How a Construction Worker Became a Millionaire by Building His Personal Brand

Eric Eden:
0:59

Welcome to today's episode. Our guest today is Grant Warrington. He is an entrepreneur and marketing maven. Welcome to the show, Grant.

Grant Warrington:
1:09

Hey Eric, thanks for having me man Looking forward to this.

Eric Eden:
1:14

So why don't we start out by you just sharing a minute or two about who you are, what you do?

Grant Warrington:
1:22

Got it. Yeah, I can start real quick, just from the beginning, that a lot of people when they hear that I know. When I first started listening to podcasts, it was hard to relate. But listen, I was a construction worker 24 years. That's what I did, that's what I knew and that's what I thought I was going to do forever. Now I have an online course, I'm into online marketing and I have built up my personal brand and I'm a real estate investor. I can't forget that. That's where it all started investing in real estate and that's where I came from. So I just I like to put that out there, because some people think that, oh, this is too hard, it's, I can't do this. And, man, believe me, I don't have a college degree. I am not an expert at spreadsheets and all these other things. I'm not an engineer. I'm just a guy that hated having a job and thought I'm going to find another way to get out of this job, and that's what led me here.

Eric Eden:
2:18

I love it. So share with us a little bit about your story. In just a couple years, you've been able to do some great marketing things to transform from being a construction worker to a real estate investor in an online marketer. Tell us about what are some of the greatest marketing things you've done to make that happen in a pretty short period of time.

Grant Warrington:
2:42

So the best thing I've done you and I were talking earlier and the best thing I've done to date, in my opinion, was on New Year's Eve. Grant Cardone, famous real estate investor, sent me a direct message and said I love what you're doing. This was on Instagram and I was like, wow. I was blown away. I wasn't sure it was him at first and he said listen, man, I'm making my 2024 podcasts and I want to be on yours. And he sent me an email address to email his team and we lined that up. I got to go meet him in person in Miami in his studio and had a great podcast with him, and that all came from marketing, and that was marketing my personal brand. So I want to go back, though, because you can look at that and go oh wow, that's awesome, but I never thought I was going to make that happen. What happened was two years previous to that. Now I've been online building my personal brand since 2019.

Grant Warrington:
3:42

But, hit and miss, here and there, I felt like posting a video. Two years ago, I said you know what? I'm going to get intentional and I'm going to post one video one real every single day, and I'm going to start doing that forever, and it's been two years now. We eventually I did it by myself, with my iPhone. I edited the videos. It was a very cheap production. I did everything myself. I wasn't great at it, but I had to start somewhere, and that's where I started, and that consistency over time led to improving my image over time, hiring people, and that led up to now over 50,000 followers on social media across all my platforms 34,000 to date on Instagram and having guys like Grant Cardone see what I'm doing, reaching out, and really, for me, it's been just incredible.

Grant Warrington:
4:37

A lot of people have asked what are you going to get off that branding, and what do you get now that you've interviewed Grant Cardone? And I always tell people it's nothing. I don't expect anything from this. What it is, though, is its social capital, and to me that's huge. So Grant Cardone knows who I am now.

Grant Warrington:
4:56

To me, that's huge. I'm going to meet him again in the future, and just if no one knows who you are, no one can help you or do business with you. And the other thing with the branding is, like I said I teach people how to buy small apartment buildings, and when you go to my account and I have 34,000 followers that I did not pay for and it's really proof, right Like social proof that, wow, this guy probably knows what he's talking about. You can scroll through all my feed. You can see everything I do and I put out there and just having that brand and building it over the last couple of years has really just catapulted my business and it's really getting looks from a lot of eyeballs. I never thought I would.

Eric Eden:
5:39

What I love about this story is you strong together, 700 days of doing the work right, 700 days, two years. Every day you put a reel on Instagram and you figured out how to do it, like you said at the very beginning, and you're very entrepreneurial about it and it's worked to the way you get 50,000 followers is. You put in the work, you do good content and then they come. And I think that the part about Grant Cardone recognizing the good work and saying hey, I want to meet you and saying I want you to, I want to be on your podcast, when you don't even have a podcast, is even further that he just wanted to get to know you. I love that validation for you after putting in 700 days of hard work.

Eric Eden:
6:30

Some people are like I just want to put up a couple of videos and see if I get a lot of glory from doing just a little bit of work. I'm like it doesn't work like that. Actually, I think the start around podcasting is 80% of podcasters give up after seven episodes because they don't immediately see like a huge not following or a number of people doing it. You had to put in the work and the established podcasts are. You had to get to 100 podcasts and then people start to say you're established and then that's when you start getting thousands of people listening to each show because you have a huge library of content. It's not that different than what you're saying is you have to do the work, you have to put out good content and then good things will come to you, right?

Grant Warrington:
7:15

100% and, to be clear, I started doing this because I knew there was me out there in the past. There's a guy like me that needs this content and that's why I did it. I didn't expect anything, and that's the thing I think people, just if you just focus on doing the work and putting it out there and don't expect anything, just put it out there, see what happens and just go with the flow and just dedicate yourself to it with nothing in return, then you're going to be successful. It's just that consistency over time and that's what I've done. Yeah.

Eric Eden:
7:48

I think there's a lot of debate on marketers across different social platforms. People try to keep score by the number of followers, and I think that it's not necessarily just about the number of followers. It's always about also the quality and engagement of the followers, because you can go out and buy 50,000 followers in South America who don't even speak English, if you want to. That doesn't really help build your personal brand, though, in the United States.

Grant Warrington:
8:19

Yeah, and I'll tell you.

Grant Warrington:
8:21

Listen. I was at an event this weekend and it's a high level men's networking event. Gobundance is a group I'm involved in and so I'm there, and there was a guy speaking about doing social media and educating people on social media and he has a company that you can pay him and he will help you. First thing I did went to his social media site and he had 680 followers. So for me, I have 34,000 just on Instagram. Right, I'm like I just I cannot see the value in that. So that's an excellent point.

Grant Warrington:
8:57

If you're branding yourself or you're telling people, I do this, but I cannot show you it in my own personal life or my own personal account. It's a big problem. So I think that consistency there, where people can go back, scroll through your feed, get to know more about you, whatever it is you're marketing or whatever kind of branding, people need to be able to see you and to see who you are and to see you have some followers, because right away, when I see 680 followers, I'm just tuning out and I don't see how somebody can take me to that next level if they can't do it for themselves.

Eric Eden:
9:32

So setting the example and being the example of what your marketing is really important. So personal branding is a big topic on this show, because I'm a big believer that marketers need to build their personal brand, because if they don't even have a good personal brand, how can they build your company's brand? It's different things, but you would think that if people are good at it, they would apply it to themselves, like you were just saying, right? So I'm curious how have you thought about building your personal brand as you went from being a construction worker to a millionaire in just a couple years?

Grant Warrington:
10:13

It has changed. The one thing I did right from the beginning was I built it in my personal name, my personal name. So that's what I tell people to do build it in your personal name, your personal brand. Because I went from construction worker to I was the director of operations for a property management company. I managed 800 units and then I was a realtor full time and then I quit that and became a. So you can see, I did all these different things. So if it would have been Grant Warrington, realtor in Southeast Michigan, now I got a problem. Now I just moved. I live in St Petersburg, florida, so I'd have to change my name on my personal brand right. So I did it right, I built it, and anything I do or change is going to fall under me, because I'm a human being and people like to follow human beings, and if I even gave you the name of my company, you'd probably forget it, but you might remember my name. So I think that's a big mistake a lot of people make. The other thing is to look at when you're building a personal brand.

Grant Warrington:
11:15

I'll talk about realtors just for a minute. I have a friend of mine. He's in Myrtle Beach and he was showing me his YouTube page and good looking guy, good looking wife, and they got a thousand followers or something. He showed me another gentleman that's got 150-some thousand followers and he's asking me what's the difference with ours? And I told him listen, this is a mistake realtors make. They all think that everyone wants to buy a house. No one wants to buy a house. Less than 1% of the people that are following you want to buy a house, and that's the truth.

Grant Warrington:
11:47

So what I suggested to him like in Myrtle Beach, is you're a travel agent. Tell people hey, if you're coming to Myrtle Beach, here's a top five golf courses to golf at. That's interesting. Hey, if you're coming to Myrtle Beach for spring break, here's the five places to stay. If you're coming by yourself and want to party, if you're coming with a family, here's another side. Here's the five places to stay. They're a little more low, key, right? These are all different marketing tips. Here's a great neighborhood, here's the best school, here's this and that. Like, you're a travel agent and people are going to follow you for that content because it's not hi, I have this house for sale here. So it's just learning different ways to brand yourself and looking at it from a big picture and how can I get the most eyeballs on it. And I think that's really important, because just putting listings up as real estate agents is so boring and everyone does it.

Eric Eden:
12:40

Yeah, I think that to be interesting and not boring is a big part of the challenge, and the example that I think is applicable from that real estate example to everybody is those content, suggestions are things that are helpful to the people that they want to engage with. So giving people value, giving people something that's helpful instead of just for lack of a better word spamming them with a high volume of posts that doesn't really do it. It doesn't matter if you have 100 listings or 100 posts. That's not really what does. It is are you putting things out there that are helpful to other people and have you targeted them appropriately? So that example has all the great things in it that lead up to not being boring, right?

Eric Eden:
13:35

Yeah, I don't think anyone sets out to be boring or mediocre, but a lot of people end up there. Unfortunately, 99% of the marketing I get is hey, check out my stuff, check out my listing, check out, here's all about me and it is boring, and so it's very frustrating to see that for me. So when I see the good example the top 1%, like you've pointed out that's what we're all about highlighting. Thank you for sharing these stories with us today. We will link to your website and your Instagram so that people can slide into your DMs, just like Grant Cardone, if they so choose, and connect with you to learn more about this.