How Yonah Weiss Helped Investors Save Over $1 Billion in Taxes - EP02

 In this episode of The Wealth Clock with Steven Weinstock, I sit down with Yonah Weiss, Director at Madison Specs and the host of the Weiss Advice podcast. Yonah is widely known for helping real estate investors unlock massive tax savings through cost segregation and bonus depreciation.

We talk about:
 • What cost segregation really means
 • How bonus depreciation supercharges investor returns
 • Yonah’s journey from educator to tax-saving powerhouse
 • His approach to building a dominant personal brand on LinkedIn

If you're a real estate investor or just want to keep more of your money at tax time, this episode is for you.

🎙 About Steven Weinstock
Steven Weinstock is a real estate investor and founder of WeCapital and the Goethals Capital Fund. Since 2001, he has built a diverse portfolio of residential and multifamily assets while helping investors access passive income through strategic real estate opportunities. On this podcast, he shares real-world insights on investing, capital raising, and what it really takes to build and scale in today’s market.

📩 Want to invest or get in touch?
Visit: www.WeCapitalX.com

📱 Connect with Steven:
LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/stevenweinstock1

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/wecapitalx/
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@TheWealthClockPodcast

Transcript

Steven M Weinstock: 0:00

Welcome to the Wealth Clock with Weinstock, where time tactics, how performers intersect. I'm your host, Steven Weinstock. Today's guest is a name that's synonymous with tax savings. Yonah Weiss is the business director at Madison Specs, a national leader in costs segregation. Yonah has helped property owners save over a billion dollars in taxes. He brings a background in education, a passion for real estate. A deep commitment to helping others. He's also a real estate investor himself and the host of the popular Weiss Advice podcast in this episode will break down how cost segregation and bonus depreciation work, how investors can maximize tax savings, and how Y has built a powerful personal brand using LinkedIn and social media. Let's get into it. Still a little background. You've been called a powerhouse when it comes to saving investors money and taxes. I've seen it myself. I've used your company. How'd you first get into cost segregation?

Yonah weiss: 1:08

As you mentioned, I have a background in education. I was teaching for many years and really conation came out of the blue. I had gotten into real estate about 10 years ago. And spent a few years doing random things, just getting my feet wet and learning so many different aspects of the commercial real estate industry from doing brokering mortgages to commercial mortgages, hard money lending. Did a few fix and flips, got my broker's license, was doing residential brokerage, and really just wanna learn everything there was and. What really happened was networking and meeting people and getting connections, connecting and connecting with others in the industry, and Conservation. Madison, they were looking for some of the business development at the time. I was open to an opportunity and really just, I call it divine providence. Call cost segmeet, met. Someone happened to say, why don't you give this company Madison a call? I met with them and it was like a perfect match. And the truth of the matter is I had no idea, even though I had been in real estate for a few years already, I had no idea what cost segregation was at the time. This is going back about eight years. That, to me, it was a huge surprise, but very quickly I learned that by asking everyone that I knew was continuing the networking, asking people, Hey, what do you know about this cost segregation thing? I quickly learned that. Almost nobody that I spoke to in the real estate world even had any idea what this was. So it was, it, a very quick light bulb moment for me was like, wait a second. The intersection between knowledge and action is lacking over here because the only reason I saw for most people, they weren't doing it was similar. They didn't even know what it was or how it worked.

Steven M Weinstock: 3:01

Yeah, Yonah, when I first started, I'm doing this since 2001. I did not know any of this. Probably for the first 10, 12 years. Really, when I started doing some larger projects that came into focus, I had no clue. I always knew we could save money on taxes, but I did not know anything about the cost. Aggregation bonus. Depreciation is something else, but yeah, it's tremendous how so many real estate investors don't know anything about this. You have a teaching background. Tell us about that and how has that shaped your, how has it shaped your communication style with your clients and the social media?

Yonah weiss: 3:42

It certainly shaped it because it. Everything that I do is really teaching, to be honest. Whether it be through social media, whether it be doing podcasts like this, webinars speaking, public speaking, things like that. It's all teaching. And the truth of the matter is when I got into the whole cost segregation thing, having this background teaching, and as I mentioned for about 15 years I was teaching, but the truth of the matter is, even before that, ever since I was young, a kid, like I was always helping others. I was always like doing tutoring and. My grandparents were both teachers, school teachers, and so it was funny, my, my grandmother always used to say, oh, you went into the family business being a teacher. And so yeah, it comes through for sure, because when you're talking about complicated topics, especially with taxes, most people they hear tax stuff and like their brain shuts off. It's I have an accountant, I have a CPA, they deal with that. I don't need to know any of this. But in real estate, you actually do, because being proactive. Is really the key to saving more money. And so you need to know about this stuff. You don't need to know like everything there is. But being a teacher, I can understand and appreciate the fact that this is boring stuff and if I can make it more fun or more interesting and it helps people understand it, even on a very simple level, then it will help them significantly in their lives and their finances and their wealth building because that's really what the key is all about and I love it. So yeah, it's definitely helped. It's definitely shaped the way that I communicate. But to be honest, social media itself and using it in LinkedIn, posting daily for like I've been doing for seven years now has actually helped even more because just learning how to communicate the right thing in the right number of words. And there used to be like a word count limit. There still is, but it's almost an insignificant, it used to be 1300 characters. It's going back like about, I think they changed it about four or five years ago. But he used me 1300 characters, which you would think, oh, that's not that. You can get a lot across in 1300 characters, but you learn very quickly that you write like a paragraph or two and it's already done, and you have to shorten your words, you have to shorten your sentences, you have to get your point across more succinctly. And that has really helped as well.

Steven M Weinstock: 5:52

Yeah, no, I'm new to LinkedIn. I've been, I've had the account for quite some time, but only really started focusing on it for the past few months. I did not know about the character limit and I. I don't know how I would deal with that at this time, but that'd be very creative. Back when it was a 1300 character limit,

Yonah weiss: 6:09

all, never never put punctuation. There's no need for a period at the end of a sentence. It's just an extra character.

Steven M Weinstock: 6:16

Yeah. You mentioned CPA and accountants. Yeah. I've come across CPAs and accountants that really didn't know much about cost seg. I really had to. Educate them myself, or I've had to have whoever I was dealing with, educate them on my behalf or really just get them the paperwork and they plug it in and they guys make it very easy where you could just hand over the paperwork to the CPA. They plug it in and they take care of the rest. Yeah, hopefully. Yeah, hopefully. Exactly. You've helped property owners save over a billion dollars. Is there a specific story or a success that stands out?

Yonah weiss: 6:53

There's not a specific story I would say that stands out. It's just so many over the years, just one on top of the other, meeting people and having those connections. There are, like I said, there's not one specific, there are hundreds of specific stories, but one of the things that I think stands out the most to me is when you have people who are, and this happened several times where it literally changes like the course. Of their family direction and their life through just the tax savings. I'll say one story without specific names. There was a couple who had do, been started investing in short-term rentals, which is a very popular and had been a very popular asset class. And specifically for busy professionals who are not full-time real estate investors. There's something called the short-term rental loophole, and it really allows someone to be able to use the maximum benefit of cost s and bonus depreciation. Without having to be full-time real estate. So this couple, they were both living in Northern California high, very high taxes, obviously California, extremely high taxes. They were both medical professionals to busy physicians and they picked up a couple short-term rentals. I think at the time they had just bought their third and they were self-managing them and they learned as a whole course how you can learn how to self-manage your properties. And it was not constantly, almost spending a lot of time in actually doing the management. And they realized by doing the cost egg. On these three properties and saving literally hundreds of thousands of dollars in taxes. They realized that if one of them retired and just spent the time managing their properties, which literally was only a few hours a week, they would be making more money after taxes on one salary and the real estate income, plus the tax savings that come along with it. Because of conservation. So they were literally able to change their entire family lifestyle and structure. The one of them retired, was able to spend more time with their kids, et cetera. And it literally was, that to me is the most impactful thing.

Steven M Weinstock: 9:00

Wow. Yeah. These stories are great people. I think real estate is just mailbox money, and it's not that it's totally passive, but it really just gives you free time, freedom of time. There are plenty of times I can go to events in my kids' school without an issue. Yes, there'll be certain times and certain days I have to be there for an inspection or whatever it is, or hopefully a closing, but it really gives me a lot of free time and I wish more people saw that. Let's go back a second. Let's break it down. I guess simply, what is cross segregation and why should a real estate investor care about it?

Yonah weiss: 9:37

Yeah, it's a really weird name. But essentially what it is, a income tax savings strategy. Okay. And I think of it like a cash flow mechanism because what it does, it allows investors to save more money on their taxes during the earlier years of ownership. So essentially how cost segregation works, it's an advanced form of depreciation. Okay, so let's take a step back and explain what depreciation is. Some people may know what that is, but most people think that it's something negative, right? Something's going down in value. Depreciating, really, it's just a borrowed term. It's the name of a tax deduction that anytime you buy real estate, any property besides your primary residence, the IRS gives you an allowance to take a deduction as if the property were going down in value every year. So you're able to take a small amount, and for residential properties, it's over a 27 and a half year time span. For commercial properties, it's a 39 year schedule, but that's a long time to wait to take all those deductions. Essentially, you're taking like a two to 3% deduction of your property value every single year, and it is completely subjective to you as the property owner because that amount you can take as a deduction starts over when you buy the property or when you place it in service, when you build it. It's not intrinsic to the property at all. You may buy a property that was built in 1924. You get to start depreciating it as if it was brand new, so to speak, today and when you buy the property. And so that's what depreciation is. So again, it allows you to take a deduction every single year. And don't get me wrong, that in of itself is huge because just taking a deduction lowers your income tax liability right off the bat. Cost segregation is a method in engineering. Method of breaking down the property into its components and showing how certain components within the property actually depreciate at certain faster rates or faster schedules, allowing you to take the deduction of the value of those components at a faster rate. So simply put, it used to be called component depreciation, which makes a lot more sense because essentially you're saying, okay, the flooring and the cabinets and the appliances and furniture, all that stuff actually depreciates on a five year schedule. I can take that value. As deduction as a write off over a five year period, which is much faster than that 27 years. So that's huge. Conservation essentially, like I said, allows you to get those bigger deductions during the earlier years, creating more cash flow, allowing you to reinvest that money instead of paying Uncle Sam.

Steven M Weinstock: 12:00

Are there certain types of properties or sizes where a cost s is more beneficial?

Yonah weiss: 12:06

Absolutely. Yeah, it is. There are certain types of properties where it's more beneficial. There's certain sizes where it's more beneficial. Typically any property purchase, and sometimes this is a little bit of a mind blowing moment for people that really, property for purchase for over $200,000 already makes sense to do a cost segregation. Some people will think, oh, I thought it was only for a huge $10 million buildings. No, it's actually extremely beneficial no matter how big it's, so when you get to lower cost basis, then that it still can make sense, but less sense because there is a cost involved in actually getting the study done and the after-tax benefits aren't as much. So that in terms of size is where the, starting from my kind of rule of thumb, the starting place is properties that size. And again, it doesn't matter if it's a single family, if it's a multi-family storage office, industrial. Some of the ones that make more sense in terms of property types, multifamily can be great. Typically, we're looking at about a 25% reclassification, which means that once we take off a certain amount for land from our purchase price, we're able to take about 25% of what's left as faster depreciation. So you can get a huge amount a tax write-off in that first year. So that's typically for multifamily Self storage, as I mentioned, is a great asset class too, as well, can get up to 30% of that reclassification. Industrial is usually gonna be on the lower end logistic centers and things like that, but just because there's really not a lot there. You think about it inside the property, it's not much personal property. There's not a lot of stuff that is non-structural. And then on the higher end, you have properties like types like RV parks or mobile home parks and golf courses, which are almost entirely land improvements. So land itself, as I said, does not depreciate, but what's on top of the land does. And when you buy a property. The way we're looking at it is we're showing how essentially the purchase price has to be reverse engineered and everything that's in the property add back up to that purchase price. When you buy a mobile home park that there's no structure essentially and all, you have some land that doesn't count, but then you have the concrete, you have the pavement, you have landscaping, fencing. All of those things are considered 15 year property, which is land improvements, and that's eligible for bonus depreciation. So you can get literally. Up to 80% of the property value in those faster depreciation categories. So it's huge.

Steven M Weinstock: 14:24

So tell me if I have this right and somebody explained it to me this way and they we're gonna deal with a round number here. Tell me, we'll break it down for the audience as well. Figure a property is a million dollars. They figure the land itself is worth 400,000 and the building itself is worth 600,000. So the 400,000 is not. It doesn't depreciate at all. And now we're talking about the 600,000. So that 600,000, depending on the type of property, could depreciate typically over a 27 and a half year period if it's residential. And then, what'd you say? A 35 year period if it's commercial and even residential is not all the same. And the reason I say that is I was, I typically deal in garden style apartments. Which means two stories and multiple buildings on the property. Lots of roof. And I was talking to, in full disclosure, I deal with Madison as well, and I was talking to my guy over there and he assumed I was talking about a garden style, which is typically what I deal with, but I happened to be talking about a high rise. He mentioned that the high rise would depreciate a little less, and I asked him why, and he said basically it's, there's less rooms, there's less items. In there, and is that correct?

Yonah weiss: 15:39

The real reason why a high rise is gonna have less depreciation benefit for cost sake than a garden style? The main reason is because of the land improvements, because in a Tibble garden style apartment, you're gonna have walkways, you're gonna have landscaping, you're gonna have a swimming pool, things like that. Amenities outside the property and all of that. As I mentioned, the concrete, the parking lot, all that stuff. Is depreciable over that 15 year period and typically for garden style apartments, you can get up to 10% of the total value of the property is in those land improvements. When you deal with a high rise, you basically have the sidewalk and the street and that's it. And so there's almost nothing in that land improvement category, which cuts out almost a huge amount of the constant benefit.

Steven M Weinstock: 16:22

Alright. Can you walk us through the actual process from the moment someone reaches out to the final study, they see you on a podcast, maybe this one. They say, I own some property. I'm paying too much to Uncle Sam. I don't like it. I wanna save some What? What's the process?

Yonah weiss: 16:40

Very simple, straightforward process. We always run a free. Upfront analysis and estimate so you can see ahead of time what the potential tax savings would be. You reach out, I have a form you can fill out, get that information. It takes about a day or so just to turn around those numbers. I love to get on calls with people just to explain it, but again, my background to teaching, I just enjoy it. It's what, how I spend my days and so people will put time on my calendar and we will, we'll walk through it and through that answer most questions that people have through that, and then the process itself of getting the cost sake done. Is extremely simple. There's essentially three steps. Okay? First thing is we're gonna collect some documentation. We're gonna look for your closing statement for the, because this is done for your taxes and is gonna be filed with your tax return. Everything. The IRS has very specific rules of how it needs to be done and specific documentation that needs to be collected and verified and things like that. So we'll need the closing statement to verify you, the property owner actually own this property, right? It's the same address that you say it was. It was purchased for the same amount that you say it was. And we will look at the appraisal because that will also confirm basic facts about the property, et cetera. And then the second step is scheduling a site visit for the property. Because I. The whole, the main process of the costing is having an engineer who is qualified in understanding construction engineering and the tax code and breaks down the property by taking pictures, videos, walking through measurements, et cetera. Nowadays, a lot of that is done virtually. We can actually have our engineers get on a video call with someone on site with a property manager or someone like that. In many cases, we still need to do a an in-person site visit, which, you know, for larger commercial properties and things like that. But regardless, that step that collects all the information, then we come back on our end. It takes about three weeks or so to turn around a very detailed report. It's about 80, 90 pages long, typically. Then you just hand that off to your CPA, like you mentioned. Hopefully they can just take CPA can take that and just copy and paste your new depreciation, schedule those numbers directly into your tax return. And then we're here. We have a full team of CPAs on staff. We're not an accounting company. We don't do any tax filing or anything like that, but we have a team of CPAs who are reviewing everything as well as liaising between your accountant if they have questions and you wanna understand things further. And that's pretty much it.

Steven M Weinstock: 19:04

Yeah, the process was super simple. The few times I did it, and like you said, I submitted the paperwork and my property manager who was boots on the ground outta state, this was in Kentucky, and they walked around with a tablet or a Zoom type of call or some sort of a video chat, and I'm not sure exactly how long it took, but it was definitely super simple for me as the owner and. I'll tell you the pricing wasn't too bad either. Some people might think, and you could talk about this, you're saving hundreds of thousands of dollars. What is the typical price for this study? Is it a piece of the action? Is it a percentage of what this owner's gonna save? How do you guys price it out?

Yonah weiss: 19:47

Yeah. We're never allowed to take a percentage or a piece, because obviously that would be. In cahoots, the IRS does not allow that.'cause hey, we're gonna say you're gonna save a million bucks and we're gonna take 10% of that, right? No, it doesn't work like that, unfortunately. Fortunately, I guess for the property owner, we have a very fixed standard fee structure, and since we're the biggest national company that does this, we're pretty competitive on the pricing as well. We can afford to do that nowadays. I guess the time of the recording in 2025. I'd say for the smaller properties, single families, the starting point is around $3,000. That's like the lowest we can possibly go for larger multi-family commercial properties, it's typically in the five to six, $7,000 range, depending again on the size and scope of work in that property. And then you may get some larger commercial office towers and shopping malls and things like that make up to 10,000. But typically it's very rare to find properties that are above that. Like you said, if you're saving hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars on a property to spend. A few thousand dollars is insignificant. Now, I will say that this is one of the biggest misconceptions about cost segregation is that my accountant said it's gonna cost me $30,000 to get this done. And unfortunately, it's just, maybe that was the case 15, 20 years ago when costing was in, in its infancy. But, and the main accounting firms were really doing it in-house, but nowadays it's not, it's very competitive.

Steven M Weinstock: 21:08

Yeah, I did, just to give an example, it was 140 something unit. And I believe my bill was somewhere in the six, mid 6,000 range. And obviously we saved a lot more than that. You guys make it really super simple, and I guess because of tech, and like you said, the Zoom, the costs are able to be reduced since things are a lot easier. When does cost said not make sense? Any scenario where you'd advise against it?

Yonah weiss: 21:35

Absolutely. Yeah. It's an amazing tax strategy, but it's not for everyone and not for every type of property. I already mentioned one thing that if it's a lower basis, like if you're buying a property, small, single families or whatever, from under 200,000, typically doesn't make sense. But more importantly, it's the individual because the way that tax rules work is that only certain people can maximize the benefit of the cas because the way that income is taxed is differently for real estate. And I'll break it down like this very simply. If you have a W2 or 10 99, you're gonna be taxed at your ordinary income tax rate. That's called active income. That's on your Schedule C real estate. Any money you're making from any properties, whether it be a passive investment or an active property that you own, that's called passive income. And the IRS defines it that way. It doesn't mean that it's passive per se, it's just how they define it. And so that's gonna be on your Schedule E, and it's gonna be treated differently, which means that depreciation and cost saving and bonus depreciation are getting a lot of it. Is only able to be used to offset that second category, that passive income. Okay? And there are a few exceptions to that rule, but typically speaking, if you are a W2 and you're thinking about, and you're hearing on the internet or TikTok or whatever, that you're gonna buy real estate and pay no taxes, unfortunately that's usually not the case because you're gonna have that limitation. You can only use the depreciation to offset your property or your rental or your real estate income. However, there is something called the real estate professional status, which means if you or your spouse, and this is probably the most important part of it, because only one of you or your spouse needs to be a full-time in the real estate business. That means whether you're managing properties or you're brokering or building, whatever it is, anything that's in the real estate world and that's your full-time job and you have a minimum of what's called 750 hours of material participation, you're right, you have to spend a certain amount of time every single year. Doing that basically allows you then to use any source of income to be offset by that depreciation. And so that's where costing is gonna make sense when you're, when you are a real estate professional or your spouses, and then you can then use those deductions to offset other sources of income as well. Now, don't get me wrong, real estate in of it itself, even if you're investing passively has with it. That great tax advantage that you're essentially not paying any taxes during the life of ownership of your investment because of its depreciation and especially if ation is involved. So it can still be extremely beneficial, just not able to maximize it. As I mentioned, there are a couple other exceptions to the rule that I mentioned earlier. Briefly, the short term rental loophole, which allows you to, even if you're not a real estate professional, to use the income to offset your active income by doing a short-term rental. That's in terms of the person. There's a couple things in terms of the entity or things like that. For example, if, where it wouldn't make sense to do costing. For example, if you're investing through a retirement account. Now retirement accounts typically are tax shelters into themselves and you're not able to use depreciation in a property or in an investment that's within a tax shelter. It just, you cancels one another out. And then finally, if you're planning on selling a property within, I'd say a year or two of buying it. Typically it's less beneficial to do a cost egg simply because when you sell a property, you're gonna be subject to what's called depreciation recapture tax, which albeit there are ways to offset that or defer that. It's going to reduce or limit the time value of money that typically you would have by doing a cost ation study. So I wouldn't cancel it out entirely, but those are gonna be the main cases where I would advise against doing a cost.

Steven M Weinstock: 25:15

I have some investors that invest with me and they're using self-directed IRAs or self-directed four Ks, and they could care less about depreciation. They're not paying taxes anyways on these accounts. But I do raise funds from investors on a regular basis, and I do have a lot of investors who are not even so concerned in the deal that I'm raising for. They want to hear about the potential. Cost said, how much could I offer them? Could I give them any extra, could I give them a peace of mind? As a real estate investor, and I'm invested in a lot of, I'm an owner of a lot of deals. I don't necessarily need all my deductions. And I guess you could speak to this, but apparently I'm able to give away some of my, some of mine, or I'm able to offer some of my LPs a little extra. And if I'm offering all my investors x. This investor might come to me and say, I don't need X. I'll take less than X, but I want more depreciation. Because I'm a big W2 guy, or I'm paying a lot of taxes this year and I wanna save some. I guess for GPS and fund managers who are raising capital, how should, how can we explain the tax benefits of the Quest seg, potential LPs, lender partners? Yeah.

Yonah weiss: 26:32

The first thing I would always look at is, I'm always wary of that because perhaps they're getting bad advice in the first place with regards to whether or not they can use the depreciation. As I mentioned earlier, if they are or not real estate professional or their spouse is not, but we'll leave that aside. That's for them and their tax advisors to use. This is not legal or tax advice whatsoever, so obviously check with your attorney or your tax professional before doing anything. Just a disclaimer there. You mentioned about allocating or giving away certain percentage, there is a way to do it. However, it's, it is a little complicated and it's not standard practice. I would say there is a way to create, in your operating agreement from the beginning, a way to essentially give different classes of investors different incentives or different shares of ownership and therefore different ways of being paid. And so the, yeah, it, like I said, it is a very legal thing. It has to be done properly and written up. Properly. But simply put, I've invested in many deals as an LP as well, and there are oftentimes different classes of not Class A investor is gonna get a 10% preferred return, and Class B investor is gonna get 8% preferred return, and that has a lot to do sometimes with the amount of money being put in, right? If you invest over a million dollars, you're gonna get Class A if you invest over 500, right? It's gonna be class B, whatever it is. But another way to do it is if you have investors coming in through retirement accounts, or you have investors who are coming in that they don't need the big cash flow, they don't need the big preferred return, and you can allocate one class of investors, that they're gonna get a higher percentage of the depreciation. And I mentioned the retirement accounts. That's a great example as well, because if they don't need the depreciation as well, you can put them and basically write them into a different class of investors where. They're maybe gonna be getting more cash flow, right? Or more preferred return. But no depreciation is gonna be allocated to them, to that class of investors, and therefore you're gonna have more to allocate to someone else who may need it.

Steven M Weinstock: 28:30

Got it. So basically ask your local account for advice. Yonahs giving you his disclaimer over here, which makes sense. Let me pivot. Before you mentioned you've been on LinkedIn for a while and you're very popular online. I've seen you on multiple podcasts. You have your own podcasts. You built a huge following on LinkedIn and some other platforms. How did that all start? Like how'd you know that's the way to do it? Tell us a little about that. As somebody who's trying to, on a personal level, trying to increase his online profile and some others listening as well. Tell us some of the secrets, the secret sauce.

Yonah weiss: 29:08

I've been doing it, like I said, for about seven years, pretty consistently. But before that, I had no social media presence whatsoever. I had a LinkedIn account for probably 10 years prior to that just because that's what everyone did. You had you and you connected with your people you went to college with or people that you knew, and that was pretty much it. You had 127 connections and you knew every single person, like personally, who you were connected with. When I started in the cae, and actually a little bit prior to that, when I was doing hard money loans. I had, but more so when I got into the cost seg and I was doing business development, and so in sales essentially, and so what you are doing is you're researching people, right? You have maybe a lead, someone bought an apartment building and you're like, I wanna reach out to this person. Let me make sure I have a name, a number, let me Google them. That's what you do when you wanna find out about someone. You Google their name. Okay? Maybe now you asked chat Chief T, or whatever, seven years ago, you put their name into Google and Lo Andhold LinkedIn. Was coming up as the first or second result in Google every single time that I put in someone's name and research person, because I wanted to make sure cold calling was never my thing. And so it was always, I wanted to get to know someone to have some sort of connection or know who they are, at least before just kinda randomly calling them. And so I stumbled upon LinkedIn by accident because I was looking. For people and LinkedIn kept coming up. I logged into LinkedIn, found their other name and accurate, and then I hit the home button or the home feed or whatever it was. And this was, like I said, about seven years ago, shortly after, or maybe eight years ago at this point, shortly after Microsoft had acquired LinkedIn and it was pivoting to being less of just a place to post your resume and more of to a social networking platform. So I logged in. I saw people doing little short video clips and people posting all kinds of sales tips and advice, and that's where I first came across Gary Vaynerchuk, Gary V, and all of his tips and things like that and stuff that started resonating me. And I kept, meeting people and listening to podcasts and all kinds of stuff like that, and all through LinkedIn. So very quickly I saw someone had put out this 30 day. Challenge 30 day LinkedIn challenge, and it no longer exists, but it was this very beautifully set up system where essentially you have 30 days to post original content and this taught you every single day a new kind of lesson of how to use social media, what to write, different styles, different, et cetera. And you'd have a short little video clip and a little tutorial and you have to post something. And it was basically like an accountability thing. And I saw some people doing this and I was like. That's weird, but you know what? Let me try it. And so I just started posting it about Cosec because I knew people didn't know about it. And I started getting likes. I started getting people reaching out and slowly but surely I was learning how to use this platform, how to use social media. And it started to snowball and became bigger. And it started getting more involved in the real estate world through BiggerPockets, through podcasting and things like that. And so it. Took off. But yeah, there's a lot I can say about the platform and then it's spun off until all the other social platforms as well from there. But it all started with LinkedIn and still is my most preferred and active platform to this day.

Steven M Weinstock: 32:28

What's your strategy when it comes to creating content? Do you have a plan? Do you just think from the heart is a little mixture of both. I'm curious to hear what you have to say.

Yonah weiss: 32:39

It's a mixture of a lot of things. The main thing is to add value, right? And that can be very vague. What does that mean? Add value? But essentially what you want to do is you want to come through authentic. You wanna come through yourself. Every single person out there, you have something, some knowledge, some skillset that other people don't know, but could benefit from. So I spend a lot of time teaching about this subject matter, like we've talked about in the podcast today that a lot of people don't know about and answering questions. However, I learned very quickly that social media is more about giving and more about adding value to others than it is about trying to sell your own product or trying to teach people about your product. And so I very quickly limited my social media daily posting. To about 10% of the time speaking about eg. So you may have a niche subject matter knowledge and you can very easily become the expert in that field just by being showing up on social media. And it doesn't even have to be done through the post thing about that subject matter. It's more about the branding and about people making that connection. And so that's done through. Your profile and through your tagline and your name, because every single time you comment on someone else's post, every time you like someone else's post, every time you are posting and people are seeing your name, they're seeing your name, they're seeing your face, they're seeing that tagline, that connection, right under my name, it says, consideration expert people make that connection. They make that branding. It's indelible every time they see your name. So the more you are out there. The more people are just going to make that synonymous connection between who you are, what you do, and how you help them, and how you add value. So again, it's more about trying to figure out ways to add value and you don't have to necessarily post on your own. And this is a huge misconception. A lot of people think I have to spend time building my own brand and posting all kinds of stuff. It's so hard to come up with content. That's true. You can spend the time. Commenting, very strategic, very thoughtful, thought out comments on other people's posts, you'll get seen much more so than if you posted yourself,

Steven M Weinstock: 34:57

Yonah. Those are words of wisdom because as you're saying that, I'm realizing that every time somebody comments on somebody else, even if it's a topic out of their industry, you're effectively leaving a business card. Right there. Somebody could be ranting about politics, they could be ranting about the cost of eggs. And you're commenting and under your comment that has your profile. And if people think your comment about expensive eggs are funny or they get upset sometimes they'll click your profile and all of a sudden they, they know who you are, what you're about. Real nuggets of wisdom over there, I appreciate it. What would you say to the real estate investor who's affraid or hesitant ? Post online. Some people are afraid, I'm afraid also even though it's, I could be called a keyboard warrior, I'm behind the black screen I'm posting, but sometimes I read it over it. I'm like, maybe I could say it in person. I'm not sure I wanna mention it to everybody, so I get hesitant. But something I found that I do, sometimes I will schedule it. So I'll schedule it for like tomorrow at 2:00 PM or 7:00 AM. And okay, I typed it, it's off my mind. And the next thing I know, I'm getting alerts, likes about something I forgot about from yesterday and okay, it wasn't so bad. I bump into people in, in, in real world and they'll tell me, oh, I read what you wrote and that gives me extra encouragement.

Yonah weiss: 36:25

I think you just answered your own question there, Steven, because why should people. People are afraid. Yeah, we're afraid to put ourselves out there, and I can totally relate to that. I was as well and still am hesitant. I'm very careful what I post, what I don't post about, but I was extremely scared at the very beginning because it is uncomfortable putting yourself out there. But you answer your own question because when you go and meet people in person and they're telling you that they saw what you wrote online, that means that they're watching. That means that they're following. That means that they know who you are. They know what you do. Even if they're not engaging with your content, which oftentimes they're not, it's still out there. And so why should real estate investors, why should people, any business for that matter, put themselves out there online? Because it gives you credibility, it gives that personal touch, and people only do business with people who they know and trust. You've probably heard that before, right? It's this triangle, right of no and trust. The most important one of those three, I think is gonna shock. Most people when you think about this, but the most important thing of knowing trust is no, because if they don't know you, they can't like you or trust you at all. And yes, it may be the trust thing is the most important, but guess what? You can't get there if they don't know who you are. So you gotta put yourself out there. You have to make sure that people know who you are. And so that's probably the most important thing. And so I've hosted over the years, I think about five years now, every single quarter I do something called this 10 day. CRE commercial real estate LinkedIn Challenge. And essentially what the point of that is, is to encourage people in the real estate industry to put themselves out there and to go out on a limb, learn what to post, how to post, how to engage with your network, how to grow your following, your profile, and by doing something, a habit for 10 days straight. You end up committing and doing it more. You may not continue doing it every single day after that, but I guarantee most people that go through this end up sticking with it because they see the value that comes out of it almost immediately.

Steven M Weinstock: 38:28

And as I get more used to typing content and putting text out there, I'm now seeing, especially on LinkedIn, more and more video and that scares me personally because I'm not a video person and one of my ways of overcoming that was to start this podcast, put it out there at first, screw up. I sound like an idiot, or I think I sound like an idiot. Hopefully I get better over time. But if people enjoy it, even though you think you sound bad, people enjoy it. People like it and it helps you overcome it. So that's one of the reasons I started this. I know you've had the podcast for many years. Have you put out, are you focusing now on video posts?

Yonah weiss: 39:13

I have because most platforms encourage, the algorithms encourage you to post video, whether it be YouTube obviously, but even LinkedIn nowadays. Instagram for sure, with reels and things like that, they basically are incentivizing you with more reach through the algorithm if you do post. Yeah, I definitely put emphasis on that. I. To be honest, I enjoy the longer text posts and I love the engagement. That usually comes with that much more, but I make sure to put at least one, sometimes two, or three videos out every week because it is important to have to not just do one type, one style of content as well. I think it is important to try out different things over time and kind of change things up. As you notice you're getting more engagement, you're getting more or less reactions. Yeah, try out everything. Use all different types of at your, there's so much out there that is available, resources out there. So use whatever you can and see what works, see what doesn't.

Steven M Weinstock: 40:06

Are you putting out video besides the podcast? Are you creating video? Are you editing it professionally? Are you put doing different backgrounds? Are you doing tours or are you sitting behind the microphone with the headphones and doing video posts like that?

Yonah weiss: 40:23

For me personally, typically I'm taking from my own podcast or podcasts that I guest on, short clips out of those because doing a podcast itself, as you know now is an incredible form of creating content. Gary Vaynerchuk, one of the things he said, you create one piece of long form content, an hour long podcast. You have 70 pieces of content just from that one long, 70 pieces of short form content from that one, whether it be videos, whether it be images, whether it be snippets, tweets, or whatever you wanna call them. You can get so much out of just that one form. So yeah, personally what I'm doing is just that, just taking out the clips from those longer form comments. Occasionally I'll do something just on my own, but it's easier because I already have the content out there, just to have someone edit and pull out a clip or two, add some subtitles, which is very important. By the way, if you're doing videos, make sure you add the subtitles in. Captions in, I should say.

Steven M Weinstock: 41:16

Sure. Like I said, I'm new to the podcast world. But I've been interviewed on, I would say about 15 podcasts over the past 18 months or so. And, these hosts, when the episode would be released, they would obviously send me a link. They would send me the actual video file, but then they would send me two or three shorts or YouTube, a small 60 second, 32nd videos that they encouraged me to post. And I thought this was great. Wow. I'm getting this like 62nd video. And I'm posting it all over. Obviously it benefits me. It makes me look like a rockstar and obviously it benefits the host because they're getting their podcast out to now my audience and I, it's just a tremendous way to market yourself. Yeah, definitely. Like I said, I'm new to the podcasting world, but when this episode gets released, we'll be preparing three or four. Short videos as well that we give to the guests and hopefully they put it out there and help us both expand our network.

Yonah weiss: 42:18

Exactly. And hopefully, as in your words, it will help add value to the viewers as well. And that's really the key.

Steven M Weinstock: 42:24

Okay. Alright. We're about to end. I know we're on a time difference here. I know you sound like you're an American, but you live overseas interested in telling us or are you hidden in a bunker somewhere?

Yonah weiss: 42:35

I'm no longer in a bunker, no. But yeah, I grew up in, in LA. So my accent is American. I am American. I live in Israel now, so I am overseas, not in a bunker. Thank God. Things are good and normal for the most part but yeah, I love doing what I do and able to do it remotely, so it's even better.

Steven M Weinstock: 42:53

Yeah, my son is in the school there for this past school year. I got to visit him a few times and the things were great and I was on vacation and I really enjoyed myself. Anybody out there definitely give Israel a visit? I'm gonna ask you a few last questions. Rapid fire, do it fast. What's one tax saving strategy most investors overlook

Yonah weiss: 43:16

besides cost segment, which we'll talk about. I'd say opportunity zones is something most people overlook and don't really know about. Not gonna go into it right now, but definitely something to look into.

Steven M Weinstock: 43:27

Yes, dabbled in Oz's, looking at it, underwriting it, but I really don't know about it and I never really dealt with it. A favorite platform to connect with people. LinkedIn, Instagram, YouTube, or X or something else.

Yonah weiss: 43:40

I always favor LinkedIn, absolutely, but you can find me on Active on pretty much all of them.

Steven M Weinstock: 43:45

Any specific quote or a certain mindset that keeps you focused during the tough days?

Yonah weiss: 43:52

I think the most important quote that kind of keeps me focused is this combination of two quotes I'll put together one, A friend of mine came up with an acronym, which is Hope. Help one person every day. And that's really just something that you have to fo when your focus is on others. When your focus is outwards, you actually become a better person, but you get more accomplished because you're not focused on yourself and you. And so that's really a lot of my energy. And the other thing that couples with that is a famous auxiliary quote. I posted this a lot as well, is that you can get anything that you want in the world if you just help enough people get what they want. And really, again, going back to the same principle of focusing on others, and there's so much that can be gleaned from that powerful quote, which is you are, if you're focusing on others, you're adding value to others. You're gonna get back tenfold what you give. And so you really have to change the way you think about how to do business.

Steven M Weinstock: 44:50

Wow. I really like that answer. And I really like that hope acronym. I'll probably rewrite that for a LinkedIn post in the future, but I'll make sure I tag you for that. What would, what's the best insight you've picked up from your own podcast? Weiss Advice.

Yonah weiss: 45:05

The best, I'd say insight I've come up with, I've interviewed close to 500 people now on Weiss advice. Some most incredible people in the real estate world. I think probably the thing that I've gleaned the most from that is not something specific, but something that is a commonality between a lot of the people that I interview, which is that they have found through real estate, has given them freedom of time, freedom of location, and creating wealth beyond what they can imagine. And a lot of the people that I've, that I deal with on a daily basis as well through the costing business are people who. Came from other industries, came from other professions and got into real estate later in life because they found it was such a way to, to build wealth and create that freedom that they wanted and they didn't wanna be stuck with the golden handcuffs and the W2. So that's probably the biggest thing that I've gleaned from it.

Steven M Weinstock: 46:05

Yonah this was great. This wraps up another episode of the Wealth Clock with Weinstock. That's me, Steven Weinstock. Huge thanks to Yonah Weiss for sharing such. Actionable insights and his unique blend of tax expertise and branding wisdom. You're really great y If you want to connect with Y, check out the links in the show notes. Follow him on LinkedIn, Instagram, YouTube, or his own podcast, Weiss Advice. But he likes LinkedIn the most, so reach out to him there. And if you found value in this episode, do me a favor, follow the show, leave a quick review or share this episode with another investor who's looking to level up. I'm Steven Weinstock. Thanks for joining me on the Wealth Clock. I'll see you next time.