Eric Simon Shares His Entrepreneurial Journey Full of Humor, Resilience & Triumph

Pamela Bardhi
Hello, everyone, and welcome to another episode of underdog. Today I have an incredible guest here with me. Eric Simon, the broke agent, how are you my friend?

Eric Simon
I’m good. How are you? Thanks for having me. It is an honor.

Pamela Bardhi
It is such a pleasure to have you here. And I know when we connect that I was like, man. Your content cracks me up on the daily being in real estate. And you just especially when you have a hard day, you just look at that and you just die laughing like it’s just the greatest. So thank you for bringing it into this world and creating that content and empowering a lot of people out there. Thank you so much for that.

Eric Simon
Of course. That’s what I’m trying to do. I’m also trying to build a business. It’s not selfless by any means from making money on this. But yes, that’s great.

Pamela Bardhi
Oh, of course. So I always start off with the most loaded question known to man, pretty much you know, what is what inspired you on your journey to where you are today.

Eric Simon
So my real estate journey inspired me to create the broke agent. Because I was failing miserably at being a real estate agent. I hated it so basically, it came out of hate, in spite and pain and suffering of being an agent that was making no money doing no deals. Failing to get listing appointments, failing at cold calling, and door knocking, hating open houses. And also not getting along, not getting along. But almost being jealous of agents within the industry as well.

So I guess it kind of came from a dark place that I’m not a very inspiring story to. But I sat down at open houses every week, I called a door knock to no success whatsoever. And that kind of inspired me to create content as a struggling real estate agent. Cover the inner monologue of what agents are thinking. And blew up pretty quickly because I’ve always had, you know. I’ve always been like, funny within conversation and I’ve always been good on social media. So I think that combination is what really made it explode, which is great.

Pamela Bardhi
That’s awesome. So we’re gonna really tell a story back a little bit. Okay. What did you want to be when you grew up?

Eric Simon
A baseball player?

Pamela Bardhi
Yeah.

Eric Simon
I mean, I guess like my childhood dream was to be a baseball player. But my growth spurt didn’t really hit until high school. So I kind of got the ball out of the infield, I was a contact hitter. Then I was a golfer and tennis player. But sports, that dream faded relatively quickly. And then went to college and had no idea what I wanted to do even until the last three years really had no idea what I wanted to do. I knew that there had to be something involving comedy not like stand-up. But from a writing perspective, because that’s what I’ve always enjoyed the most.

Pamela Bardhi
That’s awesome. So you found a way to culminate your passion.

Eric Simon
In sports and comedy Exactly. Except for its real estate.

Pamela Bardhi
So what lured you into the real estate space.

Eric Simon
It was completely by. So out of college, my first job was working at the Laugh Factory comedy club and I wasn’t doing stand-up or anything. I was in their marketing department doing their social media basically. And trying to get six shows. Which were shows that weren’t getting lots of tickets sold like on Tuesdays and Wednesday nights. My goal was to come up with a social media campaign to get more people to that show. But our budget was basically non-existent. I was getting really frustrated with the amount I was getting paid and the amount of work I was putting into it. So I quit that and then started making vines. Remember vines like that six-second video app, trying to get vine famous basically and had like no followers.

And then a girl that I knew from college worked at a brokerage called Hilton and Hyland in Beverly Hills. I see that you’re on the internet just posting dumb-ass videos all day. You clearly need a job I was like yeah, I do actually and she hired me. Or the brokerage hired me to be just a temporary receptionist. So I was taking in all the calls and basically became like a third or fourth assistant to the main guy there Jeff Highland was walking around the office.

Like it was a very not stuck up isn’t the right word, but it’s a luxurious boutique brokerage. So everything, all the clientele and everybody you’re dealing with was really high end and I had no idea what I was doing. I knew nothing about real estate. So that’s what I did to get into the real estate industry. I was just a receptionist for three or four months and then got hired as an assistant.

Pamela Bardhi
Hmm. So you got hired as an assistant, so you were doing like the open houses.

Eric Simon
Math with the assistant job. So I still, like, wasn’t even really planning on getting my real estate license. But I really liked the people in the office and I saw how much money everybody was making. And I liked all their charismatic personalities and I just liked being there and I really liked that office. So I did everything I could to stay the receptionist, even though I was probably the worst receptionist of all time. Like I had no inflection in my voice. When I would pick up the calls, I got nervous anytime someone called, which was 50 million times a day. But then I got hired as an assistant, it was basically writing property descriptions. I would go to inspections, sometimes do showings and it was kind of like learning from a top agent.

Pamela Bardhi
That’s amazing. And you went on to get your real estate license past that point.

Eric Simon
Yeah, I failed the test, and then passed the test. Because I figured eventually, I’ve been doing this for a couple years now. I thought I’m like, okay, am I actually going to become a real estate agent? Like, am I going to become a member of this guy’s team and maybe be a buyer’s agent. So I did get my license and then did eventually go to a team where I was a buyer’s agent, right after that.

Pamela Bardhi
That’s awesome. So you put in that sweat equity in the beginning. Was the most painful part because the part of real estate that nobody tells you about is building your book of business within the first, I don’t know, three to four years,

Eric Simon
Yeah, it’s near impossible. Then, it was cool to see the business from multiple perspectives, too. So from a staff and admin perspective, I work in the office. And I deal with agents and not being an agent, you deal with a lot of shit, obviously. Because agents are crazy and they’re constantly yelling at all the staff and they’re yelling at marketing. They want their brochure right away or they’re mailed in and coming. I don’t know, there’s just like so many problems that come up. And then seeing it from an assistant, a buyer’s agent, and then an agent myself. I think what helped my ability to produce so much content is because I’ve seen it from all perspectives.

Pamela Bardhi
That’s super awesome. So after you got your real estate license, did you just continue on to build that book of business as well?

Eric Simon
Well, I wouldn’t say there was a book of business. There was no business going on, there was an attempt to build a book of business. So that’s where the cold calling and door knocking came in, so I was 24-25, so my friends in LA, they weren’t buying houses or condos or anything yet. And all my family was in Arizona and your first couple deals usually come from your immediate sphere. So I was cold calling expired listings and I hated cold calling, and I sucked at it.

And I would pray that people wouldn’t pick up the phone and I would pray that people. Wouldn’t answer the door when I would go door-knocking. So when you’re fighting against yourself, you’re not going to be very successful with it. But open houses were another source of lead generation. I guess, but mostly I would get like handoff rental leads from my bosses, basically.

Pamela Bardhi
Gotcha. And so you were in LA?

Eric Simon
Yeah, still.

Pamela Bardhi
Oh, man. So what was that experience? What were some of your most hilarious moments throughout? Being like an assistant at any point in your career?

Eric Simon
I mean, I’ve had so many just dumb moments that you kind of need to learn from your mistakes. But I basically ruined the listing for my first boss, because I came into the open house and it was staged. And I bent down to tie my shoe and put my water bottle on like a piece of wood like a cabinet. But I guess it was really hot that day, and the seller was still there. Monitoring everything I was doing and thought that I created a condensation ring on the piece of wood.

And she immediately called my boss and said. I never want to see that idiot, here again, basically and then he eventually let go with the listing. So that was really embarrassing. And then I’ve struggled to open lockboxes and doors in front of investors and just made a million dumb mistakes within conversation. Just not knowing what I’m talking about.

Pamela Bardhi
Is there been any experiences that you can remember offhand, besides what you just mentioned, like any situations that maybe you saw as an assistant? Like something that was happening in the office and things like that?

Eric Simon
Well, there was an instance when I was sitting in an open house. It was a short sale, and we had the seller that was a psychopath. And it was my partner, West Pinkston, and I at the time, and we went early. Because every single time we’d sit in an open house, the entire house was wrecked of weed. So we had to make sure to go and open up all the windows and everything. This guy would literally lurk during all the showings and would just weasel his way around. It was like Gollum, from Lord of the Rings. And look, I came to actually and I went up to the room to like, clean up his bedroom, basically.

There was a shotgun sitting on his bed and it was his gun and I was like, dude, you got to get this thing out of here. We’re about to show people this house and my partner. I went downstairs and figured he was putting it away, and he’s like, Hey, boys. And then he’s standing on top of the stairs. He’s pointing the shotgun and it’s like fakes, he’s shooting basically like making a BANG BANG noise like a dove behind these pillars. I guess kind of funny, but also not funny, mostly scary.

And then Wes and I looked at each other, we’re not going to this house ever. Like we’re done, another agent set these open houses. But yeah, there’s a lot of just crazy moments. That is where you’re dealing with people’s emotions and you know, seeing people’s houses, you know, this is where they live. So you’re dealing with tenants, you’re dealing with crazy sellers, crazy buyers, so it produces a lot of content.

Pamela Bardhi
Absolutely. Well, I mean, I feel like your content is literally endless and it’s hilarious. And it’s from so many different perspectives. Which is what makes it so unique like on Instagram, like I explained, like I literally just like die laughing all the time. Because you know, I’m also a developer, I’m also an agent. I’ve seen all these different perspectives and it’s just hysterical. So I was always interested in what experiences Eric had that sparked these moments. Like, what were some of your favorite, top posts on Instagram that really just made you go viral? Blow up, if you will, because I know it’s been a constant thing for you. But that would be hilarious because it’s so tied into these experiences.

Eric Simon
Yeah, I think the best posts are the ones that you’re just kind of thinking in your head. That’s not really the craziest experience, but just like slight anxiety. So a lot of the ones that I do are when the inspector is giving his report and it’s basically someone’s face. Just making a confused face and the agent has no idea what they’re talking about. But you have to like to act in front of your client as if you know. All these intricate things about the house that the inspectors are relaying to you. And I think those ones always do the best, because it’s really covering the anxiety and just fear that agents have. Because our whole entire goal is to show people that we’re more knowledgeable than them.

And that we are facilitating this transaction. Because we know what the hell we’re talking about. And most agents are great agents and do know what they’re talking about. But there’s a lot of stuff that you don’t know because you don’t have the experience. Or you’re not familiar with whatever thing comes up in the inspection. Some sort of mold issue that you’ve never heard of, or creosote, something like that.

So I think those ones do the best. Like what helped me grow initially was getting reposted by major accountants. So I did like a meme about Ryan serhat the million dollar listing star, the show dog? Yes. Who’s the green guy, Matt Skeeter forgot his name. I blink on the tip of my tongue. But basically, it was a meme of him talking to a girl and I was like. This is Ryan Serhant talking to you at a real estate conference. Which is even that funny, but he reposted it and then I got a bunch of followers and then it kind of became like a wave from that.

So that piece of content did well, but also like real estate coach content anytime you make fun of Zillow. Or anytime you just talk about the failures of an agent or a buyer losing out on a bunch of deals or a buyer becoming a renter. And you thought you had this big commission check and then all of a sudden you’re showing someone two months’ rent. You’re gonna get like 20 bucks and work with them for two years. So there’s just a lot of things that pop up that make great content, so the more failures that happened to me the better for content.

Pamela Bardhi
That’s hilarious. So you’ve basically turned this into a business so you just started this Instagram you just kind of flow with it. A lot of people probably look at now they’re like oh my god Eric. Look he’s got all these followers and we all know like it was not you. The real entrepreneurs know it’s a struggle starting this is a struggle. Especially a digital brand and now you’re building a media brand around the broke agent. So outside of just the Instagram account.

And now you’re working on this full time which is basically like a dream. You stepped into a kind of by accident which is the most perfect thing. Now, who knows real estate could have gotten you to this content situation. Yes, the whole trajectory for you. So I was building it from the ground up. Because I know it’s been years and everything everyone sees the surface now like Eric’s the man. But what did it take to really build that brand?

Eric Simon
Yeah, it’s been six years of doing this every single day and spending way. More time on it at the beginning than I should have. Now I spend every second of every day. Doing it including weekends, but it was really hard when I was trying to build a real estate business. And do real estate by how much time I should spend on the brokerage. Should I be posting 10 times a day, should I be writing a blog, should I be focusing more on Twitter or Facebook. So it was really slow, not it became successful quickly in the sense that it got a lot of attention. Because I don’t think there was too much out in real estate like that yet.

There was a lighter side of real estate which is kind of memes and Ecards and stuff at Facebook groups. But Instagram especially in real estate in 2014-15 was not too prevalent most agents are 55 years and older. So their adoption to new technologies like they’re just picking up Tik Tok now takes a while. There’s like an age identification process that kind of happens with it. So I picked up a lot of the young crowd at first, which was really cool. Just to get the name of the broke agent out there. My partner Wes and I were my former partners at the time. We would post two or three times a day, so anything that would pop in our heads.

It was first started off as just tweets like the inner monologue. No one came to my open house or this asshole agent just walked in or. Hey, no one signed into my open house. It was kind of like dark humor. But it was just text-based and then once we started doing text conversation. Memes and videos and like you know, as Instagram became like a video platform to start putting in new types of content. But I would go into real estate Facebook groups and post all my content to get my name out there. We spoke at a bunch of conferences and went on every podcast.

I would comment on every single real estate page like 50 times a day, I would go on like Inman news. Have you gotten Tom Ferry Ryan Serhant anybody that had a larger following than I had that was in the industry. I would spend all day there liking photos of their followers. Following their followers or interacting with their followers. Just anything where they would see the broken agent name. And then hopefully come to the profile and follow it. Then it was building Facebook and then building Twitter and then also we tried YouTube videos, I have a real estate rap video that is awful.

That should be wiped from the internet and I have you basically just trying everything and being like, okay. Is this going to be a YouTube or is this going to be a blog. And then I would write blogs every single week. It got a lot of traction but I found that posting a meme would get 100 shares in a blog. We get two shares, would take me 10 hours. So I kind of find like where to you know allocate my time better but yeah. There was no real direction as to okay how am I going to monetize this? Or am I going to just sell t-shirts like I kind of thought that was the goal.

I’m just gonna sell what a million dollars worth of you know t-shirts stupid idea. But I thought that if I capture 10% of the real estate audience and 10% of those people. Buy a certain amount of merchandise I could become like a merchandise company. There’s a lot of different ways at the beginning and failures to Is it an animation series. I raised money on Kickstarter to have a funny one-minute animation series. It was $7,000 raised for one minute of animation. And then that was it so there’s been a lot of like trials of this work.

Pamela Bardhi
That’s awesome. Well, that’s what it is right? Entrepreneurship you’re doing all these things you’re constantly trying and you’re seeing does this works. Does this not work and the right time oh my gosh does it take time and you do this for six years.

Eric Simon
And this is posting content every day. Coming up with content every day and now it’s great that I’m getting submissions and I have Facebook groups where I could form content from. I have people that don’t necessarily work for the broke agent. But are affiliates or brand ambassador types that are always sending me content. And coming up with content too, but it was trying out different content to see what works on each platform. Then you just have to do it every single day, like three or four times a day. Just because I don’t want to lose any sort of growth or momentum that I had.

Even if I wasn’t making money at the beginning I knew that if I kept building this audience. If I had an audience of now it’s over 500,000 realtors across all platforms. There’s money in that, somehow I don’t know what it is yet. But then a flip switch recently where it’s like oh, I could actually help these agents too. Because I know what I’m talking about with social media. And I could set them up with people or brands or whatever the case may be. That’s actually going to help improve their real estate business. Before I was just focused on making them laugh and now the goal is to help improve the real estate business and make them laugh.

Pamela Bardhi
That’s awesome. So how did you figure out that strategy? I guess you could start with a few of your biggest lessons, not failures as I like to say. What are some of your biggest lessons in building the business and also how did you create that strategy that works for you?

Eric Simon
I think the switch you know, flipped when I created an ebook, an Instagram growth ebook. Where I found out that so many realtors aren’t great at social media. Or don’t have the time to focus on growing their social media. But they know it’s such a useful tool to improve their business and build their brand. So I wrote an Instagram ebook that was funny. It was 50 pages and was about all the engagement tactics that I use to grow my brand and grow my Instagram account. And it got 1000s of downloads very quickly and that was kind of proof of concept for me was like, oh, here’s what I can do. I can actually help realtors with social media.

But I don’t want to be like a cringe social media guru guy. That’s like teaching hashtag strategy. My nightmare is to do something like that. But then a lot of brands were reaching out to me to do kind of influencer marketing. Whether it’s a CRM like Boomtown or photography service or QuickBooks, which is a tax thing, Tax Service. And then Haley Ingram from coffee and contracts, which is a template platform. She reached out to me and said I’d love for you to help promote our brand. I said, Oh, why don’t I make content for your brand, which is funny social media templates that are also educational, infographics, memes. It’s gifts for agents that can brand and customize. Because a lot of agents like posting my content.

But they don’t, I want to share it with the broke agent watermark on it. Because it makes them look stupid in front of their clients. The clients are like, why are you sharing something that says the broke agent on it, I want to get shares. So it doesn’t make you look stupid, I try to undercut my entire business here. But the humor is agent to agent humor. I kind of transition the humor for the templates, where it’s agent to client humor. That isn’t necessarily grievances about their clients, but just about the industry. Then this template platform is like a monthly thing and this completely blew up my business in a good way. And this is like the focus now is how do I create more content for this. That agents can share and improve their business?

Pamela Bardhi
That’s fantastic. What an interesting model. So it turned into the kind of membership model.

Eric Simon
Yeah, it’s a monthly membership. And I only create 30 to 50 pieces of content with a month which is a lot. But that’s all the funny content. You get a million other pieces of content, you get email highlights, you get Instagram covers, you get an actual content calendar that’s produced by Haley and her team. So you get other, you’ve just listed just solds other educational infographics so it’s like an entire content shop for agents. Where you could just put your branding on it and post it to Instagram, they have reels, ideas, captions, everything. It’s a great service.

Pamela Bardhi
I love that. Well, yeah. Because especially the fact that you’re doing like a turnkey social media operation is really huge. Especially for the older agents as well, that just like don’t get it, and they’re just like, please just create it

Eric Simon
Or too busy.

Pamela Bardhi
Yeah, right or too busy. I create it and just

Eric Simon
You can schedule everything for a month. And it has, like in each month is specified for what’s happening, obviously. So you go around November is Thanksgiving content, and it’s winter content around the holidays. August, I have a bunch of Olympic gifts. I have back-to-school content. I have summer market and seller’s market content. So everything’s very, like hyper-relevant, which is cool, too. Because Agents don’t have the time. Successful agents don’t really have the time to plan their entire social media calendar every day like I do.

Eric Biggest Tips Of Advice In Terms of Social Media

Pamela Bardhi
Absolutely. I love that. What some of your biggest tips in terms of social media and how to create viral content, the things like that. What would be your biggest tips

Eric Simon
On Instagram, specifically, video vertical video is the most important thing right now. Instagram just recently changed its algorithm where they’re going to be promoting reels more than they already were. Because in order to compete with Tiktok, they are going to be pushing reels in vertical video. So if you’re not doing video, your content not going to be shadowbanned, necessarily. But it’s not going to be promoted in the algorithm as much. So you have to do vertical video. And I guess my main tip for agents that don’t really know what to do or what to shoot yet is just consume a bunch of content from other agents.

You could go to this agent Taylor DeCarlo or Glenda Baker, you could look at this real estate coach Jason Fontana, my friend Matt Lionetti, who had the podcast with his really funny reels. And they have tonnes of ideas on how to shoot your content and how to post it what hashtags to use. When to post it, how to use Instagram cover photos. You just really have to switch your entire strategy to video right now. But also like community engagements extremely important too.

So if you’re trying to grow your Instagram you should be commenting back to everybody that comments on your photos. And you should be commenting on other industry-related accounts to get your name out there. So if you’re not posting or you don’t know what to post you could gain a tonne of followers commenting on accounts with bigger audiences than you. That’s how I have grown a lot as I’ll go on like tank Sinatra. Or all these other meme pages, stupid resumes attorney problems, corporate bro kind of industry adjacent accounts. And leave a funny comment but we’ll get a lot of likes then they go to my page check it out and then follow

Pamela Bardhi
Oh, that’s an interesting tactic that’s super cool. I mean social media is more relevant now more than ever. I feel like if you don’t have active social media you’re basically dead like you don’t exist at all. Especially in real estate like what are you actually doing? Like I have a whole social media team just to post all my stuff constantly.

Because I just can’t keep up with it. It’s too much to do all at once and you know and then there’s all these things coming out now all the time. But what I’m seeing as a central theme across all social media platforms is this video is becoming number one. Like authenticity is being screamed at more than ever now. Like even Linkedin, now you can upload a video so when someone goes on your LinkedIn page and like that will pop up first then it’s like holy crap.

Eric Simon
Yes especially for agents because you want to work with an agent who you feel like you know already. So your social media is a good way, it’s like your digital business card. I’ve heard so many people say that I can’t believe I just copied. Everybody that’s ever said that before but showing your losses, as well as your wins, is important too. So I think just posting, just listed, just sold and escrow, and all your success and motivational quotes. And you’re in a business suit and at a sec listing, that shit doesn’t really play anymore. Like it’s good to show your success as like validation as to Hey look, I am us.

But if you’re not showing your personal interests and hobbies, and like your actual personality. I think that you’re going to kind of fall into a pool of agents that people aren’t that interested in working with. If I’m a client, I’m looking between two agent accounts and one is personable and says they like the Yankees. And they’re showing all this funny stuff about their family or bad stuff that happens to them in real estate as well. I’m way more interested in working with that person than someone that’s just posting pictures of their open house site every day.

Pamela Bardhi
Amen. Right, all of the authenticity and like this is a real person. And the best way you can build rapport with people is basically to share the same interests. Which is awesome. That is awesome. Mary, so like, in your world, right? What would your older self tell your younger self based on what you know, now,

Eric Simon
I would tell myself to focus on what I know, that I’m good at. That’s a very kind of simple, simple answer. But I think that having my foot in real estate and also in the broke agent for four or five years kind of hindered my growth. Or at least stunted it a little bit or slowed it down. Because I think it was necessary to get the content and get the experience. But I never went all-in with the brokerage until recently. So I was always kind of half-assed both. I was like, a part-time agent, part-time broke agent like, sometimes I’m showing houses and doing contracts, and other times I’m posting.

But now I’ve got like, full focus, like, I’m really good at this. I know, I could produce this content. And I know people are enjoying this, I know there’s something there. If I would have done that four or five years ago, I feel like I could be on a different level right now. I feel like I could have had the podcast three years ago, the template platform three years ago, and really be building upon that business. So I would tell myself, like, I knew I wasn’t gonna be a real estate agent in 10 years. It’s not something I’ve really wanted to do. So I would tell myself to just trust what I knew I was good at.

Pamela Bardhi
I love it. Because you mentioned a few times that in college like you didn’t know what you wanted to do. And you were kind of just doing your thing and trying to figure it all out. So when did you know that this was your purpose that you’re like, this is my jam.

Eric Simon
I still don’t know if this is necessary. Like, I know that I’m good at social media. And I’m good at creating funny content. I don’t know if there’s a limit to real estate content. Like I want to build this into like kind of the barstool sports of real estate, where I have different creators of different podcasts. It’s an entire media company, and people come to the broke agent to laugh but also get their education.

I don’t know if my not lack interest in real estate but I need to be more intertwined. In real estate, I need to know more what’s going on to be as good as possible at this. I know everything about sports, right? So I could talk for days about that. But when it comes to real estate, sometimes I don’t even know what to talk about. Besides producing real estate content.

Pamela Bardhi
You didn’t mention that it’s you felt that you knew that you were good at it. And that’s a big thing. So what’s going on in your world in the next six to 12 months? Where’s broke agent heading? Where are you heading? What are the new goals?

Eric Simon
So we have a podcast, the overcast podcast with Matt Lionetti, who is in Canada with the agency’s hilarious hilarious agent that posts hilarious reels. He kind of adapts I mean, he comes up with his own content of course. But a lot of my memes that I post he’s acting out and creating his own content through that which is really fun to see. I’ve always envisioned myself doing that sometimes but he’s way better on camera. I’ve got a camera crew and crushes. He produces content I’m not trying to say he takes my means.

I just mean like picture my content but in longer form, and someone like actually acting out those scenarios. So the podcast is doing really well. We’re getting industry-heavy hitters on it every single week. Real estate coaches, entrepreneurs, top agents, advanta reality TV stars, which is really cool. So the goal of that is to be like a raw podcast, a funny podcast that agents can actually listen to. And from showings and get information about social media and then also just here to like normal realtors talk that aren’t preachy or saying how good they are at real estate. But just asking dumb ask questions to smarter people than they are.

So that’s one thing I’m doing. And then the goal six months from now is we’re working on a course that is like real estate for dummies basically. But not like a book. It’s like a video course of how not to look like an idiot your first five years in real estate. Because the real estate education, we get right now is abysmal. All you learn is how many square footages or how many acres, how many square feet. Or how many sections are in a standard Township. You just learned these completely useless facts that never even get brought up. In real estate. You don’t know the intricacies of what happens in a negotiation, you don’t know what you should do. When you see your first open house.

Most agents get thrown into situations and they just kind of have to learn from it. So the course is funny where it shows all the funny scenarios and awkward scenarios that happen with commentary from smarter agents than me. I teach the social media section and that’ll be coming out soon. I think that’ll be good. That’ll be cool. And then also just more podcasts. Doing more video content blogging, and continuing to expand the template platform. Adding more people I want, I want more people producing content, I want it can’t just keep coming from my head anymore.

Pamela Bardhi
Absolutely. I love that. Honestly, I love that you’re infusing education into this as well because yes, it is abysmal. The real estate education, I’m like, Why do I have to calculate the taxes? I remember a real estate exam and like, that’s what the assessors for. Write it. I have never once in my career seen and I have a nine-figure real estate career. And I’ve never once calculated taxes for clients. Like go to the town’s assessor or the city assessor, they’ll tell you what the tax rate is. You can go online, like why are we learning this, and it’s all this legal stuff that doesn’t work. I’m so happy that you’re basically building this course to have real practical knowledge to be able to add value as well.

Eric Simon
It’s a funny course. So there’s a lot of hilarious, like videos throughout it. And it’s written in a funny way too. So it’s not going to be someone teaching you how to sell more real estate, it’s,87% of agents fail in their first five years. Why is that? It’s because they don’t know what the hell they’re doing. You don’t know what you’re doing. You don’t want to do it. Like that’s why I didn’t want to do focus on real estate because I felt like I didn’t know what the hell I was doing the entire time. And that’s my fault for not teaching myself and like getting that experience.

But it would have been nice to have an agent that was at open houses. This is where you could direct the conversation or if someone doesn’t want to sign in, here’s how you could get him to sign in. If you’re at a showing and they asked you a question you don’t know about here’s what you should say as an answer. Instead of just looking like an idiot or like here are the questions that you’re probably going to get at a showing. How many square feet What year is it built? What type of floor is Was there any work done when you’re just showing places and you don’t know these things before you show them? You have no idea what’s going to be asking you just gonna look like a moron.

Pamela Bardhi
Absolutely. And I’m so glad you’re putting together an actual practical course of things that actually exists in the field and not just some tests that make absolutely no sense. That’s awesome. Now, Eric, you got to let everyone know where to find you and your awesomeness my friend

Eric Simon
@brokeagent on everything thebrokeagent.com for the landing page overaskpodcast.com.

Pamela Bardhi
That’s your go-to?

Eric Simon
Yeah, bad real estate pics, the broke News Network.

Pamela Bardhi
I love it. Eric, thank you so much for being here today. I loved your story. Thank you so much for sharing all of it. You are amazing, my friend. Can’t wait to see where this goes. In the future. You will definitely be one of the biggest media brands out there. It’s already brewing. And I’m pumped for it.

Eric Simon
Thank you. I appreciate it. Thanks for having me on.