What Posting Every Day for Years Taught Me About Business

Aviva (00:00)
All right, part two, commercial estate secrets with Kusima. Kusima's got some questions for me and I figured it would be a shame to not record them. So take it away.

Kusiima Boswell (Terrakotta) (00:11)
Yeah, absolutely. So I guess we spent a lot of time talking about hitting the phones and making cold calls down for dollars. But another really interesting aspect of growing really any business terrakotta is similar to commercial real estate brokerage. A lot of it is like, you know, what can you do to go out to people and let them know? But what can you do to draw people and talk about a little bit with regards to like my question or what I saying around

providing valuable information. But what is so challenging to me is like that, those early days, right? Where you're trying to post things and we're starting to build up a following on LinkedIn and on X and on Instagram. And it's really hard and it can feel very daunting. And so the question that I was really wondering was like, how long did it take for you to hit kind of escape velocity on some of those posts? And like, was it just the same thing like of consistency doing it?

post after post after post, some of them not getting recognized and then eventually there was a big breaker. Was it like a slow thing and what would be your advice to getting started with that?

Aviva (01:13)
Sure, so it is definitely a, I mean, it's the same thing you said, it's a consistency. I wish one post changed my life, that would have made things a lot easier. But no, it's just like, it's like building.

a house with bricks. You just keep laying if you understand that this is a long game, what I always say is commercial real estate is the long game.

If you don't play, you know, people think, I'm going to get into commercial real estate, I'm going to get rich.

100 % specifically if you don't stop and you understand that this is a long game. It's the same thing with content, right?

just relentless

posting, then you also have to look at what you're posting and seeing what converts, what doesn't convert. What's effective? What's not effective? Like, you know, it's funny because you're a caller, dialer, right? A dialer, that's sales, right? You call, you're going to the prospect.

Kusiima Boswell (Terrakotta) (02:10)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Aviva (02:16)
you have to flip the coin. This is marketing. This is people coming to you.

How do you engineer that? That's how we built my brokerage. 99% of what we do comes to us.

so if the question becomes, how are you doing that? What is marketing as opposed to sales for Terrakotta? it's posting value add content that isn't salesy. So the perfect example of this, I love when I tell myself that my own example is perfect, or that I say my own, is like,

Kusiima Boswell (Terrakotta) (02:41)
Mm-hmm.

Aviva (02:50)
You go onto and the commercial real estate community is very, very vibrant on Twitter. Instead of being like, Terrakotta can help you with bullet point, bullet point, bullet point.

Kusiima Boswell (Terrakotta) (02:57)
Mm-hmm.

Aviva (03:04)
Instead, you have to find a different way to communicate that. So like, It's less about selling the product and more about talking about the results and success of the product to be like, I left.

Kusiima Boswell (Terrakotta) (03:11)
Absolutely. Yeah.

Aviva (03:14)
100 voice mails today or made X calls and it's like, well, that's not possible. And then you're like, but here's how. It's bringing value to the person on the other side of the screen because people are inherently A, they don't want to consume your ad, right? We're all like, of the TV commercials that we had to endure in our childhood.

Kusiima Boswell (Terrakotta) (03:17)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Aviva (03:41)
and it's just human nature to not like ads. But if I'm scrolling on Twitter and I see...

something that will bring me value in my day to day and how, then I have a higher propensity to click on it, follow it, engage with it. That's marketing as opposed to sales.

Kusiima Boswell (Terrakotta) (04:05)
Yeah, Absolutely. I think you said it really well. And your example is even great because we call it organic. But you know, when somebody makes a post and say, my gosh, you guys got to check out this tool. This is like the screenshot of what my call session looked like today. know, this is the these are the leads that I've been able to generate. And it's like, I'm able to get the type of efficiency and numbers that I wanted to hit. Like that does

wonders and we get a lot of interest and a lot of folks coming in and saying hey, I saw this post from someone else about that. So I think that's exactly right I think what's tricky for us is like, how do we provide information that's useful and relevant? But you know something that's really interesting is like I was saying We talked to lots of brokers across the country and like one thing that I just do is like how everything is going in your market like what's up with the asset type like

Is it is it or thing is going good like just to kind of connect with folks and I think well one thing that could potentially be interesting and I think we have some good data around like You know best times to call or like when ⁓ You know the types of openers that tend to lead to really good conversations or the voicemail scripts that tend to lead them the most callbacks like I mean even from what you just said like I think there's Tons of things out there that are interesting that

only we would have insight into, that our users would have insight into as well, if they're on the platform as well. But I think that's a great example. It really is about providing value. And that's one thing that I think is so cool about how you, like I was stalking the warehouse hotline Instagram page, and it's like you have super relevant information on like the bill 280 thing, like the bonded warehouses, like how to go through a 1031 exchange.

But it's sprinkled in and there's also like some of the proof stacking stuff around like, hey, look, this is what we're able to achieve for this client. And so the mix is like brilliant. And I was checking it out until I was like, okay, I got to ask kind of some of the thought process behind that. Is that all intuitive or do you have a background in marketing or digital marketing?

Aviva (06:11)
No, it's doing it for a very, very long time. You know, before I was in commercial real estate, I was a musician. And in music, there's a lot of content from musicians or people who want to be successful musicians. And then because the supply is high, the demand for that type of content is low. So I was like posting.

Kusiima Boswell (Terrakotta) (06:14)
Yeah. Yeah.

Thanks

Aviva (06:37)
You know, and nobody cared because I was like a no-named musician, but I was doing commercial real estate as a real job. And like one of my friends was like, you're crazy. Like you should start posting about commercial real estate. And what I learned was there was a low supply of commercial real estate content online. Therefore the demand was there. And so I learned like actually by just like doing it and.

Kusiima Boswell (Terrakotta) (06:52)
Mmm.

Hmm.

Yeah,

it's the best way to do it, I think. quote unquote, founding a startup is the hardest. I mean, I've only had like four or five jobs, I guess, jobs, but it's a hard job because like, there's no guidebook, there's no instruction manual for anything that I have to do on a day-to-day basis to just like figure it out. But you get better at stuff the more you do it naturally. And so I think it's so true, like back to the consistency.

Aviva (07:09)
Mm-hmm.

Kusiima Boswell (Terrakotta) (07:35)
about making those posts. It's also very cool that you're a musician. I didn't know that. DJ and record and audio engineer for a bunch of local artists here in Seattle. It's fun, but I know what you mean. I like the way that you positioned it around supply and demand. I study economics, so that's right up my alley.

Aviva (07:46)
that's funny.

You know, I used to like go to the gym and like meander, not get a lot done. And my husband was like, you need to maximize your time at the gym. Like if you're going to go to the gym and do sit ups, go to the gym and do excellent sit ups instead of half ass sit ups to make the most of your time. If I'm going to make social media content, I want it to be better every time. Right? Like I want to use what I've learned in the past to make better content and

The only way to achieve that, a six pack is through reps. Consistency, back to your commercial real estate secret. So, you know, with Terrakotta, I get it with you have like a brand and then it's like, who's the brand face? I'm assuming it's you.

Kusiima Boswell (Terrakotta) (08:31)
⁓ Yeah, exactly.

Exactly. Exactly.

It me, won't myself, my co-founders were a small team. I think the brand face might be, or maybe mascot is Terry Cotter, who is a rugged, Wild West property owner that is an AI prospect that, that we actually have a leaderboard of. was one of our marketing ideas is if you want to go try that by the way, and try to pitch Terry Cotter, he's hard, but ⁓

All jokes aside, yeah, it'd be us. It'd be like our team and myself and my co-founders.

Aviva (09:12)
You can have a mascot, an AI mascot. I mean, that's the future.

Kusiima Boswell (Terrakotta) (09:13)
Yeah, Terry Cotter, the face of terrakotta.

Yeah,

exactly, exactly.

Aviva (09:24)
So, okay, any other questions before I go get yelled at by these brokers who are calling me incessantly?

Kusiima Boswell (Terrakotta) (09:32)
No, no, no other questions. Thank you so much for answering, answering those.

Aviva (09:36)
That was a joke.

All right, Kusima, if you ever have any other marketing questions, don't hesitate to hit me up.

And for everybody listening, we'll see you next week.