will increase value 2 days.

Alex Nahle [00:41:29]:
Wow, wow, that's a great, great point. And you mentioned Marvelism or Marbleism?

Casey Eberhart [00:41:34]:
Marbleism. It's brand new, it's glitchy, it's, um, we're just getting it set up. So if you were to talk to me in a couple of weeks, I'll probably have a different viewpoint. But look, there are a bunch of tools. Um, again, you can go to ChatGPT, go to the free version if you've never used AI before, go to ChatGPT and say Hey, I have this problem. I'm a real estate investor. I keep having the problem where I have a bunch of, a bunch of deals come across my desk that I think are really valuable. I don't have any, any capital investors. Hey, here's what I'm about. Here's where I go to church. Here about my kids. I coach soccer. You know, I don't coach soccer like Alex does, but like, you know, here's what I'm about. Now, can you spit me out either a tool or a place you think I ought to go that I can hobnob and work with people that might have money might be willing to invest, and, um, we are aligned a little bit in our core value system. Boom, right? Because look, as investors, Alex, like, let's, let's just, let's just break this down. Very rarely, if somebody doesn't like you, are they still going to do a deal with you.

Alex Nahle [00:42:41]:
Sure.

Casey Eberhart [00:42:42]:
So if we, if we know, like, like, I don't want to open up this whole can of worms, but I think it's a valuable at least couple of second conversation, and that is that In the real estate world, I had a real estate really high influencer ask a question to a room once, like, as a real estate investor, who controls your portfolio? And everybody was saying like the investors, the deals, that this— it's actually the underwriters. It's the people that make the decision whether the cash flows, right? Yeah. Well, if we know that, why can't we have our own personal underwriting criteria in order to do deals or work with people? I don't work with people that are racist. I just don't. I don't work with people that are sexist. I just don't. I don't work with people that are homophobic. I just don't. And so what happens is when you can get that set of core values down for yourself, well, it's kind of easy then to let kind of that document do a little bit of the heavy lifting, right? So let's say I say I don't, I don't work with people that are, that are, are, you know, mean or racist or, or something like that, right? I'm just making this up. And let's say then Alex gives me this referral partner and he gives me all that referral partner stuff, and I go and I say, hey, here's everything I know about this person, can you spit me back whether you think I'd be a good fit for this person? Yeah. And AI comes back and says, hey, you might want to steer clear because they're a head of a racist organization based on blah blah blah. Well, I already know that that deal is not going to work. I'm not going to spend the time, energy, and money. I'm going to say, Alex, thank you so much. This is awesome. I'll probably give her a little bit of time or him a little bit of time and say, hey, I'm probably not the best fit. Let me see if I can find you somebody else.

Alex Nahle [00:44:28]:
Absolutely. No, absolutely. That's the way— that's the way it should be. And even like when you're investing in real estate is like you don't just go looking at properties randomly. You have to know your buy box, right? You create that buy box. That's your underwriting criteria. And then you go based on that. As long as you don't get off track, then you should be fine.

Casey Eberhart [00:44:44]:
Alex, just to say, just to say that for a second, because a lot of people do that exercise, they'll find their buy box and then they only focus in that buy box. And what I would recommend is consider you've got your buy box and you don't deviate from that buy box. I have a buy box. It's very clearly defined, but I also position myself as a real estate investing resource so that if Alex comes to me and says, Hey, Case, I've got this. I want to buy an abandoned church in Texas and I'm going to turn it into an arcade. Not in my buy box, but I can say, hey, that's really awesome. Let me go over here and see if there's anybody else over here that I could match you with that this would be a better fit for. And maybe I can work myself into taking a tiny slice out of that deal. Yeah, right. So, so, so I would say you guys come up with your buy box, no problem, or your investing box. You know, I've got one guy that'll invest in everything seedy. I've got another guy that will only invest in everything wholesome, knowing that investor's appetite for what they want. And then look, at the end of the day, this is actually a really simple solution: deliver and take a sliver. Deliver what somebody wants and take a sliver of the deal, whatever it is.

Alex Nahle [00:45:53]:
So have your buy box and know other people's buy box as well. 100%. Yeah. So this is awesome. You know, I want to be respectful to your time. So we clearly now understand, you know, the importance of networking and relationships in growing a business. And maintaining the relationships and making people feel good. And then how we can incorporate AI into all of this by not replacing us, by being more efficient, being more productive and scaling and still have, you know, a significant part of the transaction as humans. So Casey, you know, again, I want to truly, truly thank you. You've really impacted, you know, me personally and my business and I know many others as well. And, you know, like you mentioned, you know, you have a community. I'm part of that community. I'm grateful to be a part of that community and to collaborate with a lot of awesome, you know, high-level business owners in different industries. So it's truly a great, great opportunity. You've inspired me about networking, you know, when we met, and from there, you know, I launched my networking events, the podcast, and all that. So I really thank you for, you know, everything that, you know, we're doing in our business and your guidance and support. With that said, you know, if someone wants to connect with you, learn more about your community, how they can, you know, possibly join that community. What is the best way? And we can put that in the, in the comment section below as well for you guys to be able to have access to it. But what's the best way for someone to reach you?

Casey Eberhart [00:47:16]:
Easiest thing is I'm on all the socials. That's one thing. But, um, go to powernetworkingtips.com. It's a free, it's a free PDF. I just wrote out like 120 like easy, quick things that you can do to build better relationships and be a little bit more strategic when you go into an event. I mean, things like you go into an event, if you've got a speaker in the room, go buy 3 copies of their book, have them go sign it before the event starts— one to them, one to you, one to your top client— and then have them sign one and donate it to the organization, let them raffle it off. 9 times out of 10, the speaker is going to highlight you from the front of the room. It's things like that that you can do, like, that are pretty easy, very tactile or tactical things and strategy you can do. But Alex, even more importantly than that I just need to take a second and take a step back and recognize you and your team for what you do and what you've brought to, you know, really kind of the whole world and your community. I mean, you are a dad, a coach, a mentor, an investor, a real estate broker. You've built an amazing community around you by just taking the stance that people matter. And because you've taken that stance, there are so many people that fall all over themselves to get into your space, into your ecosystem, whether it's coming to your live events, whether it's listening to your podcast, whether it's reading your books, whether it's— whether it's just getting in here, investing with you. I just want to be able to recognize you for what you've done and what you bring to the community at large. It's absolutely awesome. And I couldn't be more thrilled and honored to have you in, to have you in my space and our space. So yeah, you guys, listen, here's the deal. When Alex is doing an event, jump in it, get in his community, get in his ecosystem, figure out how you can play a part. He's got a great group of people, a great group of friends, investors, and dealmakers that you deserve to be a part of. But yeah, if you want to connect with me, I'm on the socials. I highly recommend everybody go grab the powernetworkingtips.com like PDF. It's super easy. There's no big sales pitch, there's no upsell afterwards or anything like that. It's just my way of sort of saying like, hey, if you need some help turning relationships, um, into actually like profit and deals and actually make stuff happen, um, and you're frustrated and you go and you're like, I'm shaking a lot of hands and maybe getting some business cards or maybe not getting business cards, like there's a better way on purpose and with intention. And it kind of just starts with this list. It's like 120 different things I literally printed it off. I have a set in my car, uh, my truck I should say. But, uh, so literally before I go into an event, I literally scan it and read it. You can read it in about 2 minutes and it just sets you in a different mindset when you go into an event. So Alex, I so appreciate having you ask me to be on it. Like, this has been awesome.

Alex Nahle [00:50:06]:
I really appreciate you as well. It's a true inspiration. Thank you so much for the kind words. Thank you for everything you've done again for my business and for everyone else out there in the community. I'm so excited to be able to, you know, first off record this and share this with everyone because every time, you know, we get on a call, whether it's one-on-one or a group call, there's always amazing golden nuggets. So I hope you guys enjoy this. Thanks again, Casey, for being here. And until next time, we'll see you.

Casey Eberhart [00:50:33]:
Awesome. Thanks, guys.

Alex Nahle [00:50:35]:
Thank you all for joining us on the BRRRR Investor Podcast. If you found today's episode helpful, please hit like and subscribe to our channel for more real estate insights. We love hearing from you, so please leave your thoughts, questions, or topics you'd like us to cover in the comment section below. Be sure to check out our website, thebrrrrinvestor.com, and follow us on social media @thebrrrrinvestor. Keep learning and investing, and we'll see you in the next episode. I'm your host, Alex Nahle. Stay invested.