Episode 130 - Behind the Scenes: Our Origin Story & What it Takes to Create Your Own Podcast

Today hosts Braden Cheek, Brian Duck and Joel Thompson give the viewer a behind the scenes look at our podcast as well as tips on how to start your own!

All right. What is up and welcome back to another super exciting best Tulsa commercial real estate podcast ever. So, some people think. No, that's, I mean, it's the best, best. I totally stole this from another podcast, Tyler podcast, but we have the best commercial real estate podcasts in Jinx. I guarantee it. I agree with that best in Jinx. Best in Tulsa. There's some good ones in Oklahoma. That's a commercial in Oklahoma. Anyway, we are back. We have a super cool episode that I think will be interesting. We've never done anything like this before, so it at least will not be boring, that's for sure. And we're not talking about taxes so definitely not boring. Um But today we're gonna talk a little bit about what we have going on. So we've been pivoting kind of a little bit. We, we have a weekly meeting, you know, every week, just kind of align the focus. What are we looking at? What do we have going right now? What, what are the push and pull points on some of the deals? And I've noticed that we've been offering on um existing shopping centers a ton. I mean, again. That's good. Which, uh, you know, takes us back a little bit to how it started about a year ago.

Yeah. So it's, it's been a whole year where just underwriting shopping centers has, has sucked, you know, it's been impossible to find yield. But if you've been watching the, the treasuries, they've been falling like crazy, you know, 2530 basis points over the past week or two. So, that's super exciting because we're getting loans based off those treasuries. So anyway, tomorrow, uh we're, we're driving to Topeka, that'll be exciting. Um Exciting drive to Topeka will not be exciting because we don't have a plane. That's true. That drive with the plane would be better. Yeah, it'd be like five minutes down the road to the airport. Uh but I want to comment on that. So, you know, we've been waiting and kind of sitting on the sidelines with multi-tenant retail and for that matter, apartments because the metrics just weren't quite there coming out of the recession. Cap, rates were low and then interest rates skyrocketed and blew up and then we, we couldn't make uh the yields that we wanted to make. Uh And we didn't want to force the issue because we didn't know how high the rates were gonna go. Now, we have some visibility as to where the rates are going. We think the rates are topping out.

Ok. It's not a guarantee. Uh Something can happen next quarter, maybe next two quarters they could consider raises. But we think the raises are gonna be paused for the foreseeable future. And there, there's a lot of foreshadowing of lowering as well. So, I mean, we, we think it's pause and the, I mean, nobody's talked about lowering until just recently in the past week or two. I've, I've seen it up on the, on the TV, that there's been several articles about it. So, so the thinking goes like this, we're seeing uh retail deals that were eight cap, 8.5 cap, nice deals, decent locations. We're seeing those uh not all of them but enough of them push up to 9, 9.5 cap. Ok. That's a really good cap rate historically. And so what we have is that 9, 9.5 cap in good at good real estate and we have AAA situation where treasuries have dropped almost 100 basis points. And so those rates are getting a little bit better to make that 9 9.5 work, but it just barely works. But our thinking is this is that we go in, we get, uh, we get the deal, we get 6.5 debt maybe uh on a 9, 9.5 deal, we get almost three points to spread.

And then as the rates come down, if we get an uh a loan, we can pay off. Now we're gonna be able to refund hopefully the rates get back to 4, 4.5 and, and so we can drop another two points. Now, if that happens, we have five points of spread between purchase cap rate and our debt and, and so then we'll really be in the money. So that's kind of what we've been looking at lately. Well, you said barely work, but by barely work, our models have been showing still upper teen returns, right? I mean, over 20 like we normally are, but we're still upper teens deal level. Irr, I'm, I'm, I mean, in the past again, a couple of weeks, we've probably sent out 345 of these LOIS and I'm consistently underwriting to low twenties. Irr, which is, which is promising because we can chop that up as a sponsor and deliver. Um, I, I think 1718, um, without assuming a big refi and that again to Joel's point, we're, we're looking at it at it as upside. We're telling the investors, hey, we've got potential upside here. I, I don't think we're shoving that in the model just yet that we're gonna waive the magic wand and interest rates are gonna be 5% a year or two. And I think that's why we've generally stalled on this is because nobody knows when it's started to come down.

Now that we think it's, it's stalling in, you know, possibly even coming down next year next year could be nuts. Um, now, could be the, the peak or, or kind of the, the lowest point of property valuation. So we've been super aggressive in finding those opportunities and, and the reason we're driving to Topeka is because a lot of other people are bidding on the same property. So, you know, we get called into a best and final and I know we talked about that before, but again, when you're in the best and final, you are interviewing for a job, you're interviewing for that slot, you, you need to show up as best as you freaking can. So we're, we're driving there. We're getting um a loan quote from our lender written down. We're, we're submitting all of this with our offer because we want the seller to believe that they have AAA good surety of clothes with us that we're a good bet. So tell us about uh Houston and he went down to Houston and that's the next deal that's coming along, right? It's a build to suit um Calloway landscape. Yeah, it should be launched later this week. We're, we're going through the legal documents right now. Um But yeah, it's, it's a brand new um nursery or landscape center.

Um They've got, you know, a dozen locations in the greater Dallas Houston area. I know there's one in Fort Worth, right by um the criteria not right by but very close by the criterion office in Andy's house. Um But this site is really interesting because it's right next door to this massive power center. Um like you would think a a retail location would be. So Andy Flew down there, checked the site out. Um He's met with the developer uh several times because the developers in Fort Worth or Dallas. Um but yeah, super excited about that deal. We we get a corporate guarantee from Calloway's. We, we saw the financials, financials look great. Did I see that wrong? It's at least 15. I think it's really strong lease. And so we think that'll sell at a pretty low cap one point. I want to go back to before we get into the topic of today's show is you may ask, ok, well, why are you buying now if rates are gonna come down next year, shouldn't you just wait? And the answer is no, we, we are obviously we're risk takers, but we're thinking that if rates are at their peak and they're not gonna go any higher, uh, and cap rates have been working up, right?

Which means the prices are coming down because of that expensive debt that now is the time to secure those properties at, at the higher cap rate, lower purchase price because as the rates come down, if owners see that, right, that's gonna put down, uh, downward pressure on cap rates because the money is cheaper and it's gonna push those prices up. And so we think, well, if we can get it, we can make it work today and get control at a 9 9.5 cap. Then when rates come down, we already have the asset we can refinance instead of having to compete for the asset when the rates are coming down. So that's the point on that. So massive asterisks. Um Obviously, that's not the case with long term um non recourse debt with defeasance on it in the form of a prepay. So normally with local uh bank debt or regional bank debt, a prepay maybe be, you know, 4% 3% 2% 1% you know, in the first four years, it may not be a prepayment penalty at all. But typically, you know, I with the local bank, you're looking at around a point to pay off the loan early. Typically a lot of the times it won't be in there at all. Um uh if you go get CN BS debt or, or life insurance debt sometimes, um it's non recourse.

It's typically lower leverage, but they lock in that rate and the prepayment penalty is defeasance so it can get insanely expensive. The only time you have a chance to pay off, uh One of those loans is if you buy low interest rate probably and you get a loan with a very low interest rate and then treasuries move way higher. Now when you sell and you give them their money back and they have to reinvest it in a treasury to match the return, they can, they can do it. Uh, you got a 2.5 3% rate. Now, treasuries are four or 5%. Maybe you can do it and not get totally skinned. But if you're gonna buy and get AC M BS debt today, you'll never pay it off because, because rates are gonna go down. Uh, and, and so, so now when you got a 6% rate, they're going to take that money and have to replace that return and there's gonna be nothing to do it with. They're gonna have to buy a treasury at 3% or something. So, yeah, so pay attention to the prepay, get local bank debt. So today's topic is, um, you know, obviously we've been talking about some of the stuff we're doing, but we are giving you a behind the scenes of how this podcast gets put together, which uh maybe you have some grand ideas about, uh how much time we spend 20 hours a week preparing for this, uh podcast.

But really, we, we, we meet downstairs, uh uh about 30 minutes before we're gonna do the podcast and we start brainstorming on what we think topics might be interesting to the people that watch the podcast. So maybe one of these days we'll spend a lot more time, but that's what we do and we're gonna give you AAA glimpse into that. And then I think, uh, you, you should have already, if you're watching this youtube video, you should already see kind of the behind the scenes uh with, you know, where the lights are and where the computers are and where all the cameras are that we look at and they can switch in between us. Uh And so now I think what we want to do is we're gonna ask some specific questions to the team that puts the podcast together and do we wanna, let's start from the beginning? I mean, people, people want to know how this podcast started. You know what I mean? So, you know, what was it? It was the beginning of 2020. You know, everything was going great. It was like, you know, March and then the world gets shut down and we're all sitting at home doing absolutely nothing. Right. Absolutely nothing. I remember sitting on my couch and I was scrolling through my computer and II, I was, I was watching some bullshit and then I get this great idea that I'm gonna start a podcast and I remember going up so excited.

I, I get my laptop and I'm like, baby check this out. I'm gonna, I'm gonna start this podcast. Here's this idea. You know, we're gonna do it. I remember calling Brian that day, you know, hey, what do you think about starting this podcast? You know, just kind of backroom, casual conversations about what we do. You know, if, if somebody had that, I, I would listen to like, cool stuff about commercial real estate investing. It seems kind of interesting. Nobody's gotta watch it. I think we can do it kind of cheap. I think we can do it on Gopros. You know, it was the first camera we used in your office and we bought some like $500 table and I remember my wife looked me straight in the face and she's like, what are you? No, that's the dumbest idea ever. Braden. What are you doing? Starting a podcast? And that day, that day I bought all the shit to start the podcast just to stick it to my wife. And you've been sticking to it ever since three kids later. Oh, no. Yeah, that's right. We forgot. We used, we bought some Gopros, we bought some little stands, we bought some, we had some goofy headphones and we got a shot of those Tenner to show people. We thought at the beginning we thought, well, there's no way to control the audio.

If we're not, we're not able to hear ourselves. Now, we understand. If you'll just keep your mouth over the freaking mic, you're gonna be fine on audio. So we don't have to wear the headphones anymore. Yeah. Anyway, it's, you know, what has it been? Three years now guys? Yeah. I mean, it was 20 I think the first episode came out in like the fall of 2020. So three years up to like 12 listeners. This is dumb people. We're getting one a month, you know, we don't have the the biggest following and, and none of us are trying to be famous, right? We're trying to help motivate people, get invested in commercial real estate because we honestly believe it'll change your life. At least that's what I believe. And I think this is motivated to a lot of people and in fact, we, we get emails regularly and, and this may sound insane, but people reach out to us regularly and, and just say thanks guys, you know, this is motivating. This is interesting. I didn't think it was possible and, and I believe that it truly is as easy as we make it seem and that was the purpose in doing this is to get more people to say, man, maybe I can do that. Well, I like the idea when you first pitched it and here we are, what, 100 and 40 episodes later.

Yeah, I wasn't sure I loved it at first. Just being honest. Um You know, I just, I just didn't know if I wanted the hassle of being on camera and you guys know, I'm kind of, I don't want to try to be famous in Tulsa for, you know, commercial real estate or whatever. So, uh it's been, it's been good though. It's been a kind of a hobby. It's been something that we all get together and it focused us to think about our business and how to articulate what we do to other people so they can be involved in it as well. So, let's, uh let's transition then. Uh let's do Tanner first. So Tanner's, I'll call him our production engineer. If, if, if we were going to give him a title, you know, he's a big time photography guy and he's the one that kind of helped us get the system set up. Technically, Savvy. Yes. Which I'm not, I mean, you guys think I do all the nerdy stuff, but actually Braden was the one that did all the nerdy stuff again. He, he's like the one that's like, hey, I got this and this and, and I got all these gopros, like you said in the beginning and, uh I think it'll work. Yeah, we're, we're much, much bigger. So now of course, everybody gets the camera, the cameras filming.

But how do you know, tell us exactly if someone wanted to do a podcast, how are we taking the video? And what are you importing it into? Were you, you know, can control and edit the, the, the film? So if that's the secret sauce actually, that, that makes ours easy. Yeah, I mean, uh there's a bunch of different programs you can use and, and some of them are even free, I think. Um, but the, the ones that we use, uh, is all Adobe, um, sort of system. So, I mean, they, they have a whole suite of what you can use. I mean, it's anything from photography to videography, to straight audio to web design, stuff like that. So we use Adobe Premiere Pro. At least I do. Um, and so whenever we're recording this whole thing, I mean, um, we have it recording onto SD cards and, and S sds and we'll take, I'll take those home. Um, I'll, I'll roll some footage in here of me actually doing that and, um, I'll, uh, I have a sort of system set up since I've done this for what you said, three years now. I, I have pretty easy, uh, system set up which, uh, is very good for an editor to have because, um, if you're just jumbling around the entire time and you're like, oh, ok.

How do I do this again? What do I do, then you're gonna be editing for way too long? I mean, the whole thing needs to be, this is how you do it. Is it pretty seamless the video and the audio together or is that separate? And you got to marry the two? So, you, I, I have to marry the two. I usually find, um, a point in time where maybe Joel slams his fist down or puts his phone down and it makes a big bang. Or, uh, or Braden collapses if I don't have any of those. Yeah. If I don't have any of those then, uh, I'll find a point in time where someone says time with something or something like that where you can definitely tell that uh that someone's making that sort of noise. Um And that's where you sort of sync it up and, and you can tell, I mean, by looking, if you're like, that doesn't really line up, maybe you shift it forward a couple of frames, maybe you switch it back, a couple of frames, whatever. But yeah, usually the, the clap is, is the clap, sorry. Uh Usually the clapping that Braden does um is what helps me sync the audio and the video.

But um yeah, so II I sync it all together and post um color grade, all that stuff. So I sort of have a drop in. Uh I'd literally just drop everything in and sort of sync it up and put it in between um everything inside and like it's good to go like, I, I rarely ever have to play with anything unless you guys are like, oh let's let's edit that out or something like that. Then I'll, then I'll actually go in. But are you putting on the intro music and, and so it's all, it's all like dropped in already. I literally just duplicate the last podcast, take out the video and audio form or whatever else. Maybe I put in some graphs that time or something like that. Um I'll take those out and now it's just a blank slate. So I drop in the video, drop in the audio, make sure everything's synced together, make sure the intro and outro are at the correct places and, and, and it's good to go. I mean, I, I made it very easy for myself so that again, I don't take more time than I need to, to actually. So then once you get it in that format is that when you're tossing it over to Aaron to, to publish market? Yep. Yep.

So, um once, once it's all rendered out and it's good to go uh believe it or not, I, I um so I've watched and been here for almost every single episode, but I have not watched every single episode. I mean, you know, I'm, I'm here for it but, and usually, yeah, usually every single um every single time I'm uh I'm here for it. I'll, I'll remember if there's like a point in time where I need to edit something out. But if not, yeah, I'll just put it in, uh render it out and then upload it to our sort of dropbox that we have. Um And then we have, we have Aaron, he, he takes care of all the sort of social media and uploading to all of our actual platforms. But um yeah, I'm, I'm in terms of behind the scenes. Oh, good job Braden. Wow. Look at that. This is something we would normally cut out and I'm not going to um usually um whenever I actually send it off. I mean, I'm, I'm actually behind the scenes behind the scenes. Uh Aaron is the one that actually does all the sort of emojis and, and titling of the episodes and stuff like that. So mine is, is more uh of the long form or, or raw sort of stuff that you're seeing.

So if you're watching youtube, that's usually what I, I've done. But if you're seeing our, our social media accounts that's shorts and clips. And so I think that's important, right? Because when we were coming up with this, how do we use social media for a commercial real estate company that at the time was maybe like trying to buy four deals a year. You know, how do you, how do you, how do you do that on, you know, five different social media platforms every single day, about four things, you know, it's, it's pretty ridiculous. So the podcast is a great long form content for us where every week, you know, we're getting 15 to 30 minutes of our thoughts about what we're doing or updates or our thoughts about deals, drone videos, everything like that. And then Daily Aaron is, is chopping those up into, you know, bite size pieces for Instagram and, and, and the reality of it, that's what people are watching. I mean, people, my family, you know, they're like, yeah, my family was like everybody else, they'll watch 60 seconds max, they're not watching a 20 minute podcast. My job is useless is essentially what you're saying. No, we get lots of people that every week tell us they've listened to every episode, one guy hit us up said he's listened to every episode twice.

That was incredible. Um I could never hit my wife to do that. Ok. Well, with that said Tanner does a great job. If any of you guys need consulting services for your own videography projects or podcast, you want start one, get this guy to consult, he'll help you out. He'll probably say no. The guy whose job actually matters a well, I mean, he can say no or he can just increase his price till he wants to say yes. That's true. That's true. It involves blowing shit up. I bet he'll say yes, big guns. I just want to say guys, I'm a big fan all this, you know, I've been here since episode 48 and uh I think it's about specific. Um So I'll, I'll just dive into it. Won't make it too long. I want to talk about how me and Braden met. Um you know, uh Bob Parker who was a guest on episode 69. Asset manager hits me up says, um it's like, totally ironic. He's like, if you guys knew Bob, you would appreciate the irony of that. You know, I graduated from OS U with a marketing degree in 2020. So the job market in 2020 was ridiculous.

So needless to say I was door dashing and um yeah, I'm a, I'm a artist. So I was posting on social media on all five platforms every day as it is. And the way I got the job was um I kept bugging Brayden like I kept sending him videos. I knew the way to, I learned six months later that I beat out like 100 and 50 people simply because I just kept like subtitling videos and sending it to them. So essentially, first off, thank you, took me out of that doordash life. Like I'll never be able to pay you for that. Um But so I get the, the raw video from Tanner, you know, I'm in Adobe Premiere Pro as well. I just started working through cap cut more because Braden, dude, I had, I didn't know how to do this. Braden said, hey, uh here's a computer, here's premiere pro. Figure it out. I was like, all right. And um you know, I'm in, I'm in cap cut more so now. But my job is to every day I post on Facebook, Instagram, linkedin, Twitter, youtube Shorts.

And it's got to be another one, Tik Tok, Tik Tok, Tik Tok the tiktok. And so if you're looking for quick growth, um first off, you know, I'm reading this book, uh 1 million followers, I'll put that in there as a reference, maybe put an Amazon link to it. But if I was I was following people, you know, just mass following, not on some spam. OK. I would hit the limit until tiktok told me to stop or Instagram told me to stop. Um you know, criteria in social media started out with less than 500 followers across all platforms. And now I'm happy to say that we're at 8000 across all platforms, but it feels like we just got to the starting line Like, you know, we're still, I'm still having to unlearn everything that, you know, all these models and systems that we've developed. Just because yes, you know, getting criterias Instagram to 1000 is cool. But how do we scale that? And so, you know, for the, for those starting off, it's that consistency of, you know, copy and paste the caption, post the video, copy and paste.

This takes 30 60 minutes out of your day, copy and paste the caption if someone says a rude comment, reply back because you're boosting the algorithm, you know, and um now we're at this point where OK, how do we, how do we leverage our brand and scale our brand to the point where how do we get to that 10,000? You know, we got this local following, we got people emailing us that they've watched every episode twice. And it's like, how do we get to that to that next level? So we're in the middle of this major rebranding and just constant improvement I think is, is where, you know, he, he gives me such freedom in my job. He's like, hey, I want this, I'm like, Brandon, what do you want me to do? He's like, I want this to be a creative hub of ideas for you. Just let it rip. And I'm like, ok, cool. You know, but now now it's time to really continue to push yourself to do that research, to um you know, push your creative boundaries to, to make emails to email Gary V, email, Gary V once a week until he emails back.

How many times have you sent him an email? Five? You know, look, if it takes 10 or 15 to get him on the pod, I'll know it was worth it when we get him on the pod. So it might take more than that to get Gary V on here. Hey, whatever it takes, I'm on, I'm on it. Yeah. So I, I think, you know, if you're, if you're starting a podcast, thinking about starting a podcast and watching how to invest in commercial real estate show. First of all, it's highly ironic but um uh invest in a couple of key pieces of equipment. We, and we can maybe do a video of this. I think our most valuable piece of equipment and I'll ask Taner afterwards, but it's probably that a 10 mini, wouldn't she say so? Um and, and basically it's, you wouldn't need it if you have a one camera set up, but because we have multiple cameras, all of these cameras plug into the ATM and Tanner's back here switching these cameras live. So the, the software and this piece of equipment is recording each camera individually, but it's mainly recording what you're cutting live. So when Tanner throws this in post editing, when he pulls it up at home, he's, he's pulling up the cut show, you know, you can change a cut or two if somebody's like sneezing or laughing or, or whatever, but it's mainly color grading, syncing audio, you know, finding a highlight clip.

So I think people get intimidated by the editing because they're not an editor. A lot of people don't, aren't good at photo and video editing, even photographers, videographers, there's a lot of them that just suck at at editing. So there's pieces of equipment that you can buy that help offset that. And now there's even like A I software crap that you can upload all of your camera angles in and it kind of auto cuts. There's a I captions. I mean, it's, I, I think that the title should be How To start a podcast. You know, Google plus effort equals knowledge. Google plus effort equals knowledge. I mean, how many times do I say that all, literally all the time? Um And I remember in the beginning, we, we hired Aaron and we, we didn't have anything he shows up and he's just got a, you know, a smartphone and he's editing videos in his phone. And at some point I'm thinking, like, I wonder when he's gonna like, whip out Photoshop and it was, it, you know, it just, it didn't happen. And I was just like, you know, maybe there's a better way to edit videos and, and we did and we, and we learned that process uh by ourselves, you know, we found these cameras, we just network.

So I, I think a lot of these, you know, easy task starting a podcast investing in real estate. It's, it's literally just asking people for help finding a youtube video like this and, and watching it and if anybody has any questions, they can email us and, and we can give an answer. Absolutely. And, and just uh one last thing I, I really believe in the power of observing results, you know. Um So whenever we look at our social media, it's really funny because the, the major guests and personalities that we book are on Twitter and Instagram Twitter. If you are into commercial real estate, go to commercial real estate Twitter and follow everybody because that is the quickest access, you have to very high profile players in the game. But whenever it comes to real life people and conversion rate of investors and people that have showed up to events like our new investor networking linkedin, even though our linkedin videos get literally 1 to 2 likes per post. Apparently there's hundreds of people that still watch it. You know, we went from 72 followers to like 1300 right now and I asked them consistently.

So how did you hear about us? Oh, yeah, linkedin, you know, and in the back of my head, I'm like, why didn't you leave a like comment and subscribe, but it's really cool to watch. OK. If I'm looking for big personalities and, and broad reach, I'll go to Twitter and Instagram if I'm looking for local conversion rate and wanna meet professionals in the industry in person, linkedin. So I uh I definitely encourage you to um stay consistent with the posting, measure your results, find out what works and what doesn't. And uh you'll be surprised at how quickly things can, can pick up steam. Now before we get criticism and comments that, well, you guys only have 10,000 followers or whatever it is, we, we get it right. We're not doing this for maximum followers and, and really uh commercial real estate investing isn't a mass uh follower type of a topic. We're not doing this for followers at all. First of all, we're doing this for new investor sign ups. So really, yeah, the purpose of this is to give us CRE credibility to help us advertise our deals and to uh you know, bring in new investors that hadn't heard about us that are out there searching for commercial.

This show isn't for you, it's for us, for us. And I'd say it's paid off, I'd say you've had some really awesome guests on here. You've had some, some hilarious moments and, you know, you're really building an ecosystem, I think you'll be dangerous. We've received uh investor money, uh, from podcasts with people we've never met. We've had haters, we've had some haters which by the way, bring that on. I wish we had more actually haters are we're getting along. Hopefully, you enjoyed the kind of the behind the scenes. Look at how this particular podcast gets made. We'll be back next week with an awesome new topic. What else are we doing? Are we doing the thing we talk about downstairs? Are we doing the thing? The thing remind me what the thing is another cold plunge. First of all. Second of all, no, the, the, the Christmas. Oh, well, we can, we can mention it. We haven't decided on it, but let's decide now. I mean, what's we're gonna, we're gonna mention it. Hey, we're gonna be doing a Christmas giveaway of, uh, it sounds like it's gonna be big, a recent, a recent, a decent amount of money and we'll have the parameters on our next show.

Uh, but it's gonna be involved some action that you have to get involved with the podcast or, I don't know, we'll decide, make some comments. Uh, and then we're gonna get, we're gonna kind of put names in a hat and give away a decent amount of money for Christmas. So that'll be, that'll be next, next podcast. I don't know if I'm exempt from it, but once I said the amount of money, dude, I'm I'm doing anything necessary one. No. Alright guys. Until next week. Thank you and we're out.