SaaS Interviews with CEOs, Startups, Founders
EP 109: How BiggerPockets Grew to 10,000+ paying $9/mo with Joshua Dorkin
11 Nov 2015
Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
This is The Top, where I interview entrepreneurs who are number one or number two in their industry in terms of revenue or customer base. You'll learn how much revenue they're making, what their marketing funnel looks like, and how many customers they have.
Chapter 2: Why did Joshua Dorkin start as a web designer before becoming a realtor?
I'm now at $20,000 per top. Five and six million. He is hell-bent on global domination.
Chapter 3: How did Joshua build an organic community around BiggerPockets?
We just broke our 100,000 unit sold mark. And I'm your host, Nathan Latka. Okay, Top Tribe, every Monday I give one of you 100 bucks to invest in your idea and get to the top.
Chapter 4: What motivated Joshua to create BiggerPockets?
To enter for your chance to win 100 bucks, simply subscribe to the podcast on iTunes right now and then text the word Nathan to 33444 to prove that you did it. This week's winner was Matt Wolfe in Chicago at the DDB Agency.
Chapter 5: What strategies did BiggerPockets implement to engage users?
Coming up tomorrow morning, you guys will hear from Anurag Agarwal. He gave up a $1 million Wall Street salary for nature,
Chapter 6: What are the current membership statistics for BiggerPockets?
Okay, Top Tribe, good morning.
Chapter 7: How does Joshua manage cash flow from his business?
I'm cuddled up here in the studio. I'm drinking my green tea and I'm excited for our guest today. His name is Joshua Dworkin. He's an entrepreneur, web designer, real estate investor, and one-time realtor. He founded and launched BiggerPockets after he was not satisfied by the online offerings of other real estate sites and decided to build one himself.
Josh's vision for BiggerPockets has propelled it into becoming one of the top real estate destinations online, and his vision for the site and its future has brought so many people financial freedom. Josh, are you ready to take us to the top? Let's do it, man. Let's do this. First off, big fan of bigger pockets. When I bought my first five bedroom, I started listening to the show. It's so true.
You're making so many people financially free. Why on earth didn't you just start with the site? Why did you become a realtor first? Oh, man. Really?
Chapter 8: What lessons has Joshua learned about entrepreneurship?
We're going to go there, huh? Yeah, we have to. It's so unsexy. It is. It was not sexy at all. So I was out in L.A. I had ventured through all sorts of different parts of my life, and I had gone out to Cali to be part of the entertainment business. I never wanted to be one of those folks. You and entertainment? I could never see that. Shut up!
So yeah, I didn't want to be like a starving waiter in Hollywood. So I was always trying to come up with creative ways to make some money and find my thing. And so I got a real estate license to become an agent. That was not my thing. I was definitely not loving that.
And so I did that for a little while, got out of it, ended up getting back into it again just to see if I was totally right or wrong the first time. I realized I really didn't like it. Lo and behold, ended up falling into education. I had a sub teaching credential, ended up my first sub gig. I ended up a full time teacher and did that for four years.
And all the while I had gone and started to buy real estate because my brother convinced me it was a good thing to do. How old were you at the time? Oh, boy. Twenty two, three, twenty two or twenty three. So guys, here's what I'm going to do.
I don't want to ask Josh about all these real estate questions because he's got a great podcast that sometimes I'm ahead of in business and Josh, sometimes you're ahead of me. We'll keep warring. It'll be fun. I love it. It's on, baby. It is so on. But go listen to his show. It's called Bigger Pockets. It's a great podcast. So I don't want to focus on real estate, Joshua.
What I want to focus on is the community that you've built on biggerpockets.com. So what was the process? Was it the podcast first and then the website? Kind of walk me through the community building. Sure. So I really, really quickly, you know, I've got this this real estate that I own and now I need to figure out how to get better at it and stop losing money and stop bleeding.
And so I launched the website and the website in its first incarnation was let me put together a bunch of resources so I don't forget all the places that I like to go. And let me build a community. Let me build a forum where I can go. and get answers to my questions. And so those two things happen simultaneously. But really, at inception, it was all about me.
It was 100%, hey, let's help Josh out. What I realized was, because I was so selfish, which I was, but because I was selfish, other people were getting value. And that was so cool to me. I got this thrill of seeing that other people were getting answers to questions, people were syncing up for more than just answering my questions. They were really coming together and doing great things.
And so I immediately had a light go off in my head. And I was like, wow, I've got to build this community. So that was literally, that was 11 years ago. Okay. So that was what, about 2000 and what? It was 04. 04. It was 04. And for the next... X number of years, seven, eight. I'd say fully I was committed and focused on nothing but building a community for a good three to five years.
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