Good morning, good evening, good afternoon. Paul Andrigo here,
realestatepodcastshow.com.
And today's episode is definitely, and I'm totally stealing his words here.
This to me is the Super Bowl of podcasts, as far as I'm concerned,
because I had the just, for some reason, I had the crazy idea to reach out to
this guy with absolutely no idea of what he might say or if he would block my email.
But he was kind enough not to just reply, but without even saying a word,
just literally booked the podcast session.
So I want to welcome to the podcast show for the first time, Mr. Gary Gold.
So thank you so much, Gary, for joining me. You're welcome.
By the way, I said yes, but right after that, I did block your email.
So you're not going to be able to reach me anymore. This will self-destruct
after we're done reporting.
So this is a real estate podcast show, and we're doing this on audio,
but we're looking at each other on zoom and behind
this young man he's got what
looks like some version of a stratocaster and he's got a les paul yeah is that
a stratocaster that's a copy that's a samik that's my that's my cheap strat
copy that i got when i was 13 and i'm never selling it yeah yeah and then And he's got a flying V,
like Gene Simmons guitar over there. Yeah.
And then he's got something I have not seen before.
I think that's for, oh, that's for playing. I think that isn't even the guitar.
I think that's just playing for, uh, playing a rock star. What's that game where you pretend?
No, actually. And this is the first time I've ever actually.
Is that a six string? Nobody, nobody talks about my guitars usually.
And I don't usually do the video, but this is actually. A ukulele.
A Hoffner mini guitar. It's a travel guitar.
So it's actually, you can completely play it. And it's the closest thing I could find.
To the, to the back to the future guitar.
It's the closest thing I could find to that, that when I was looking and anyways,
I saw it and it's a Canadian made guitar. So I kind of just.
Those Canadians really, they're like in the forefront of guitars.
You're not wrong. You're not wrong. It's, it's, it's. And I was really sarcastic. Are you?
Oh, but yeah, Hoffner. I don't know that much. Yeah. No, there's other names.
Yeah. For a couple hundred bucks, you can add another one to your wall, which could be cool.
Do you know who Samantha Fish is? I do not.
This is like the most badass guitar player. She looks like a Hollywood starlet from the 20s. Okay.
Jane Mansfield. Who does she play with?
And she has her own band. Oh, her own band. And she plays like Eric Gales or
Stevie Ray Vaughan. She's ridiculous.
But her signature guitar, she plays a lot of things. She plays like a $300 cigar
box guitar and she plays slide on it.
And she just is, she is such a like, what is going on?
And she plays with everybody. She's big in the blue seat.
So that's amazing. That's amazing.
I'm going to look that, I'm going to definitely look her up. Samantha.
Yeah. Fish. Fish. Okay. I just discovered her recently and I was like,
what is going on here? And then almost just in a little corner,
and it looks like you have a guitar that maybe palm or a bass guitar.
Paul McCartney would have played in the sixties. I don't know what it is.
I could be wrong. Oh no, that's a, that's an acoustic. Yeah.
Oh, that's just an acoustic. That's just the acoustic for, you know,
when, when, when, when, when the teenagers want me to bust out some old tunes.
All those old tunes from the nineties. But I get Gary, this is amazing.
The, I, I, again, And I've got obviously things I want to ask you about.
And of course, I'm so curious about, of course, you know, your career and some
of the amazing things you've done.
And I know you've talked about some of them, but I'm hoping that I can do,
which is what I've tried to do with this thing, is to try to have a little bit
of a unique spin on maybe things that you've talked about, but maybe sort of
go into a different direction.
And certainly we started that with the music discussion.
But of course, again, I know how valuable your time is, and I'm really pumped
up about, you know, obviously getting a chance to virtual, whatever this is
called. I still don't know. There's a name for it.
Virtual meets digital. Maybe we should call it.
It's it's, it's two guys bullshitting. That's what it is.
It is. It absolutely is. For me,
this is the whole purpose of any good podcast. It's two people at a pub.
And this is my, my other passion besides guitars and music is rugby.
And I'd say if I, if I have any social skills at all, and I'm not saying I do, they were learned.
After the rugby game, after you basically try to pound somebody into the ground
for two hours and then make sure that's the person you buy the first beer for. That's the rule.
So in real estate, we kind of do that to each other. It is.
It's a full contact sport. Very much.
Same injuries. But by the same token, we have to cooperate with each other in most areas.
There's some that are a little different but we have to cooperate
each other if you are too much of a dick it can
bite you in the ass where someone is rude or condescending or isn't just cooperative
and then all of a sudden they have an offer on one of your hot list things it's
probably not going to work out very well for them all things being equal i mean
i think it would be crazy i am into.
Have your personal feelings get involved in something representing your client
yeah but But it certainly is a note when someone is not cool and they might
not be good to work with and they might be difficult.
That's definitely not a plus when you get to pick who you're going to go with
and what buyer you're going to go with and what agent.
Because, you know, interesting, when the market's hot, when there's multiple
offers, one of the things you're handicapping, who's going to be,
what deal is going to close?
What deal is going to close? And one of that part of that handicap process is
who do they, who represents them?
Cause that person represented some, I mean, some people are just amazing at
keeping a deal together.
I think one of our big jobs in real estate, and I tell this one,
I go and listen to appointments.
I had this one guy and I said, you know what you're hiring? You're hiring me to manage you.
You're hiring me to make sure
that you do what you set out to do today four
months from now when you're in the middle of it that's what my job is i guess
you're right so so instead of property management it's people management so
to speak yeah and uh it's very expensive i think it can be very costly to have grudges in real estate.
I have one friend in me, but we actually are like a joke about it.
I mean, there's one guy I just think is just a piece of work.
Yeah. But we actually last year spoke.
We did two one-hour sessions in front of a group. And we literally don't think much of them.
But just because I don't like them and just because I have issues with them
doesn't mean they're not a good agent. Absolutely.
There's just no doubt about it. So you totally get the rugby analogy. Not everyone does.
And whether you've played or not, what I'm talking about is being passionate,
being competitive and all that stuff that you kind of have to do to,
you know, feed your family.
But at the same time, you've got to have that. That's the collaboration thing, by the way.
It's not huge. I mean, I wish it was bigger, but it wasn't huge in real estate.
But when I started this thing in 2018 and I started just asking everybody that
was interesting that I knew in real estate and music and small businesses,
I said, I'd love to share your story. Do you want to come on?
It's almost like you did, like just snap of the fingers.
Absolutely. Would love to come on and share the story. So the collaborating thing is great. Yeah.
I get the rugby analogy, but don't mess with my ears.
Then it's a different story. Don't fuck with my ears. Your ears?
I don't want to get those cauliflower ears.
Well, that's what you mean. Yeah, okay. I got you.
That's definitely, yeah, that's one of the side effects, unfortunately.
The first time I saw rugby, I was in Fiji and I watched the game.
It's bizarre. I mean, a scrum, if you've never seen it, you have no frame of
reference. Yeah. It's bizarre.
And then I got it. I really got into it. We were watching. It was the playoffs
and rugby's big in Fiji and Australia.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Outside of, I think outside of the US, obviously it's pretty big in Canada,
but still not huge. But outside, like you said, South Africa,
Australia, New Zealand, Ireland, Scotland, like it's, it's second language stuff.
Like it's, you know, you, you, you, you sort of, you're born and you play one
of those things that soccer, of course, is still the biggest in the world.
But you know, the joke is eventually you pick the ball up and then you want
to start hitting people.
That's, uh, uh, some evolution joke that comes along with the rugby.
So again, Gary, this is again, such a great honor for me to have you on here.
And again, I want to try to make it so that, again, I know you've been on different
podcasts and you've got your own and I want to make sure people know about that.
And obviously I want people going to, uh, you know, to listen to you.
Cause I know I have, and I've learned a lot from there. So I want to know a
little bit about what sort of, I guess, was the, the earliest sign for you.
Cause I know that you were in, I believe a different career,
like many of us were before. Yeah.
So what was the earliest sign for you that real estate or being in real estate
was something that you were going to pursue?
Because obviously, you might remember. My first career, I was a professional
boxer at a supermarket. I was boxed groceries.
Okay. All right. I was 16.
That was my first. I worked at Gelson's Market in Encino, and I boxed groceries.
So as a kid, it was my first job. I did not have a career before real estate.
I was in high school, and I made the grave mistake. I've said this a thousand times, so it's not new.
I just tried to paint my car, which Jews should not try to paint their car. It's not in our blood.
And I destroyed the car. I had to take it to Earl Shive, get it painted for $29.95, sell it for $12.
And I had no car. And my brother said, my brother was in real estate and he
was making a lot of money and he was young. No one was young in real estate back then.
And he said, come work for me and I'll buy you a car. So that was my entree to real estate.
Zero interest whatsoever to get in real estate. And I actually have struggled
with wanting to be in real estate.
For a good part of my career, I've had this love-hate relationship with it.
So you weren't looking, so speaking on a relationship type of situation,
you weren't looking for her.
She wasn't looking for you, but you sort of found her, so to speak.
When I got in real estate, it was not a cool business.
It was not like everyone. No one grew up wanting to be a real estate agent.
It just didn't exist. Or sales, yeah. yeah right you
know what real estate real estate was for like
the the cliche was the housewives that
were you know i guess their kids are grown or but you know i'm sure it went
beyond that but all you needed to get in real estate was a license a business
card and no better options okay but i got it at 17 i was just in his assistant
got my license shortly thereafter And that's how I got into it.
But I was really good at the... At first, I just did marketing.
I did marketing for my brother.
And I had no background whatsoever. I mean, I came out of high school,
not college. I had no marketing background.
And I really wanted to be like a comedian or a screenwriter.
So basically my version of of being
in marketing was just being a smart ass so all our postcards our billboards
are all this stuff we went big because he's making some good money and it was
kind of outrageous and it was funny and that's what i did so at the time people were so,
it was so conservative and it was so nothing it wasn't even in pictures in the mls and then
we come along and we're doing these outrageous things
and my brother stood out like
a sore thumb he's this 21 year old good-looking
kid who ran around in tennis shorts
or etc and everyone else was like
three times his age and just
kind of just you know vanilla and
our business blew up and it was kind of like there i'm sure other people had
done it at some point maybe or other people were doing it was the first like
person who like branded themselves in real estate like some character like there's
a lot of people that just have a persona in real estate and have a.
I may have started it. I'm not sure. But I was definitely a pioneer in that,
not really even knowing that we were doing that. I was just trying to be a smart ass.
Okay. So you're basically saying that you may have started it based on a dare
or just, again, as you said, as a sort of a joke.
It wasn't even a joke. Not a joke.
Do marketing yeah i thought the purpose of i knew the purpose of marketing was
to attract people yeah and i the only way i knew to attract people was to do
something funny and my humor.
Leans towards sarcasm even at 17 so
we did all these sarcastic clever fun things
nothing and nothing hurtful or
anything like that but they were just i wanted to be clever
and i wanted to be funny and it
worked unbelievable and we
blew up and that's my that was my forte into real
estate it was being the marketing person who created
my brother's brand who did something
no one had ever done at the time and it wasn't some great
the only my only objective was
to okay i'm i i don't
want to be in real estate but i do want to be funny so let's
be funny and i do like getting attention so let's
get let's let's get attention to this brand and do
it funny and people go like that's clever for some
reason in my mind i thought if people thought we were clever they'd think we
were smart and we would stand out and they would work with us and it was true
obviously again whatever and this is this is not even a quote for me but i've
brought this up way too often in in my podcast,
but I'm hoping that you'll get the reference or the quote is by Joe Walsh of the Eagles.
And in the documentary of the Eagles, one of the things he says is as you look
at your life happening, it looks like a bunch of random events all bumping into
each other that make no sense.
But when you look back at it, it looks like a finely crafted novel.
100%. There you go. So I hear you guys, and this is just by just,
the luck of the draw and just again someone watching over me whatever it is
whenever i get to sit down with you guys who are in my opinion you know some
of the best storytellers in our business,
i hear these random sort of you know events that sort of got people to where
they are and of course for you that was the beginning of your journey so obviously
it started that way and clearly it was enough there was enough good stuff happening
where you decided to okay take it up to the next level And clearly you've took it,
you've taken it beyond that, but what was your sort of,
once you started to sort of get into it for yourself and really start, you know,
start picking up speed, so to speak, I guess, was there a point that you thought,
okay, this is for me, this is the thing I, I, you know, I'm,
I'm going to do now, so to speak.
Yes. Yeah. Still, no, was successful.
Always thought I wanted to do something else. I never wanted to be in this business. I know, but,
As smart as I am in some things, I just didn't have the foresight or the ability
at that time to, like, how do I do something else?
Like, I really would have wanted to be a screenwriter or a stand-up or a lyricist.
And by the way, if people want to be a lyricist, just can't play that fucking instrument. That's it.
If I could write a song and play the guitar about it, I would have watched a
guitar. I was going to bring his name up before.
And again, this is going to be a music podcast, whether we like it or not,
at this stage. But Rick Rubin, that's one of the things he says in almost every
podcast, because I've listened to his podcast like crazy.
You can't play anything. Can't play a thing, but knows what he likes enough
to be able to be very, very convincing to the musician that this is how it should sound.
He's the one-off. Yeah. That's true. That was shocking that he doesn't know
anything about the board. He doesn't know the fucking music.
He doesn't know anything. But he probably knows more than he's leading up to.
I would guess it's it's of course it's a great sound clip
of course i'm i'm i'm guessing there's got to be something in
there that clicked at some point maybe he knows three chords i
don't know but you don't really need you don't you don't even need no more than three
chords for the most part if you play
them right but yeah so
again i hadn't i had really
again no interest and then but i knew at
30 yeah i had i owned
a company i mean i got my brother went into
some other business and then i bought companies i had a
successful real estate company in my early 20s
okay and i was doing it but i still didn't
think that was the thing i would be doing i was
just doing it um i also had a very successful
drug addiction going on okay and 26 that came to a fierce crash again and went
into rehab got sober pulled myself back together became more successful than ever.
And when I turned 30, I said, if I'm going to do this, I want to go on the big lease.
If I'm going to do this, if this is going to be my business,
I want to go to the highest level.
And Jeff Hyland had been literally for seven years.
I did one deal with him earlier, and we'd always refer business back and forth.
He was in Beverly Hills. I was in the San Fernando Valley.
And he kept going, you've got to come to Beverly Hills and work.
And at 30 i just gave up my
business in the valley and the company i
had and i went to go work for him and that's
when i said okay i'm going now i've had even after that i've had several times
where i just wanted to get out several times and always trying other things
and related to real estate or not
so i love the business now there's no question about it i've been on a uh.
Love affair with it for about 14 years
okay it's it's really
interesting i did not know that part about the part about your 20s and the fact
that you mentioned again you're brave enough to mention it here about dealing
with addiction and this is something that by the way yeah yeah if i was 30 if
i was 30 if i was 37 days sober i wouldn't be talking about it but 37 years
sober i don't think Yeah, yeah, yeah.
You're working with Gary. He's got a drug problem.
I think I'm good. No, no, no. And all I'm saying about the fact that you faced
it again, way back when you did.
And of course went on from there is, is it something that I actually learned?
I was, I was in the, the fitness and health business for about a decade before real estate.
And the thing that I dealt with for the most part is people coming in,
facing their addictions everywhere, everything from food to smoking to stress, all those things.
And this is where for the weirdest, this is the weirdest thing.
This is where I met the majority of the top performing realtors and lawyers
and business people in the city at that time.
When I was in my late teens, early twenties, they were all forties and fifties
and literally, what do you call it?
Mandated by their doctors to show up they didn't want
to be there they wanted to be out doing business they literally
were on sort of that last call at the bar type thing like they you got to do
something else so i again i'm giving you kudos for what i quit all those i lost
100 pounds in the last 25 years i found 25 of it but lost 100 pounds after i
got sober and i quit smoking so So I am a quitter.
But the one thing is I have a ridiculously addictive personality.
And I remember my ex asked me if I ever was diagnosed with this.
Have you ever been diagnosed with this?
With Asperger's? I said, no, have you ever been diagnosed with Tourette's?
But then I was thinking about it. Like she just really, she goes,
if you were a kid today, would you be, you know, would you be diagnosed with being on the spectrum?
I go on the spectrum. I am the spectrum.
Obviously I'm highly functioning, but I'm very obsessive and very distracted.
So I'm like, but it looks like I'm normal because I'm just,
I'm just about a bunch of different things bouncing all over the place,
but I've had to definitely, and I don't know to what degree I didn't diagnose myself,
but I really have to have systems in place and I really need to have a plan
or I can get too obsessed about something and too obsessed about a distract with a bunch of things.
But to your earlier point, this series of unrelated things, all of a sudden,
when you look back, it looks like this just poetic story.
Everything that I've done in the past, I remember I started teaching about 15
years ago, speaking at conferences.
And people would say, why did you do that? Because I spent a lot of time and
there didn't seem to be some real outcome.
And I remember saying, I have an agenda. i just
don't know what it is and i just
started taking that teaching and
speaking and i created a course which i
just finished the first session yesterday amazing amazing and it's called compete
and beat the best where i teach agents how to beat people like me and but what
was so poetic is that the reason I'm such a good teacher,
and I only say that because it's been reinforced to me so many times, because I don't...
If anyone said, what would you like to do, teaching is not even on the list.
I wouldn't even say that that would be my nature, but the combination of being
in real estate over 40 years, being sober.
Those two... And then being in real estate 40 years, being sober, and
also having a failed comedy career all three
of those make for this great speaker and this
great communicator i mean stand up you
take information and you boil it down into as few words as possible and you
make it so it's very you know how to get people's attention aa is for people
which i don't think there's too many people that are pretty familiar with it
and you know to one degree or another.
It's especially in LA. It's just a hotbed for public speakers.
People go there and you learn how to speak to other people with similar.
Interests similar people like-minded people yeah
so when i teach i do approach
it like not instead of one alcoholic talking to
another and that is the foundation of aa and
12-step programs it's one person with
an affliction talking to another it's one agent talking to another there's a
lot of teachers out there that they are great teachers i mean phenomenal but
not that many that are actually active in the business and that's like what
i do I'm just one agent talking to another and they know what I'm talking about.
I know what they're talking about. It gets very relevant.
So it's been a lot of fun teaching this course.
And I don't, when I'm doing it, I definitely go, oh yeah, now,
now I understand why I went through all those things.
Well, and obviously I've sort of unofficially, I've taken your,
the masterclass that you offered and I'd call it that because when I was listening to,
I was listening to it again this morning just to sort of remind myself of
some things the the podcast that you did with tom ferry
the uh sort of the good one yeah that that
to me should be framed and if you can frame a podcast that would be the one
that you should frame in real estate but i mean it was just so yeah so tom's
really good and that actually after i did that that was one of the sparks i went.
Because Tom, who is just such a great speaker, such a great teacher,
known him for a long time,
he's sitting there like he was so blown away
how prepared i was and how specific
i was and it was just such a great combination he
just was not in his head the whole time and it got a
ton so many people come up to me and talk to me
about that court about that podcast yeah and that probably is the foundation
of like okay why don't i do this about every facet of what matters in real estate
and put that into a course. And that's brilliant.
That's, and again, obviously I'm going to make sure everybody at the end of
this thing knows how to reach you and how to get into that.
But of course I want to make sure that we cover all the, you know,
all the basis of the, of the gold experience, so to speak.
So obviously you got to the point where you were doing it on your own and then
you joined, as you mentioned, in your thirties, you, you went to work with Highland.
And so, and at that point you decided that you were going to go for,
and again, I refer to this again, probably I should be, you know,
sending you residual checks, the Superbowl, the Superbowl reference that you
made to certain sales or Superbowls.
Yeah. I didn't know at the time I didn't have that reference.
I just wanted to be successful.
And in San Fernando Valley, I was a big deal and I was really successful.
I went to Beverly Hills and I didn't know one Canyon from the next.
And i remember and i got a desk i
would you know he was really happy to see me he told me i'd make
a million dollars but he didn't give me a private office and
i remember being at dinner this is how it all started and it's so on top of
super bowl rings we all i think every agent has an opportunity they get these
opportunities and if they if they recognize it they jump on it and then they
leverage it, it can change the trajectory of their career.
I've had several, but this was one of them.
I go to a restaurant at Palm.
Palm Restaurant, and I run into a client from the Valley who is in the music business.
And he was in promotion. Now he's in management. And he's managing an artist.
And he introduces me to her and says, would you help us find a lease?
She needs something for a couple grand a month.
Not a big moneymaker, not even something I really do. But I had nothing else
going. And I said, yes, absolutely.
The guy's a manager, he's in the business, he's an old client. i
need to get some momentum going and this is
what's been offered to me so i perceived
this woman as if
she wanted to buy something for 10 million dollars
and because it took it took us probably a
month or two to get her even out but by
the time she was going to get out she was having some success and she wanted
to buy a house and i sold her a house for 800 grand and it was a listing i had
that was like from the that i had there was a someone i knew from the valley.
And i convinced her why don't we and it was a valley house
i said why don't you let me list this i'll bring buyers from
the west side and lo and behold someone who was
from the west side i showed it to her her name was connie selica she
was a famous actress yeah i know the name she was like the movie of
the week queen she's married to john tash movie the week queen she
wasn't married to john at the time and so i
sold i double pop they sold connie and
oh by the way the person who wanted the two thousand
dollar one place was paula abdul and at
that point she had she had a hit song on the radio
she buys connie's house connie
now wants to buy something for like three million
dollars and then paula in like
overnight became one of the biggest stars
in the world and we became friendly and
so literally within like
a month or two of moving into
this house and after she remodeled it she wanted
something bigger and she did she should she had a lot going on wanted to be
in the gated community so i was taking both connie and paula out to see houses
and i had the bright idea there wasn't a lot of inventory the market was pretty hot but there was.
Excuse me there was.
A bunch of new construction going on all over Beverly Hills and Bel Air and the hill.
And they were just these developers that would build one or two or three houses, all individual guys.
And I just started driving up and down the streets in the communities and walking
on construction sites. I'm introducing myself and saying, would you be open
to showing your home now under construction?
I've got these, I have a couple, you know,
a plus clients and with
and i told them who they were and they all said yes so i
am reading around connie and paula like one after another to literally 20 different
houses 25 different houses and i ended up selling connie i didn't get a deal
with she bought like a fixer somehow,
after me and i wasn't involved so i
missed that one but paul i did sell one too but even
more valuable than that i ended up
with about over the next couple years like 25
brand new listings of new construction homes i it just put me on the map i went
from zero to hero based on that and it was saying yes to two thousand dollar
a month lease that in the back of my head i thought but I didn't have anything better to do.
And it seemed like there could be some opportunity there. More with the managers at the time than her.
It really ended up being her. At the time, her was Paula.
I don't know who she was. She wasn't anyone of note. I think she was the Laker
girl. So I think if you were...
I think she had a little notoriety because she was the head of the Laker girls.
She's a great dancer and she was a choreographer.
And so she had that, but still not at the time. You know, we didn't have social media like we did today.
She might've been well known in certain circles. Yeah.
Well, obviously, yeah, that definitely sounds like you took,
and this is the thing about, I've always, I've had these conversations with,
you know, some of the big shots, I'd call them in Toronto, over the years.
And at one point, a few years ago, one of them said to me, what are you still doing?
Why are you still dealing with rentals? And this was probably,
you know, five or 10 years into the business.
Why are you still dealing with rentals? I go, I don't, I don't really see them
as rentals. I see them as relationship building exercises.
So no, there's not much money there, but actually in a, in a,
in again, in a very appreciative way, there was enough money there to pay for
diapers and to cover some bills.
It wasn't a lot because in Toronto anyways, we get a half a month from a rental.
So if I was doing that $2,000 a month rental, I would have got $1,000.
So at a certain stage in life, that's still a pretty good amount of money and
it paid a few bills, but it built relationships and that's something that you're
definitely, and I don't know if that's part of.
Yeah, I just brought something up for $65K a month. I just have something.
I have like three things at least right now.
I look at it as a couple of things.
It's like going in the batting cage.
Right. Rentals, the clip and the tone and the way you handle rentals is way
more aggressive than you might handle a sale. Yeah.
And it gets you really into like bam, bam, bam, bam.
You don't screw around as much. So it's really good for just keeping it lubricated.
It's really good for relationships.
Those people often do want to, at some point, sell their home.
In my case, some of these things do pay really well.
I have one home. I've been leasing from $30,000 to $40,000 a month for now six years. Okay.
It doesn't suck. I mean, it's actually kind of a fun mission to get. I can imagine.
I can imagine. The other thing it provides is exposure.
You have a property on the market with photography, and it's just, it's exposure.
So to all those things, I do it. It is...
Some people don't like it and think it's a waste and it might be for some people.
I think it's part of the, uh, just being of service. Um, I think it works.
Well, obviously, yeah, it, it, it sort of is that sort of that random series
of events that got you from where you were from the, you know,
the, the, the bad car paint job to, to starting in real estate to where you are now.
And of course, in between you had this little tiny sale that you talk about sometimes,
but involving the playboy mansion this you know sort of
small sale on your oh i can work yeah
it's not my biggest it's not my biggest but i'm not
saying in your case i'm not i'm not even questioning that but the fact is it's
it's of course sort of a big deal it is well at the time than a big deal yeah
yeah it was the first house to sell in la for over 100 million i'm like the
roger banister of luxury real estate.
I broke that four-minute mile of real estate. That's going in the podcast quotes.
Roger Bannister of real estate. Yeah.
Love it. And that's when I came up with the term Super Bowl ring. Yeah.
And it's true. It's just, you know, at that point, that is something,
if you leverage, you can change the trajectory of your career. I did leverage it.
There was someone who sold a home for a couple years,
back a few of them someone sold something for 70
which at the time was the most expensive home ever in beverly hills another
person that sold a home for close to 90 years
before that was the biggest sale in la
up to that point i don't remember
either of their names yeah they did
not leverage it so yes i did that
but interestingly enough as i said i've had a love
affair and my trajectory has not been pretty it
just hasn't been this straight shot up in 2009
i found myself just couldn't get
a listing in my life depended on it i took a
detour and got into developments because that seemed really sexier and i acquired
all over vegas and fiji everywhere these massive developments but probably added
up to maybe a half a billion dollars a billion dollars there's a lot of listings,
all all on the come I had a couple that actually there's some we sold that had 105 units that we did.
And another one just 30 that we did another one that 16 we did but for a long
period of time most of it never even got.
Off the ground or it just failed
and i was no longer involved in and you know it
was in moth balls for a while in 2009 to
remind people listening was probably not the most
you might you may not have felt the most amount
of wind in your sails just from what was going on
in the states at the time am i am i correct or not yeah yeah
i don't remember it was eight or nine i think it was eight it's close
enough to to when you know when the whole thing happened yeah
yeah i think it was september i called a client that
we were going to buy this property downtown and build
a saint regis hotel and residences yeah
amongst other things we were doing together he also owned
a property in vegas that's one of the big famous
hotels today and it was a condo hotel and i was going to be selling the
balance of those excuse me
blessing thank you so i
called him to talk about you know putting the
offer in on this property downtown we're also
in you know working on having the it
was the cosmopolitan in vegas it's gonna be selling
half of it like 1500 units they were condo and
it just all
blew up it just but i remember i called him
he goes you didn't hear i go hear about
what he goes there's no more money it's over
yeah these things are done he was so black
and white clear about something and i.
Had to you know with my tail between my legs had.
To go back into residential real estate which i.
Still was a little bit in but not enough to where
i remember being at the airport and people someone
came up to and goes are you still in real estate oh god it's.
Like the kiss of death that's so i had that's reinvent
myself i am i i don't know
am i yeah yeah i had to read so
in 2009 i had to reinvent
myself one more time and i was i spent a lot of years in development got very
few dollars out of it was financially in not a good place and literally wanted
to quit i just again had no better ideas.
And I remember going on a listing appointment that people go for three million bucks.
Before I was having more expensive listings, no problem. And I was a great closer
at a listing appointment. And they go, show me what you sold in the last year.
And I had nothing to show them. And,
That's when I started to go, okay, how can I compete with this other guy who
had this new cool business, he was on a roll, how am I going to compete with him?
I started to figure a few things out, and I started to put this plan together
and position myself and brand myself and come up with some unique thing about me.
And at the time, it was, and this was very hard to convince people of until it wasn't.
Yeah i owned from the
developments i ended up but it's a long story but i
owned the zip codes in beverly hills
and the beverly hills and and the sunset strip a hundred percent of all the
zip codes on zillow at the time no one in our area would register their name
for zillow which meant at the time you have a listing and your name is not on it.
And my name is on the corner on it. Yeah.
And also at the time people were looking at houses primarily on their computer.
So they'd be searching for a home in on the left side, three quarters of the page on the right.
There's my picture. Every time they're looking at houses and Hollywood Hills or in Beverly Hills.
So if someone's looking for a week or two weeks or six months and they're ready
to call somebody and look for a number and they see the person they've been
seeing for a year, a million times.
I started getting leads on Zillow like crazy. And at this time, it was equivalent.
In my area, a bus bench is not a good look. It's just not elevated enough for people around here.
And Zillow was considered the cheesiest thing in the world.
I jumped on it. And I only jumped on it because I bought advertising on Zillow
when I had a development. And all of a sudden, I started getting some calls.
So that's how I just reinvented myself through Zillow.
And I took that relationship with Zillow to the highest level.
I started doing things on Zillow that the people running it,
Spencer Raskoff and Greg Short started reaching out to me going,
wow, that's really clever.
It wasn't what it is today. It was having some success, but it was at the early stages.
I became their poster child for luxury real estate. Because that was a market
they really weren't breaking into.
So you cranked the real estate improv level up 20 notches.
Obviously, you were doing things that they couldn't imagine,
which is what a lot of companies, no offense to Zillow or anybody else that's
really great at what they do producing things, but they might not be thinking
on your level just because. Right.
They're doing something right. different they're doing something right
and you're doing obviously you know just you're you're adding
steroids to the mix sort of thing right what happened is
on so when you but when you bought by the way
what you when i first got on zillow what you paid for was banner advertising
on the top yeah or something on the side the like when you buy a zip code and
you get your name on the side today which is their main product yeah that was
that came if you bought the banner advertising It was free.
But that's what was converting. That changed shortly thereafter.
But when you bought that, when you were on the side as a bonus,
you also got another box towards the bottom that had your face on it.
And you pushed that link and it would go to your profile on Zillow.
So I realized that profile on Zillow is just a link. and I switched that link
for a bio of me on a video describing who I am and what I do.
And when they caught wind of that, they went, that is clever.
I started doing classes for them. I did webinars for them.
When they would go on the road with Inman Reboot or something like that,
I was their poster child. They used me as an example.
And that relationship ended up really leading to a lot of good things.
Absolutely. It sounds like, yeah, it sounds like you definitely did.
Again, something else that you sort of has been a theme through the podcast
is you've leveraged, you know, your positions wherever you were.
So that was unrelated. As you said, you weren't necessarily looking for that
situation when you started with Zillow, but you took it and you obviously got
it to, you know, bring you up from,
as you mentioned, 2009 and you couldn't give away the listing or as we joke,
You wouldn't, you know, you take a dog house as a listing. That's the worst joke there is.
And it's true because when you're starting out, you feel that way.
But that's where you were. And you obviously brought it way up from there to, you know.
Well, when I left developments because it was dead, I kept the zip codes.
I said, and then they started selling the zip codes. I got to own these.
And then I started and it took a second to really come through.
And it was really hard to convince sellers in
2009 and 2008 that the
internet is where you're going to get business that
three million dollar listing i couldn't convince that but i
did what i did as a result of having this relationship with
zillow they gave me this millions they asked me
if i would list this million six home owned by
ashton kutcher and donate my commission and
to charity and i said yes and what
happened is i did that and we sold the house and
in addition to that we used selling his house as
a vehicle to raise money
for charity it was for child trafficking which
i didn't even know existed at the time yeah and
i remember when ashton told me about that about
this cause he had i went i just didn't even
believe that was real and obviously it's very very
real so donating my commission to that we also
turned his house into like a design house where different
designers would decorate a room and then
we sold tickets to that house via the guilt group and at that event which i
was at obviously there was an architect named william hefner who i met and his
wife had done one of the rooms we struck up a conversation.
I had someone I thought would work really well with them. I referred him to
a big job at the time. It was a big job for him.
He's one of the biggest architects in the city. It wasn't any big deal today,
but back then it was a million bucks. And.
I also said to him, I said, if you ever had a client that has a question about
real estate, am I building too big of a house? Is it not big enough?
Is it the right type of house? What do you think of this area?
Happy to answer it for him.
And like a year and a half later, he called me and said, I have a client that
thinks he overbuilt. Can you go talk to him? And I did.
That guy turned into a client. I ended up selling that house.
I ended up selling him another house and then another house. and he
also ended up being the managing partner
of private equity company that don't
playboy and i had a shot i just had a shot yeah years later but i didn't have
the credentials to list it but i went through a process but all these things
from like taking that at the beginning having no business when i got
in the business and this also when i had met
this guy who i was selling homes for and he
wasn't deciding it was a board of directors and i
just had a shot and i really wasn't the
person with the cred to sell that kind of house yeah
i looked for what cam and
i have a saying i love so what you got yeah both
times i said okay how i
bullshitting doesn't work people are too smart doesn't work
but you can sell somebody not
that i knew i wasn't going to sell the people
early on that i was the most successful agent i could sell them
that i'm the most inundated agent i've been someone who's been in the business
30 years and i've got the most innovation and this is what it is the internet
marketing online and this is how i do it no one else really has a clue about
how to do it like i do yeah and i got some traction on that and it led to.
You know one thing after another after another when it came to going to the
highest level competing literally against the three or four biggest agents in
the country i didn't convince them i was on their level or i had their success
i convinced i persuaded them i was the best agent for that.
And I knew what my competitive advantages were.
I hedged the bet and brought in someone else that I thought would add that competitive
advantage of credibility.
Amongst a number of other things. Yeah. And I was very strategic about it and
I did close them and get that deal done.
And now I am that guy. Yeah. Yeah.
And you live to tell the story, so to speak. And I do remember,
again, I was listening to the podcast for the, you know, I don't know how many
10th or 20th time that I've listened to it.
And one of the lines that really always strikes me is
the one where you said that you own me
while i'm working on this i'm not sure if it was specifically to
this listing but uh it was something like for the time
you got me i'm yours this is all i'm doing because of course if you are competing
against the guy with 50 other you know 20 million dollar listings then there's
a chance that that guy might be too busy to as you mentioned in the podcast
to to to be of service Well.
No one's going to be too busy to be of service, and that you own me can really
work against you. I did it in a very specific way. Yeah.
I said to him, I've been in this business 30 years. I know how to sell this
house, and so does everyone else you've met with.
I said, you've literally met with the most successful agent.
Yeah. They all are as good as they get.
I go, but none of those people, this sale is going to change your life.
It will change my life. That's the other, that was the part. Yeah, yeah.
And you owe me. Now, what I did know when I made that decision to say that is
I think there were some other people who were way more successful than me that
were a little arrogant when they had their conversation.
Yeah. And I don't, and I think the arrogance compared to the sincerity.
Yeah. The sincerity went out there. Now, arrogance sometimes does win out.
Different person, different situation that other, I may never even had a shot
and maybe they love the guy with the major bravado or cockiness.
And yeah, you know, yeah. In this particular case.
And I did think that it was the case that being sincere, I couldn't be.
Maybe if I, maybe, I don't think so, but, you know, maybe if I was the person
that had the track record, the arrogance would have worked.
But in this particular case, I went with sincerity there, appreciated.
And what I had that no one else had is I knew they knew, liked, and trusted me.
I knew they trusted me. So, and I knew that they knew I knew what I was doing
because I've already had a track record with one of the people.
And so the on top of that making this
statement that you own me and it'll change my life which most people won't say
yeah they want to be too cool for school you add all those things i trust this
guy he's saying this that's true yeah i this he's the person we should put our put the bed on.
And no the humility definitely comes through in
that statement as you mentioned the the two things together so
that's that's one of the things that again sort of struck
me when i listened to it as well yeah my best
skill is false humility almost as
good as my false sincerity it's a
joke my friend i know i know i'm i'm i'm
completely with you on your humor it's it's it's definitely it's
important of course again these things these these podcasts
have to be 90 entertainment i
love it when there's some fun facts but i i'm glad
that you're also keeping it fun i've been told
that i've just i'm very i have a lot of humility i've been
humbled i'm humble probably has something
to do with you know when you got sober that was so
not cool and it took me to such a low place you don't forget it i'm like a rescue
basically you know i have a i have a rescue poops there's certain thing about
rescues that are so great and that's basically what i am good i'm like this
rescue that wow he's a great dog.
So because you mentioned it, and obviously I wasn't going to pull the Playboy
Mansion sale story out unless you were okay with it.
Obviously, again, I can work it. I can work it into any.
You can. And again, I was hoping you would. And I really appreciate that you would.
Cause even my wife was asking me, you know, obviously find out,
you know, find out this and find out that.
And obviously I was, listen, I
don't know if this is what he wants to talk about on this particular day.
It might not be on the, you know, on the, on the story, but I know that again,
you're, You're definitely, again, you're such a great storyteller that that
story, I think it gets better, actually.
The more you tell it, I think I've even heard a few things that came out this
time that maybe I haven't heard before.
So maybe the story does get better, like stories do over time.
I'm working on it. Or at the bar, you know, how the story from one side of the
bar to the other side, it gets way better by the end.
So it definitely seems to get better. so my
big question was going to be and this is the only thing i was
going to add in if i was going to add anything at all is you mentioned
it being a life-changing moment for you so what did you
do if anything to celebrate that life-changing
moment was there anything that you had planned or
anything that you did special anything like that that you can share
it couldn't have been more perfect and i really
by the way i frown upon celebrating too
much you want to take it to victory lap but yeah
there's a guy named andrew huberman who's a neuroscientist one
of the biggest podcasters out there right now very smart
yeah yeah yeah yeah and andrew talks about
if you condition yourself
to kind of to get
a dopamine rush over wins opposed
to the process yeah it's a
it's a recipe for depression yeah it's very
true i know explain to me why so
if you have to have this especially in real estate if you
need to go through this long arduous process of
getting something done to celebrate and that's when you get dopamine and he
says dopamine is the most valuable currency in the world yeah when you make
a sale you're facing this just going through this belaboring thing that doesn't.
Give you any pleasure just switch that
around and condition yourself to get a
charge out of the process process
yeah well said then you sell
a house the next thing you want to do is do it again which is the process the
process the next thing you want to do after you sell a home is be where you
are right now it's a long way to get there and you could actually dread the
normal day thing before you have that next big win,
which that big victory in your chemical brain.
So, but to your point, I sell the house.
I think it was, I don't remember the day, but let's just call it Tuesday.
House closes on a Tuesday.
That night, just by coincidence, is I'm flying to Las Vegas to go to a real estate conference.
Yeah. It was Tom Ferry. It was Tom Ferry.
And I am flying to a real estate conference with 5,000 real estate agents.
I just closed that deal. It was, not just real estate agents, it was just big news.
Big. So imagine walking into a room with 5,000 real estate agents,
and you just sold the Playboy and the Hatchip.
It's like you're you're lebron and you just won the nba championships and then
you go out to dinner yeah or you go that you walk down the thing and you just
had made his accomplishment so it was.
To say the least it was a huge charge and i remember tom called me out about
selling it in front of all these people okay and and then he says to me after
this he goes no i'm in front to 5,000 people. Yeah.
So what's next? What are you going to do for an encore? How are you going to
top it? Mm-hmm. And I say in front of everybody, I go,
how can you top the biggest sale in the United States, the biggest sale ever
to sell in LA? I go, I don't know.
Maybe I want to sell a lot more small ones.
And he goes, I think he had kind of pushed me. He goes, really?
Don't you have a, what's your next move? Yeah. And I said, I just said,
I have no idea, but I want to sell something more expensive.
I don't even know if it's possible, but I want to make it possible.
Yeah. And within a couple of years, I sold something for $150 million. Okay.
So that was amazing. So not just the one hit wonder.
No, absolutely not. And then I've had more after that. So it's a lot of fun. Yeah.
All that being said, at the moment, I think real estate agents have to be fluid.
But I have a lot of really expensive, nice houses right now.
But I've just added to my repertoire in a bigger way.
I want the 1.5, the 2.5, the 3.5, the 4.
I want the smaller deals that are always selling at a faster clip. Yeah.
I mean, the cash flow.
The momentum waiting for
these single deals to happen in
this market it's just i mean i always think i
like to diversify it's not that great of a thing to just be hitting these grand
slams yeah i like it i like the momentum even when you're selling these other
things and you have a lot of product you're talking to more agents you're talking
to more principals they're not Someone who buys a million and a half,
$2 million apartment on Wilshire could buy it for their mother,
and they, oh, you're Gary Gold, and they're going to.
Or that person's selling their $20 million house in Holby.
So I really like to have, I like selling real estate.
I like working with people, and I like to be diversified, especially at the
moment, because those other things are selling a lot quicker.
Yeah, yeah. I couldn't agree with you more.
And again, obviously I I'm in a very different market here in Toronto, but the fact is, yeah,
to, to, to have, uh, as one trainer told me really early in the career, basically,
and he didn't, he didn't mention numbers at the time, but he basically just
said, if you're, if you're not working with, you know,
five buyers or five sellers at a time on some level, then you,
you start getting very neurotic about that one or two clients that you're working with.
So for their benefit, make sure that you've got a few people going.
And that's just, that's, again, that was one of the best early lessons that I was able to learn.
And as you can tell this, for me, this podcast, this whole thing about having,
again, again, really great storytellers like yourself on is about just continuing
that and obviously making it sort of where it's me and you.
But of course there's, hopefully if all goes well, a few thousand people tuning
in and listening to, again, your words. By the way. Yeah.
You had mentioned you're in Canada
and you mentioned Toronto and it just triggered something. Oh, yeah.
I was really, one of the things I did with Zillow when I was really,
I was spending thousands of months and I would, I would, one of the things that
was a huge advantage and how one of the ways I got an edge is I would respond to people.
If they sent me some message at 11 or 12 at night, if I had to get up in the
middle of the night and pee, I would go to my computer and see if anyone, you know, reached out.
I do this all the time. So I did really well with foreigners talking on their
time frame, especially in Asia, in the Middle East. And it mattered.
The other people they were talking to, they would call one day,
the other one would call another day, and another day they'd never talk.
I would talk to them in real time.
I had almost like my second shift.
And I also met some rock stars and performers.
And one night at like 12 at night, I got an email on a property.
It wasn't my property it was just looking into some property and
i was on the side it was russell peters oh no
way okay you know we we did we
did a bunch of business together and i just i met him on zillow that
is again this is this is how small of a world it is
and even though i'm not even remotely involved in it on
that level there's a friend of mine who's a comic who's
also a good friend of russell's and and you know they've done shows
together and everything else a guy by the name of darren frost
he's a canadian comic funny funny guy and
he's a friend of russell's so that's again obviously that's
uh he's a good guy yeah that's that's that's what i've
heard obviously from from the inside because of
course comedians are and and and he's a he was
darren and me were parents at at the school together
so we we got into the heavy duty dad conversations
at the schoolyard together which is a
whole nother level of relationship is when you're you know
it's funny because i did stand up i was just always
trying to make russell laugh yeah and he
just kind of looked at me and he just like had this ongoing gag
with me no matter what i said yeah he wasn't even going to flinch or acknowledge
he wouldn't you wouldn't even he wouldn't budge with any i finally got him i
finally caught him off guard yeah i was showing his property malibu and i said uh.
And I was showing his house. I said, by the way, I'm showing it to Alonis Morissette.
And he goes, I'm other Canadian.
I go, isn't that ironic?
Ah, wow.
First time. Got him to laugh. That's amazing.
Well, it would have been either that. And had I known you, I would have said
just, I don't know if you're going to have any Brampton jokes,
but he's from Brampton, which is a part of Toronto.
If you could ever come up with a Brampton joke, you might've got in that way with them.
But, uh, all you needed was, that's right. You might not know,
but the, uh, the Alanis obviously was another good tie in there.
Ah, Gary, this was, again, this was really, really, again, this was mind blowing and eyeopening.
And again, I was pumped up before we even started this, but I,
and I know we could keep going,
but I definitely want to respect your time i know how busy you
are and let me just do a shameless pitch for no
no you're doing that for sure i want to i want i want everybody to
hear that because that's what they should be listening for yeah i do
love so it's called compete and beat the best you
can go to compete and beat the best.com and
it's live it's online it's taught by me it everything about this course there's
other people who do courses that they're just putting their name on it this
is mine this That's kind of what has made me successful in the last 43 years,
all the good ideas, all the bad ideas, the trials and tribulations,
in a one-month,
once-a-week, four-hour-ish course, and it's live online.
It's also recorded if you miss it when it's live.
And we have a community that we're building to create more referrals,
And I'm also doing interviews and interviews.
Putting an exclusive podcast on that. And we just finished the first course.
People are completely digging it. I'm probably a better teacher than I am a
real estate agent. I'm not a bad real estate agent.
Yeah, no, I'd say that's definitely under describing what you do. Yeah.
Yeah, so you should check that out. I mean, I'll be doing it regularly.
There's another course coming up, you know, August 3rd.
I'm not sure when people will be watching this. but whenever it is,
it'll probably be one coming up.
Amazing. Unless I decide to stop doing it. Yeah. It's a lot of work, but I do totally do it.
Well, obviously, yeah, you're, you're, you're, you're giving back in,
again, in the, in the best way that you know how, and obviously for you doing
the course your way with your words, I can't imagine anybody being any,
anything but blown away.
So again, I just wanted to say thank you so much for joining me on the podcast
today, Gary. It was really a pleasure getting to know you this way.
And of course, you know, sharing some of that behind the scenes stuff.
Cause like I said, when it comes to music or comedy or movies,
I like, and this is, this is sort of my ongoing other joke is that I like the
behind the scenes of the Godfather movie as much as I like the movie itself.
Just like the makings of, yeah.
Well, the Hearst Estate was made.
Godfather one was made with the horse's head at the Hearst Estate.
Yes, I know. I'll be impressed if you know who I'm seeing tonight, if you are dialed in.
Tonight I'm going to see Jason Isbell.
The best he's the best songwriter out today
oh yeah amazing okay amazing let's
put this way bruce springsteen kneels at his altar huh okay
well that's uh it's in his bill in 400 unit check
it out wow go see him tonight amazing amazing gary
again really really great meeting you really
great having you on the podcast and i cannot wait for
the world to hear this i think it's definitely going to add
hopefully a bit more buzz for what you're doing and
of course you know anybody who needs anybody that knows
what they're doing out where you are definitely make sure they reach
out to you what's what's what's your own personal website again
soldbygold.net that's my
personal website i'm easy to reach yeah i'm easy
to reach okay listen you call me
you you know i'm i'm
just around yeah so amazing i
like i like real estate agents at least they do so far
hopefully until now until
until you unblock me on the emails exactly take care thanks so much really appreciate
it thanks gary take care bye bye this is gary gold the agent that sold the playboy
mansion for $105 million and the creator and your teacher to the real estate course,
competeandbeatthebest.com.
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