In this episode of the Student of the Game podcast, host Brad Noll speaks with David Sidoni to discuss his journey from a successful career in real estate to becoming a prominent voice for first-time homebuyers through his podcast, "How to Buy a Home." Brad and David explore the critical importance of education and support for new buyers navigating the complex housing market. They also explore the concept of "falling in love with practice," underscoring that success comes from dedication and continuous improvement rather than just transactional achievements. With over 1.6 million downloads of his podcast, David's mission is to empower prospective homeowners.

Timestamps

(00:00) Intro

(02:29) David's Journey from Hollywood to Real Estate

(00:49) The Importance of Coaching and Mentorship

(08:31) Understanding the Role of a Real Estate Agent

(10:58) The Power of Pivoting in Business

(33:30) Building a Podcast for First-Time Homebuyers

(36:01) The Impact of Podcasting on Real Estate

Noll Team Real Estate

SINCE 2003, Noll Team Real Estate HAS BEEN HELPING PEOPLE IN THE FORT WAYNE AREA FIND THE FREEDOM TO LIVE THE LIFESTYLE THEY WANT.

DESPITE CHANGING MARKETS AND BUSINESS TACTICS, WE HAVE REMAINED TRUE TO THIS BETTER AND IMPROVED BUSINESS MODEL BY FOCUSING ON BUILDING RELATIONSHIPS AND SERVING OTHERS IN EVERYTHING WE DO.

WHATEVER STAGE OF LIFE YOU ARE IN, OUR GOAL IS TO PROVIDE YOU WITH THE WISDOM AND TOOLS NECESSARY WHEN BUYING OR SELLING A HOME. WE PUT YOU FIRST TO ENSURE AN ENJOYABLE AND PROFITABLE EXPERIENCE.

Welcome to student of the game podcast, where we help you master the fundamentals, fall in love with practice, and win at the game of life.

I'm your host, Brad Knoll.

Welcome to the classroom.

Welcome back to another episode of student of the game.

I'm with my buddy, David Sidoni.

How you doing, David?

I'm fantastic, thank you.

So, first of all, a quick story about David.

He's from Orange County, California.

So shout out to my west coast lady listeners here.

Before we hit record, I told David, I said, unfortunately, I'm kind of boring.

I don't watch a lot of tv or I don't watch a lot of movies.

David's a former Hollywood star.

I mean, he's been in tvs and in movies and had some lines here or there, but he does have a Ted Lasso shirt on.

I am a big fan of Ted lasso.

So, as people know, I like to coach small business owners.

I like to coach my team.

I'm a coach at heart.

I grew up as a coach's kidde, and Ted Lasso was awesome.

So, Dave, why don't you introduce yourself a little bit, and I can expand on that.

But I'm excited to have you on the show today because this is the first time we've had somebody that we're talking about small business here on this podcast.

And you're somebody who's been in the industry, you've had some careers, you've been a realtor, you've had a great, successful business, and then you pivoted and went into podcasting, and now you're creating a business off of podcasting.

And I think a lot of times the listeners kind of get stuck, like they stuck in the day to day, and they don't understand maybe there's other revenue models out there.

So why don't you introduce yourself a little bit to the listeners?

Thanks for being on here.

And it's how to buy a home podcast and something that is in my daily updates.

So I've been listening.

I'm a fan.

Thanks for joining us here on the podcast.

Well, I got to start off by saying, no, shocker that a guy who maybe doesn't watch a ton of tv and movies.

If anything, that coach Brad likes Ted Lasso.

I mean, come on.

I imagine you got texts from everybody, you know, telling you you needed to watch it.

Cause just like, he's quotable, I've been listening to your podcast for a while now, and you're the mantra master.

So I think you and Ted are both quotable for me.

I started my career very strangely.

I was gonna be a division one soccer player.

And then my senior year at high school, the high school of the arts, came to my campus, and that was one of my real passions.

So I ended up studying musical theater for a year and giving up my scholarship opportunity, much to the chagrin of my father.

And then I had ten years in show business, got ready to settle down, and moved back down here to Orange county and got into real estate.

And I enjoyed real estate for about a dozen years or so.

And then I got to a point where I started to figure out that I wanted to do something different, because I saw what I believe was a disservice to first time homebuyers.

So I tried to figure out at the time, I thought maybe I was going to be a YouTube star.

And I started studying like crazy, listening to entrepreneurs, business people who had found different ways to do the business of their business.

A lot of that, you know, some of the people that were.

And so I did the podcast as kind of an aside.

Cause I was doing everything, all the pieces of social media.

And then the podcast blew up.

And suddenly I woke up one day and said, this is gonna be my third act.

It's kind of a culmination of everything that I've done in my life.

And it was an opportunity.

So then I had to.

What is it?

There's a podcast I listened to from the Gary Vaynerchuk people.

Build while flying.

That's what I had to do.

I had to build the plane while I was flying and figure out how to best use my talents to turn this into something that could fulfill my passion, which was helping these people, but at the same time, become a viable business with all the systems and everything in place that I knew could help it fly.

Well, I mean, first of all, you said, in my words, you'd call pivot, but you said build while flying.

Right.

So one of the things that we both breezed over a little bit is you worked at Disney.

Yep.

I've got here, in my notes, that you've appeared in a Disney movie, hosted several tv shows on E.

MTV, Nickelodeon, the Disney Channel, and then I was listening to Rob's podcast, and you talked a little bit about the junior version of the Pat Sajak.

Tell us a little bit about little Wheel of Fortune there.

Yeah, it was actually really interesting.

The FCC came down with a mandate to all the major networks.

This is pre streaming in the nineties, where they had to have educational programming on Saturday morning.

They didn't want it just to be cartoons.

And, yeah, the spelling in Wheel of Fortune counts as education.

So CB's did a junior version of Wheel of Fortune.

I was Pat Sajak.

My vanna White was a motion capture cartoon.

So she was, like, behind the word wall in with all the ping pong balls all over her, and it was a cartoon that I looked at all day long.

And I was a television host for four or five years and had a great run.

And then one day, I was just talking to my agent and realized, like, you're either Mario Lopez or Ryan Seacrest or you're hustling every day of your life.

And that was when I made the pivot into real estate.

And because I had worked at Disneyland in high school and college, it was just coincidence that later on in my showbiz career, I did a Disney movie, and I worked on Disney Channel.

But I built a lot of my business through my relationships and through my connections to the people at Disneyland who are good, kind, wonderful people, got a nice, steady job.

And when you put in a loan application, that Disney is something that everybody recognizes.

And so I help them turn into first time home buyers, and then the rest is history.

That's awesome.

So, one of the things that, like, the name of this podcast is student of the game.

And a lot of people think, like, oh, Brad, play basketball.

This is a sports podcast.

We're gonna talk about sports a little bit of, like, the goal is really not to talk about sports, but what the goal is is to say, there are clues in your past.

There are clues in other people's past.

And if you stay curious and if you pay attention to what's happening around you, you can use that.

I have to imagine.

Okay.

And so, again, I'm gonna go to sports for a second.

So, Kobe, his nickname was the Black Mamba.

These successful athletes had this alter ego, this character that they were playing.

They had to get into a character in order to perform on the athletic field or the court or the course or whatever that is.

I have to imagine that understanding how Hollywood works and understanding playing a character has.

Has that helped you in, like, now we're talking about your real estate career.

Did that help you in your real estate career, knowing that you were kind of playing this character?

Yeah.

And, you know, it's shocking because it's in ways that most people don't think about.

When it comes to my Hollywood career, I was what I would call like an offensive lineman, maybe more like a random, you know, utility fullback or a slot receiver.

I was not the superstar.

I got to where I got to because of everyone knew they could count on me, hard work gonna be there.

And, like, on a scale of one to ten in Hollywood, if ten is, you know, the best singer or the best dancer or the best, I was, I was an eight or nine, but I was an eight or nine in everything.

And so that kept me working.

And because I had that mentality on set, I kind of loved to watch how everything worked.

A lot of actors do their job and go to their trailer, and they're just about them by watching everything that happened.

When I got into real estate, everyone said, you're going to be awesome because you're an actor and you know how to talk to people.

I immediately found out it was less about being an actor and it was much more about being the stage manager on a show or the assistant director because you're putting out fires all day long and keeping the ball and keeping the train going down the tracks.

If you want to get into, first of all, if you want to get into real estate right now, I mean, you're definitely not the actor or the front person, right?

You're the guide, you're the Sherpa, you're the stage manager.

I love that you said that.

So if you're going to, if you want to start a business right now, because you want to be the man or the woman or whatever, the reality is you're not going to go very far.

What I just heard in this short period of time we're talking is the more people you impact, the further you're going to get.

And you can't impact a lot of people when you want to be the.

Hero, like, you just can't correct 100% and understanding that there are heroes in movies, but there are other heroes.

For every Luke Skywalker, there's a yoda, for every Harry Potter, there is a Dumbledore.

And as a business leader, you have to realize your customer is Luke and Harry.

You're Yoda, you're Dumbledore.

And with your team, it's the same thing.

You know, you want to make your team shine, you want, you want to make your quarterback, you want to make your point guard look incredible and let them get all the glory.

You just sit back and coach and show them how to do it.

It's so good.

I've got kids that play sports, and one of the things that I tell them all the time is like, you know, in order for you to be the one, right, the person, the man, the woman on the field, you have to help other people exist.

You have to help other people hit their goals.

If I can help somebody else hit their goals, the ripple effects of that, I'm getting whatever I need.

If I can go help a lot of people win.

And that, that's actually my life motto is help other people win.

Help others win.

People ask me all the time, how did you build the business?

How did you do this?

How did you do that?

I said, well, you might be looking at the wrong way.

It's not about how, it's about helping others win.

You know, it's the acronym that we created, help others win.

And that's really how you become successful.

So now you have all this background in acting and show business and Hollywood, cult, whatever you want.

You worked at Disney, you understand service, you understand, how can somebody wait in line for 3 hours and still have a smile on their face?

Like, that's customer service, that's taking care of people.

You get into real estate and you have this experience of, you just feel like there's a miss in the real estate industry.

Before we get into how to buy a home podcast, you were a realtor, a successful realtor, building the team, having buyer's agents, having people working for you.

And, and there was this stirring, if you want, Rob calls it.

You know, you were chiseled, but, but talk about what happened in your real estate career that kind of gave you this transition to be a podcaster and to really fight for these first time home buyers.

It's.

I'd love to say that I had it all figured out when it originally became an idea, but as most ideas, it birthed from, you know, my own internal feelings.

And those internal feelings were, it was my wife looking at me one day when I was building a team.

And I, I thought building a team was going to be like just doing the inspirational, motivational, educational part of coaching.

I didn't realize that when you're building a team, that there's a lot of business aspects to it, and that's not necessarily my favorite part of the job.

I almost kind of want, I realized later, oh, I'm not a team manager of a large business.

I more the face of the company or the education and training only.

And so I was getting a little burnt out and frustrated.

But it was a good business realization for myself to understand what my best role was.

And my wife looked at me and said, you're only happy when you work at the Disney.

People and so I thought, okay, well, what if I just get, you know, dissolve this whole team and start fresh, and I make a new team that has a division that focuses on the thing that makes me happy?

And then I thought, okay, well, how do I grow that division?

And then that's when I started researching and looking into social media and YouTube and eventually podcasting as a way to reach more than I could just through the relationship of my database, but actually reach other first time homebuyers who were feeling the frustration that I felt.

And then as it progressed as a business owner, I'm sitting back and I'm realizing, this isn't a Southern California frustration.

This is a national frustration.

So then I started studying the industry, and as I studied the industry, I saw a giant hole.

And then that's when I heard every coach I've ever had in my life, whether it was in soccer or a director or now my business coaches, I've had for 18 years saying, go for it.

Make a difference.

And so that's when I decided to try to speak to as many of these people that were being relatively ignored by an entire industry.

And when you're customer centric like that, when you're explaining there's a new thing that's going on right now with the customers, they've had a phone in their pocket.

A lot of people don't realize, like, 36, and I think it's 36 or 37 years old, they've had yelp since they were 16.

So they've been looking at customer reviews far differently than someone my age, you know, and their concept of what they.

They hear from each other changes their perception of businesses.

So I wanted to reach out to them and let them know, this is just for you, because I see that the industry is missing it.

That's so good.

I've actually.

My wife and I talk about this a lot, is we want to create a business where, you know, she used to be a nurse in her former life, and so she was a big fan of Grey's Anatomy for a long time.

And I think, what is it?

Seattle Methodist or whatever the hospital was, they coined themselves as a teaching hospital.

And again, because I wanted to date my wife, I sat and watched Grey's anatomy shout out, I guess, to the early two thousands, but they were a teaching hospital.

And the thing I told Lindsey a long time ago is, like, I want to be a teaching real estate office.

And if I have a group of interns that I can mold and kind of, like, figure out, I get to understand how the next wave of consumers is going to think, and I think it's really important in our business because, you know, I don't want to go off in the deep end yet because we've got a framework to follow here.

But I think it's really important to understand what are your consumers thinking?

You know, a lot of times, you know, I'll brag and say I've got 21 years of experience.

Well, that actually can be a detriment, too.

If I have 21 years of experience and I think about how things used to be, that's not going to keep me in business.

That's just telling my story.

That's telling you how I've built my business.

But I've got to continue to grow.

I've got to continue to evolve.

And by having an intern program, it helps us to think about, you know, you made the comment like, these kids buying homes today, everything they do is on their phone.

So you're in real estate.

You have this idea to get your voice out there because you're passionate about first time homebuyers.

I've heard the phrase that fame is the most efficient business model.

Now, I think you have to be a really confident person to understand, or maybe self aware is better than confident.

You have to be a really self aware person to understand that concept of fame is the most efficient business model.

I don't do what I'm doing to get famous, but what I understand is if I can leverage technology, if I can leverage a platform like a podcast and my voice is heard by more people, I can impact more people, I can inspire more people.

And I feel like that's what you're doing, you know, with how to buy a home podcast, there's.

I believe that a lot of good business people, you get to that point when you have that position to expand your audience, because you've done it one on one, whether it's at the kitchen table or at a consultation or in your office, you've done this numerous times.

The new world that we're living in just opened up the idea that, oh, I can do that same one on one education where it's 100% caring for that person and that individual on a broader scale and more people can see it.

And that's why one of the huge pieces of the podcast has been listener interviews.

And I get more response from other people, hearing other people talk about the process, and it's made that platform and that megaphone so much bigger.

That now I'm able not just to help people here in Southern California, but people all over North America.

One of the reasons, and I love that because I think, you know, I'm not familiar exactly with where exactly we met, but I know we shared a table at Nashville and we both read together and we had a great conversation.

And I just knew iron sharpens iron, and we were very similar in kind of our thinking.

You know, one of the reasons I built a team was because I got a slow start in real estate.

When I got started in real estate, it was very transactional.

It was for sale by owners.

It was expired, it was cold calling.

It was door knocking.

It was all the traditional methods of being transactional.

And one of the reasons I built a team is so that I can help them have success faster than what I did through a relational business model.

But when we talk about helping people who are coming behind us, I think that's what you're doing right now.

I want to talk a little bit about the fundamentals.

You pivoted.

You were like, hey, I'm this realtor.

I've got this business.

This is great.

It's kind of stressful.

I've built this big team.

That's awesome.

However, maybe we're missing the mark a little bit.

Maybe.

Maybe we're not talking to the people that I want to be talking to every single day that you really can, can invest in.

So when it comes to, let's just talk about podcasting, because I really want to talk about how to buy a home podcast, I've actually shared this with my team.

I'm like, you need to listen to this guy.

He knows what he's talking about.

You're going to be a better realtor if you listen to this podcast.

This isn't just for buyers out there.

If you're a realtor listening to this, you better be listening to David's podcast, because that's what the buyers in this market are hearing.

He's the voice of first time buyers.

He's actually the voice of buyers.

Matter of fact, if I have a seller, I'm going to send them your podcast because the sellers need to know what the buyers are equipped with.

But before we get into all that, talk a little bit about what are the fundamentals to building a podcast.

Well, it's funny that, I mean, I appreciate that, and I do.

For me, once I started building the podcast, I thought initially, okay, I'm going to take everything that I've learned at the time, 13 years in, and just put it on a podcast.

And I thought that was enough.

But then I thought back to the very first thing I learned when I first, I was 35 years old when I pivoted from show business into real estate, and I got super lucky.

And I went to Brian Tracy, motivational business, not a motivational speaker.

He's a business speaker.

And I bought the entire six cd set, you know, and hundreds of dollars.

The number one thing I remember is he said, if you're in an industry, get up and read 30 minutes every morning.

Just having the information at the, you know, the tip of your tongue on the top of your brain, it just puts you ahead of the competition, the rest of the skills and all that stuff.

Yes, you need to learn that, but you have to start with the fundamentals of know your business, know your craft.

Have you ever talked to someone that's crazy passionate about a hobby?

Well, if they were a business owner, then they'd be the best person to talk to about oil painting or, you know, model car design or whatever it was.

And then, thank goodness, you know, I was books on tape back in the day.

We live in a world where I've gotten probably two or three different PhDs over the last six years through podcasts and through audible books constantly.

Every time I walk the dog, every time I wake up in the morning, every time I, you know, have lunch, I've got a podcast or an audiobook going in my ears to learn and educate myself.

The books are the fundamentals, you know, listening to the classics on how to run a business.

But the podcast is the current day to day information on what's going on in the industry.

So that's one of my big fundamentals.

So reader education.

I mean, I hear, I hear what you're saying.

Like, my very first car had a cassette.

But I remember when I, after I was given a car, my first car I had to purchase.

I remember one of my things now, right?

I just bought a car for my daughter.

We can get into that later.

But one of the things that I had to have was a CD player because my parents gave me, like, Mark Victor Hansen's, like, selling tips.

And, you know, I had all these cds from, from our mentor, Brian Buffini.

And it's like I have to have a car as a CD player because this is mobile university, right?

It's mobile university.

And so you're saying one of the fundamentals is education.

Whether you're getting that through reading cassettes, cds, podcasts, the fundamental, the strategies and tactics always change.

We talk about that all the time.

But the fundamentals never change, and it's putting more inside of yourself.

It's understanding that I have to be a reader if I want to be a leader.

I have to be a learner if I want to be a leader, and I love that.

What else?

Are there any other fundamentals of building the podcast?

I think it's falling in love with the same things I learned as an athlete and as a performer.

It's finding the different ways to fall in love with practice.

Took the words out of my mouth.

I love this.

Yeah, you have to.

I mean, you know, there's, there's understanding and enjoying the practice and realizing how little time I'm behind the mic.

Go, I want to.

Before we hit record, you talked about Joe Montana.

I've never heard this before, but I resonated with a lot.

Tell the listeners right now about Joe Montana and the Super Bowls.

And like, first of all, he went to Notre Dame, which is in our backyard over here.

But talk about Joe Montana falling in love with practice and the mathematical equation you have here with playing versus practicing.

Yeah, I had to go back and look it up because I heard it years ago somewhere where he was talking to, you know, kids doing one of his camps and talking about understanding and believing in the fundamentals and working on those drills and working on the practice.

The kids were like, dude, you want four Super Bowls?

You know, like, of course this comes easy for you.

And he's like, okay, a game's a little over 3 hours.

They've done the research on it.

The playing time is only eleven minutes of a football game.

So that's five and a half of the offense, five and a half for the defense.

That means he's won four Super Bowls, but he was on the field for 22 minutes, period.

That's four Super Bowls and VP, NFL MVP, hall of Famer.

And the amount of time he's actually playing the game is so little.

If you think about that.

I had a listing appointment today.

All right, so we still go on buyer calls and listing appointments, and I've got a great team that helps me with the transactions.

And this seller came into our office today for an hour, and I prepared for 2 hours this morning, an hour and a half yesterday.

And then last week I had massive preparation for this appointment.

And the appointment itself was only an hour.

And the amount of talking that I did, the amount of preparation that came out of my mouth was probably maybe 15 minutes.

It's exactly what you're saying.

And there's so many small businesses that can relate to this.

It's like you're not in front of the client, but how many times do we get in front of the client or the customer or whatever?

Or even in your case, the listener, and this is what they see.

Right.

But falling in love with practice.

I love that you say that, because that's actually our second point, is falling in love with practice.

What do you have to do as a podcaster to fall in love?

Because so many people are like, Brad, oh, you just get in the mic and it's awesome, and you've had almost 50 episodes and how many thousand downloads, and here you are, and you're actually a really big deal that our listeners are finding out about right now.

But what does falling in love with practice look like for you when it comes to podcasting?

You know, it's really funny.

It comes back to one of the things that you were talking about earlier, because you are a solo voice in a room.

A lot of the show business stuff was very helpful for me, understanding script writing, storytelling, and understanding that.

Like, when you're on a movie set and you get your script, there's jokes about it, it's rainbow colored, because every time they rewrite it, they send the pages in a new color, and it gets out of control with that to make up colors.

There's like, you know, we always joked about the Goldenrod and the fuchsia pages because they ran out of red, blue, orange.

And so understanding that drafting and redrafting and redrafting.

Although you and I have, like, I think you sold yourself short, those hours that you put in, the four or 5 hours of preparation for that single listing appointment, then the only 15 minutes of talking to.

Let's not forget about the years of time with you doing the Fundamentals to understand the process.

You know, when was the first time you took a class on how to sell a home?

That day, those Fundamentals you did that day you brought to that meeting.

And so I have to remember that when I write something out, even though I'm, you know, expert, guru, whatever you want to call it, doesn't mean it's perfect.

So taking the time to step back, always walking away, going back and looking at points, and then what you were talking about earlier, listening to the consumer, 100%, you have to listen.

I mean, people used to spend thousands, tens, hundreds of thousands of dollars on customer surveys.

We live in a wonderful world right now where you can figure out exactly what your consumer wants by reading the comments.

When you put information out there, if it's received warmly, I mean, understanding, to filter through the trolls, they're always going to be there.

But the positive things that you get, everything I do is based on what the listeners are asking for.

And that took a while for me to evolve.

I said I was customer centric.

I said I was consumer centric.

But I also thought, well, I have all the experience.

Let me tell you how to do this, because basically you're in an industry where you're getting hosed.

So let me help you.

Let me help you.

Let me help you.

And then suddenly I went, the best teachers listen.

So let me hear what you are struggling with, not what I see you're going to struggle with.

Time out.

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Now back to the show.

This is, this is great.

This just came to me as you were talking.

I have a question.

This was not pre prepared, so forgive me, but what motivates you more?

Is it, is it proven the trolls wrong?

Or is it, you know, adding some value to the people who want to listen?

There's a couple great people I listened to who have been big in social media when the rest of the world was like, what are you doing?

And I just respond like, oh, sorry, man.

Hey, hear what you're saying.

Good luck to you.

Anyone who has the time to be a troll, God bless them.

Boy, their life is not worth me assuming that their opinion is something that's going to change all the people that I affect.

So, I mean, I think there's this whole generation out there of like, you know, you got to prove the haters wrong.

And I'm glad for your answer.

I agree with that.

And it's like if I woke up every day just to prove the haters wrong, like that, that's going to get old.

Like, I get up every day to help others win.

I just want to help others win.

And there's going to be people who don't understand that.

And I tell my kids all the time, David, it's like preparation creates separation.

You know, if you want to separate yourself, don't hang out with the haters.

Like, just.

Just prepare.

Understand, you know, who you're serving.

Maybe.

Maybe it's a teammate.

If you're.

If you're a high school athlete or college athlete, you know, maybe it's.

Maybe it's your staff.

If you're a leader, you know, if you're a salesperson at your clients, you know, just.

Just understand that.

That preparation really does create separation.

Not.

Not focusing on the haters.

But I do.

I do like to see those funny videos every once in a while where.

What's it, the bad memes or something where that.

Where the actors are reading, like, all of the hate mail.

The gymnast.

That's pretty funny.

When we talk about fall in love with practice, you talked about making it a game within a game.

What do you mean by that?

Well, you know, I've listened to a lot of different people, you know, everything from John Wooden's pyramid of success or listen to Bill Walton talk about it over and over and over and over again.

But, you know, it's understanding that those moments in practice where everyone wants to do the scrimmage, but you want to do the drill, and you want to see if you can do it better than you did you did last time.

And, you know, I heard people talk about constantly trying to improve, and I think a lot of people think improvement means to.

You've got this at this level.

You've got this at a nine.

This at a nine.

This is a nine.

But this part of your game is a little weak, so you should be trying to improve.

I agree with that, but I also think that you can improve on the areas that you're already doing well, lean into your strengths and finding a game within a game.

For me, I mesmerized watching Steph curry warm up, and the guy's got sick handles, and he still is out of control with his Harlem Globetrotter style warm up routine.

And I have my kids watch it.

And that's a guy who understands that this part of his game is incredibly elevated, but he challenges himself every single pregame to get even better.

And, you know, if.

If I'm going to emulate someone, I'm going to watch my boy, especially because he's a short dude who played basketball.

Who was overlooked for a long time.

And he actually.

And he actually says, had he gone to a bigger school, he wouldn't be Steph Curry, who Steph Curry is today.

So he.

And it was that run.

It was a run in the NCAA's.

He would have been drafted even lower if his team didn't make that run.

Absolutely.

Okay, so here's what I want you to do.

We're going to pivot just a little bit on this podcast because my listeners need to understand who you actually are.

So we've heard.

You've heard your backstory.

We've heard a little bit about how you pivoted from being a realtor to understanding.

You went to becoming a podcaster because you wanted to niche down and you had this passion.

And so, falling in love with practice is a fundamental of yours, but it's something we talk about regularly on the pod because it's something that I tell my kids, like, all the time.

Like, I don't care what you do.

Be an actor, be a baker, be a basketball player.

You can't be great if you don't love to practice, if you don't love the process, if you don't, if you don't love to show up your blood, sweat and tears when nobody's watching, you can't be great at it.

I'm sorry.

Like, challenge me.

You just can't be great at it.

Back to one of the things you're talking about.

I think it was a Marcus Buckingham book called go put your strengths to work.

David and I were in the same audience back in the early two thousands, and we didn't know each other back then, but we heard the same thing and we were kind of riffing offline.

And Marcus Buckingham shared a story, if you remember this, about Tiger woods.

And at the time, Tiger was like number one in driving accuracy, number one in distance, number one in greens and regulation, and he was something like 104th in sand saves.

And Mister Buckingham kind of made the point like they asked Tiger, well, don't you want to improve your sand saves?

And he said, no.

And he was like, emphatic.

He was like, no, I'm going to improve the times.

I'm never going to be in the bunker.

You know, I'm going to improve my strengths.

I'm going to be in the fairway more often.

I'm going to be on the green more often, and I'm not going to focus on the thing that I'm not that great at.

And so if you're listening right now and you kind of have all these things going on in your business and you're trying to figure out, okay, I've got this bakery and I'm baking pies and I'm baking muffins and I'm baking rolls, but I do catering and I do this and that, but I'm a little weak in this area.

Let it go if I'm a little weak in, in transactional real estate, but I'm an amazing podcaster.

Go do more podcasting.

Bring in more leads, bring in more, you know, teach.

Teach the community how to fish.

Yeah, but falling in love with practice.

David, I want you to tell the listeners a little bit about how to buy a home podcast.

I'm a huge fan, by the way.

How to buy a home podcast is not just for first time buyers, but I know that's your niche.

Talk about where you started with that podcast and where you are at today.

You're going to hear, you're going to hear a lot of bits and pieces right now.

You as a listener, you're going to hear about how he's falling in love with practice.

But be really specific.

Where is, where is how to buy a home?

Where did how to buy a home start and where is it at today?

It started as it was a direct pivot.

And so for a lot of business owners, just, you know, I think you can look at it from a marketing standpoint if you're a business owner and you're trying to understand how this podcast worked.

For me, it was one of several different marketing pieces that I was trying out.

It was Facebook, it was Instagram, it was YouTube.

Eventually it was even TikTok.

But I started a little late on that, and there was a big push for audio at one point.

And so what I did for my business was I wanted the message to get heard by as many people as possible.

And I thought that I was going to be a YouTube star.

I mean, I was a, you know, a television host.

It seemed like that was going to be it.

But because I didn't know the fundamentals of YouTube and I didn't understand what it took.

What I did was I fell into a smaller fish in a much or a bigger fish in a much smaller pond with the podcast.

And I listened and I understood that there was the average age of the first time homebuyer is 36 years old in America right now.

And I do not think that's because down payments are too expensive and houses are too unaffordable.

Because in the average market where it's a $400,000 average first time home, the average two bedroom is $2,000.

And it doesn't take that much understanding how many 28, 29, 30 year olds do, you know, who have their stuff together and figured out what they're doing in their life.

The problem is, between 30 and 36, they go online and they're not getting clear and concise information.

Well, I discovered when I was doing all these things that podcast listeners are analytical, intense researchers.

And don't let the goofy Persona fool you.

Like I said, I can talk NFL and musical theater equally passionately.

So understanding how to take the goofiness of who I am and my Persona and my character mixed with all the business pieces, I didn't realize that the podcast listener soaks that up.

And so I listened and I learned and realized, you know, at the beginning, as I started to grow, this is something that can happen.

And now we're sitting at, you know, 1.6 million downloads and thousands of first time homebuyers every year getting educated time.

On time.

On time.

1.6 million downloads.

Yeah, man.

Pat yourself on the back.

That's fantastic.

1918, was research I did.

That's the other thing I researched for a year before I started it.

I continued doing real estate full time, and on weekends, I was figuring out how to become a podcaster.

You know, if there's nobody listening to this, if just my team listens to this, like, speak to my team for a second.

I got some team members that are like, I don't know.

I don't like how I sound.

I don't like my voice.

I don't like how I look on social media.

Talk, talk.

If there's no listeners right now, like my mom and a couple of my team members, speak to my team members right now and tell and encourage them to get their voice out there, their face out there.

What can they do to kind of break down that wall of, I don't like how I look.

I don't like how I sound.

There's the happy medium between what you were talking about.

I don't want to be famous, either.

Fame doesn't matter to me.

Educating, helping, and lifting up the consumer, that matters to me.

Fame's a byproduct of the service you put out in the world.

Yes, exactly.

And, you know, I mean, to me, you're like the most famous relational business coach in the country, and that's, to me, you're famous now.

To.

Would my kids think you're as cool as Taylor Swift and Dua Lipa?

Probably not, but I do, you know?

And so it's kind of like, you know, that thing, when the student is ready, the teacher will appear absolutely if they put it out there, somebody in their database is going to go, that's exactly what I need right now.

But if you don't put it out there, don't worry about the packaging.

I mean, I am the biggest dad joke cringy nerd on my podcast, but if you listen to the next sentence, I'm going to hit you with facts and data and real information that's going to help you progress.

So you have a financially stable life.

And so, so the packaging, I think, is get your team out there, get them to do their thing.

Find out what it is, find whatever it is.

If you're good, if you're good at hanging out, then have Monday night football parties and invite your clients.

You know, if you're good at writing blog.

Yeah.

If you're, if you're good with the elderly, show up and, you know, bring some dinner and have dinner around 430 at night or whatever, like, you know, understand who your tribe is.

Right.

I'm hearing that, that theme from, you understand who your tribe is, and if you're Uncle David to people and it's like you can speak their language, then, then go do more of that.

Okay.

So I've, I kind of have a, you know, peek behind the curtain a little bit.

So tell the listeners a little bit about this unicorn network you've built.

Well, one of the things that I noticed, and again, this gets big picture macro business wise.

When you're looking at the way an industry works, you not only have to realize how your team works, but how other teams work and how other larger entities work.

In our world, we have brokers, but then we also have individual teams within the broker.

And understanding how each of those work can help you determine how you want to build your business, where you want to put your own fundamentals, what you want to spend your time improving, and where you want to grow.

Understanding that differentiation is the key in business.

What are you going to be that's different from somebody else?

Everything in real estate is based on numbers, so the broker is constantly recruiting.

Get me more, more people, more realtors, more realtors, more realtors.

You know, the, the real estate company with the most amount of realtors.

That's what they, you know, slap on all their marketing.

We have, you know, the best realtors and the most realtors.

I decided to go kind of elite, go way down and just take the best of the best of the best, you know, and like, if I was that guy from Hoosiers, I, instead of having the team, I'd have five Jimmy Chitwoods and so that's good, by the way.

And I realized right away that you could, because there are 1.3 million realtors.

47% of them didn't sell a home last year, and 87% of realtors quit in five years.

What industry does that like?

How many industries are there?

I like cpas.

Like, 50% of cpas don't do any tax returns.

Are you.

What?

Yeah, bro.

Sorry I called you bro.

That's my Southern California and me.

Oh, good.

That lets you know when I've really, you've really hit me in my heart.

It's like I could go on for hours about it, about.

But the key was I found a hole in the industry and the industry is a big boat that's not going to turn around.

But what I can do is instead of building a business the way everybody else does, where you get as many people as you can and then you play the numbers game.

But what?

That's why I started the podcast, because it bothered me that they were doing the numbers game with the consumer.

Here, go work with this person I'm hoping works out.

And there's an 87% chance when you want to sell your home in five years, they're going to be back at their old job.

That's disgraceful.

And that's not right when you're saying.

The numbers, though, like, just be very pragmatic for a second.

So first time homebuyers typically have a lower average sales price.

And so that's why a lot of realtors, a lot of people in our industry, you know, don't chase after them, but I would challenge that.

And you're the expert on this.

I mean, I feel like I'm an expert, but you're an expert.

From digging into the data, I believe in my 21 years experience, I found that first time homebuyers not only are like the beginning of the life cycle of all business, because they end up having families, they end up moving up, they ended up upsizing.

Their kids move out, and they end up downsizing.

Like it's the most profitable long term client we can have as first time buyers.

And not only most profitable, I think it's the most referable type of clients.

I think when you serve a first time buyer like this is what people don't know about real estate.

In real estate, we don't just serve people who are getting married or people who got a promotion.

The majority, we call it the three ds, death, divorce and delinquency.

You know, when somebody dies, they don't have a group of people around them that everybody dies at the same time, you know, divorce, they don't have, like, a group of friends that are all going through divorce same time.

That would be weird.

But when you're a first time buyer, you're kind of hanging out, right?

Like, you know, like, follows, like, first time buyers hang out with each other, and then they bring all their friends.

I, like, talk to that talked about, like, it's missed because of the low average sales price, but we should not be missing out on this demographic because it's the most profitable and most long term business model there absolutely is.

So I'll give you a real estate specific example that other business owners can figure out a way to do it in their business as well.

When you help a first time homebuyer buy a home, everybody wants to give them a gift.

Everyone wants to give them something.

The simplest and easiest way for you to quad Drupal, the money that you made with that first time home buyer is to hold a house warming party for that first time homebuyer.

They will bring all their renter friends, and if they're, if they're snarky, spiteful people, they're really going to invent all their renter friends so they can rub their face in it.

But I'm being goofy.

But you know, that the fact it's.

And every business owner can find a way to do that when you have someone buying your daughter bought her car for the first time.

I saw it on social media today.

If you sell someone their first car, all of your correspondence back to them should be about what an amazing accomplishment this was and how incredible.

And then they tell all their friends, who are petrified because they've heard the horror stories of going to a car dealership and getting grinded, and so figuring out that there's a referral source, and I laugh.

In real estate, people work like crazy.

I'm going to be the best.

I'm going to be the best.

I'm going to be the best.

And then they go sell the home of Sally, who's been living there for 35 years, and Sally leaves and she downsizes to Florida, whereas, and, great, you made triple the commission.

But if you gave blue Star a ribbon service.

Oh, that was opposite blue ribbon, a plus, gold star.

How about that?

If you gave that service to a first time homebuyer, I mean, the joy that they're going to have bringing people over to their home instead of cramp sitting in an apartment, when they want to watch the Super bowl, when they want to get together for Thanksgiving or the holidays or friends giving just the opportunities to realize that you sell your product to multiple different niches.

Some niches are in that season of life, like you talked about.

It's not everyone gets divorced and dies at the same time, but, boy, everyone does a lot of these things, and all their friends ask them about it.

And if you don't believe me, go to Reddit.

This whole world talks to each other about, how did you do this?

How did you do that?

Yeah.

And at the end of the day, the bottom line is it's still referral.

It's still introduction.

Like they're happening, but they're happening in a different vehicle.

Real quick.

Before we get into winning at the game of life and what that means for you and where you're going to take this podcast, I want the listener to hear this.

So David Sedoni is passionate about first time homebuyers.

If you can't tell.

All right, created.

Created.

How to buy a home podcast, you need to go listen to it.

Even if you don't want to buy a home today, you need to go listen to this podcast because you're going to understand the housing market by listening to this podcast.

It's really good.

I was actually walking my dog listening to multiple episodes of yours, and I'm like, man, this is really good.

I could actually turn this into team meeting.

There's so many different ways to unpack your information.

I'm gonna say this, and I don't know, I'm sure you've thought about this, and I'm sure people have told you this, but they haven't.

I'm the first one.

Sorry about that, because people need to tell you this as a realtor.

A really, really good realtor.

Might sell 20 homes in a year.

Might sell 30 homes in a year.

Really, really good realtor.

If you're in an industry that you're passionate about and you want to pivot into a podcast because you really care about helping people in real estate, we can get paid referral fees.

We can introduce somebody to my friend in Orange county, my friend in Denver, Colorado, in Florida, in North Carolina, and we can get paid a referral fee.

There's things that you need to look at as a business owner.

Where is their revenue to be made from?

That aligns with my core values.

That aligns with the service and the passion that I want to instill into the marketplace.

Make this up.

Has buyer's agents, let me give you some numbers.

The amount of people that he is impacting is surpassing the amount of people he can impact in his backyard.

Think about that.

Think about that.

If you're a landscaper or you're a CPA and you're impacting your client base, that's in your backyard, and you start a podcast because you want to help people with some problem or some challenge, the scale in which you can do that is unbelievable.

And it's because of the work you're doing.

Is that correct?

Yeah.

And what's interesting with the numbers that you gave, those are the ones that became part of my business.

Those are the ones that stayed with the unicorns.

It's double that for people who bought a home.

And I understood the very beginning of my business model.

There were going to be a lot of people that were going to take my education for free.

But again, I'm a business nerd.

And I went and looked at it and thought, okay, this year we're 32% of every single purchase is a first time home buyer.

That's about 1.2 million people.

When we hit our 4 million units at the end of the year, 1.2 million people, fine.

I don't care if 225 people go through the services that I offer and another 300 or 400 just use me for education.

But that also gets deeper into the fact that one of the things I'm focusing on is the education point, and that's helping people a year before they're even shopping for a home.

And that's a whole different part of you can use a podcast, especially if you have a little bit of passion, like you mentioned, a landscaper.

If there's some kind of passion for the career path that you've chosen, you can take the passion part and put that into a podcast that has education and a niche of people.

You will find.

Some of them will listen just to listen and never reach out to you.

But some of them will then eventually look for your area of expertise in whatever that niche is.

You've blessed us, and I want to figure out how we can bless you here for a second.

So I want to talk about winning at the game of life, but I want to.

We won't go into detail because I want people to listen to your podcast.

But here are some things that David shares on his podcast, I believe, and I've heard this from the great coach, Kristen Tabert.

Talking about the problem is usually not the problem, it's how we think about the problem, right?

That's how we think about.

Most people think the problem is the high interest rates right?

Now, I was with my twelve year old son last night, and I know you talk about this stuff on the podcast, and if somebody wants to know more about this, they can listen to my next episode.

Or what I would hope is they listen to how to buy a home.

But I was talking to my son about investment real estate, and we went through some scenarios.

He's twelve.

Okay.

So we were talking about how to buy, like, a $200,000 rental property in our backyard and what that looks like.

And I said, okay, if you're putting 20% down, this is how much you have to put down.

And if it grows this much, here's the thing.

Make up numbers, right?

If you buy $200,000 house and you put 10% down, that's $20,000, and it goes up to 240, what percent of return did you make?

No, I know what you're thinking.

You're calculating 200 to 240, right?

But the cash that you invested was $20,000.

You doubled your money.

That's a 200% rate of return.

Buyers, listen to me.

It's not the rate.

It's not the payment.

It's the investment overall.

And David's podcast will teach you how to be a confident home buyer.

Please go listen to the podcast.

David, winning at the game of life.

What is winning at the game of life look like for you?

We believe on our podcast, relationships win.

And in the game of life, relationships win.

What does winning look like for you?

Okay, this is where I'm supposed to give you a really philosophical, well thought out answer.

And I decided that to really understand myself and be real.

And I'm just thinking this right now.

I didn't think about this ahead of time.

I was.

I was sitting here going, I'm supposed to say something like, you know, really effective.

No.

Here's what winning the game for life is for me.

I discovered this in my third act, and I love it, and I love helping people.

So I don't know is where I'm making enough money that I can do a live stream two or three times a week and be a guru that answers questions like Clark Howard, who used to be on CNN, or Dave Ramsey, or, you know, the people that just people respect.

And then I live in New York City and I go see a Broadway show every night.

That is winning at the Game of life.

The real, like, who I am to my core is I almost feel like I'm up by 20 in the fourth quarter right now because this happened.

I haven't won the game yet, but dang, I get to wake up every day and help and motivate people.

Ten years ago, I wasn't here, but I'm here now.

Help and educate people who, frankly, are being ignored or steered wrong.

And that feels pretty darn good.

And if I continue to do it in this way, you know, there's.

There's little parts of it like, boy, I'd like to really understand how to be a better CEO.

And I'd like to really understand, you know, what my hiring process is going to be over the next five years so that I continue to do.

But then when I say that, I realize all those things are so that I can just live in a position of waking up where some people want to hear the advice and I can come and answer people's questions and help them move forward.

That's awesome.

You're doing it.

And I love it that you're doing it.

In the game of life, relationships win.

And my kids today are like, dad, send this man his flowers.

Send this woman her flowers, which is just accolades and appreciation.

Who's somebody in your life that you want to thank?

Who's somebody you want to send some virtual flowers to that got you here today?

Maybe somebody who's helping you right now, maybe somebody in your past that got you to where you are.

You know, it's interesting because people ask me this all the time.

I've had so many different mentors, you know, the original founder of the high school darts that I went to, a guy named doctor Ralph Obesik, who basically turned my life in a complete direction, much to the chagrin of my soccer coach and all the directors and wonderful people I've worked with.

2006, when I went to a buffini event and I met my coach at an event, wasn't even a member yet.

The first five or six years of my business career, having a coach, from day one, she's affected everything I've ever done.

Her name's Nancy Arroyovia.

She since left the company to go do something else.

But she understanding what a business.

I learned everything about the business, but then I also understood what a business coach can be.

And when you're coming from a place of athletics and performing and you have coaches and directors, it was a new world for me.

And she absolutely is 100% the reason why I am where I am today.

That's awesome.

Great, great answer.

By the way, if you're, if you're a high school athlete, what I heard, David, I heard you say, if you're a high school athlete, and it's like, I'm a track star.

I'm going to run at Oregon.

You know what?

Sometimes life throws you something that you just got to pay attention to, and it's okay to pivot.

And the way you've pivoted to get you where you are today is you mentioned it.

You are winning at the game of life.

And that's awesome.

And my next question is, how can the listener support you?

But I think I know, because you've answered this a lot on your own podcast is, number one, go listen to how to buy a home podcast.

Number two, go leave a review.

It's fantastic.

Go leave a review.

Because that's what keeps things going.

That's what keeps it ad free.

I'd appreciate if you listen to it, especially if you're into my back, if you're in my backyard, listen to David.

Cause when you're ready to buy a home, you're gonna win.

If you're buying a home with us, you're gonna win.

We've actually helped some of the listeners on David's show.

It helped connect us a little bit.

And so I know how the listeners can help you.

How the listeners can help me is if you like this episode, you know, screenshot it, tag me on social media, and if I see some of those out there, I know that you like this content, and I'll make more of it, and I'll bring David back on and we can talk more about how to buy a home.

Today we're talking about how to have a podcast, but anything else that the listeners can help you with.

David, we had a hack on my YouTube channel, so check out the YouTube channel how to buy a home.

It's going to be coming out when this podcast hits the air.

We're going to be starting again.

But howtobuyhome.com is everything you need.

And I will give you a reciprocal plug and throw you some flowers, knowing that we were going to have this opportunity to talk.

And as you know, I do that mobile university in the car.

I've been listening to your podcast and I am learning tons from people from all different walks of life.

And I appreciate so much what you're doing.

Thanks, Brad.

Thanks so much, David.

I appreciate it.

I just, like I said, I grew up in the locker room.

I didn't go to business school, but I got a master's degree in business from the locker room.

And it just taught me a valuable lesson.

It taught me you can learn from people all the time.

You can learn from people like David.

If you have a business right now, you might not be at the level of doing a podcast, but you can learn something.

And that's the beauty of it.

Stay curious, stay hungry, stay humble, and continue to grow.

So, David, thanks for being a guest today.

I appreciate it.

Thank you, sir.

All right, that's a wrap.

Enjoy the episode.

Share this with a friend, and if you don't mind, send us a screenshot, tag us on social media and we'll make more of these.

Have a great day.

Thanks for listening to student of the game podcast.

Whatever game you are playing, I'm cheering for you.

See you in the next class.