The Hustle Cost Him His Marriage Then Imposter Syndrome Took Over

Transcript cleaned from the episode recording. Speaker names are Mat Lewczenko (host) and Bobby Kerr (guest).

[0:00] Bobby Kerr: What did it cost me? It cost me a marriage. It cost me the reinvention, as you mentioned — someone who thrives on reinvention. It's cost me relationships. It's cost me friendships. It's cost me time. Years later, or decades later, when you can reflect on those things, to say, "Yeah, did I work 18 hours a day when starting new ventures? And did that take my focus and attention away from the people that I cared most about, or the people that cared most about me?" It sure did. That's the part of success nobody puts on LinkedIn.

[0:34] Mat Lewczenko: In this episode, Bobby Kerr and I unpack entrepreneur burnout, imposter syndrome, and the hidden cost of hustle culture. More importantly, we explore how to keep building without losing the people you're building it all for. Let's get into it. You guys are in it today, because we got one of the guys. If you've been listening to the podcast for a minute, you're going to find an episode that goes, "Man, that hit. That was fun. I want to meet that guy." Today's one of those days. I am pumped to introduce you to Bobby Kerr. He is a dynamic entrepreneur, real estate coach, and marketing expert, and brings a unique blend of rockstar energy and sharp business acumen to everything he does. He was the former co-leader of the Sean Ashley team at Remax Heritage Blue Springs, voted the best real estate team in Kansas City. He was also the founder of LOC8, a Google Business Profile marketing agency, and one of the co-creators of a pretty epic podcast with a bunch of Royals Hall of Famers known as the Always Be Cool Podcast.

Bobby's story is one of reinvention and relentless hustle. He's built multiple successful ventures across real estate, home services, and media. But what truly sets Bobby apart is his alter ego, Bob Joy. What you may not know is Bobby is the world's top 1980s Bon Jovi tribute performer, touring nationally and commanding stages with the same energy that he brings to his business coaching. He understands that whether you're selling a house, building an agency, or singing "Livin' on a Prayer" to a packed room, it all comes down to branding, storytelling, and creating an unforgettable experience. Today this guy focuses on empowering other agents to build thriving independent businesses while maintaining high-performance mindsets. He interviews CEOs and entrepreneurs about the bold risks they took, and lives his own message of taking big leaps — whether that's investing in real estate, launching marketing agencies, or hosting influencers at his Florida Airbnb, the Latitude Adjustment. Guys, please help me welcome to the pod, Bobby Kerr. What's up?

[2:42] Bobby Kerr: All right, man. That was pretty epic. You had to dig deep — you even got Latitude Adjustment in there. That's nice. Let's go.

[2:47] Mat Lewczenko: We don't mess around. I take my cues from Hot Ones, one of my favorite podcasts — it goes in and finds some deep stuff. So we're going to jump in. For those that know, they know that this podcast is all about transformation. I want you to have an opportunity to tell us a little bit about your origin story. I want to preface it with: you're a builder, you've built successful companies, and you also tour the country as Bob Joy. I want you to walk us through the before and then the after. Who were you before this rockstar alter ego came to be, and how did stepping onto that stage transform the way that you do business these days?

[3:26] Bobby Kerr: Number one, thank you for having me, Matt — this is awesome. Big fan of the show since you kicked it off, and I feel very fortunate that you and I got connected. So this is really cool and an honor to be here. I'm excited, so thank you. The backstory — when you say "before the whole rockstar alter ego thing," to be perfectly honest, not to sound hyperbolic, but the rockstar alter ego has been there for a very, very long time. Before the tribute bands and before performing internationally, I was in a band from the time I was 12 years old with a pretty famous guy who ended up winning American Idol. So we had a band together from age 12 until 22. That is really where I cut my teeth in guerilla marketing, self-promotion, self-preservation — whatever you want to say — and what it took to really brand a message, whether that was a personal brand or working alongside people to get to a common goal.

That mentality honestly started whenever I was in middle school, barely out of grade school, because that's what we had to do to make sure that we were noticed. That lesson I was forced to learn at a really young age pushed me into every business venture I ever had, entrepreneurial or not. Back in the day we had an expression: "loved or hated, but never ignored." That was the messaging we said every single time before we took the stage, even at 15, 16 years old. We repeated it four or five times to get amped up before a show. I think that's what transformed my model of thinking of how to do business and how to carry myself — because energy, right? How people have energy and move it into their business kind of sets the tone. Whether you're dealing with clients one-on-one, or trying to instill motivation with team members, or anything in business or in family, you've got to have good energy. So when you say, "What was it like before the rockstar alter ego?" I hope that paints the picture that there wasn't much time before it — it started pretty early.

[5:44] Mat Lewczenko: I love that you bring up energy, because everything is energy. We talk about how your energy is your business card — it's how people see you, experience you, and receive you. You bring crazy energy in everything you do — coaching, real estate, marketing, touring. But performing on stage and performing in business can both be exhausting if they aren't in alignment with goals. What did the hustle — what did the come-up — cost you? The part of the Rockstar Realtor story that you don't put on LinkedIn.

[6:12] Bobby Kerr: Wow. This is why I love the show, and what I love about what you do — this isn't a fluff interview. I don't know these questions coming. You request full transparency from your guests, and that's what makes this show special. I appreciate the question. What did it cost me? It cost me a marriage. It cost me the reinvention, as you mentioned — someone who thrives on reinvention. It's cost me relationships. It's cost me friendships. It's cost me time. None of that, by the way, is any kind of regret — I don't want that to be confusing. When someone hears "it cost him a marriage" or "it cost him lost friendships" or "it cost him time," that sounds negative on the surface. But years later or decades later, when you can reflect on those things to say, "Yeah, did I work 18 hours a day when starting new ventures, and did that take my focus and attention away from the people that I cared most about, or the people that cared most about me?" It sure did.

When a lot of entrepreneurs have this rabid-dog mentality, and success — by the way, success looks a lot of different ways to a lot of different people — but when you have this vision of what success looks like and you're chasing after your version of it, you get blinders on. At least a lot of really strong entrepreneurs get blinders on and go balls to the wall, so to speak, and say, "Nothing is going to stop me until I reach this level of success, or obtain this thing, or get to know this person, or make this much money." In hindsight, that's all just noise. But when you're in the thick of it, especially when you're younger, you're willing to do whatever it takes — of course, in an ethical manner — to achieve whatever the level of success looks like for you. For me, that's what I did when I was younger. It wasn't about doing anything bad or wrong. It was just a level of focus that took away from some relationships where I valued those relationships greatly. But obviously, at the time — now looking back 10, 15, 20 years — I valued my work more than I did some of those relationships. And I can say that now and be okay with admitting it, because I certainly don't make those mistakes now.

Balance is really important. You had a guest on a couple episodes ago talking about happiness and what that looked like — he thought he achieved happiness, but then he realized he needed to strip it all down and start over. I can really relate to that story. As a builder, I love to build — I love to build up other people, I love to build organizations, I love to take a plan that started with a seedling and really just grow the heck out of something. And I've done that several different times in my career, and it usually works out, but to the detriment sometimes in the past — two or three times — where you lose relationships, because it's a really hard thing to come to grips with, especially for someone that's not entrepreneurial. Looking back, that cost me in time. Whenever you like to rebrand, and you love — you said the "reinvention" term — I have not on purpose, but I've become a master of reinvention. And that's not changing me as a person, that's not being a chameleon. But I love a challenge.

[10:00] Bobby Kerr: It's almost psychopathic that I love to start over. Every 24 months, for the last 20-plus years of my working career, I've hit the reset button. For most people listening, they're thinking, "This is a crazy person — a psychopath that said he likes to change every two years." And I know that. Thank God — and I really do mean that — thank God I have a woman in my corner now. Past the practice marriage that I said I lost, the current relationship that I'm in with Allison — she's my biggest fan. When I want to reinvent or grow something, she's right there in my corner saying, "Go get them. What can I do to help you?" And I think that's a massive factor to anybody listening to the show. If you want to do great things and accomplish anything, you need a team around you to support you. You cannot do this by yourself at all. It's impossible to do.

[11:09] Mat Lewczenko: Not only do I agree with it, it's crazy because we have so many deep parallels here. If you ask anybody in my world, I have a 26-month pattern of reinvention. I had to do a lot of deep introspection — "okay, what is that?" — and I've got my theories on it. I don't want to put that into this podcast here with you. What I do want to ask: now that you've noticed that for you, let me ask you — I was talking to somebody around this idea of destination disappointment. A lot of people think that once they hit X, once they achieve this, once they make this, then everything will be in place. When's the last time you've experienced destination disappointment, or the post-marathon letdown? And how has that shaped how you choose to rebrand, reinvent, and restart?

[12:06] Bobby Kerr: Man, that's a good question. I've listened to some of your other shows, and I know you've asked that type of question a few different times. I thought you might ask me that, so I'm going to have to think through it as we go. But that is a real thing, and I've never heard it put like "destination disappointment" — but that's it. A lot of people — and I don't think this is just about entrepreneurs, I think people in general, especially living in the 21st century when everything's pretty easy to get access to no matter who you are — everyone has the internet, you can talk to anybody across the world in milliseconds. We've all got access to cooled homes, heated homes, the things that we need. But a lot of people, as we are driven to work around the clock — we've got these stupid devices that keep us connected 24/7 — I think intentionality, if that intentionality is not omnipresent where you have to detach, then you're constantly just grinding, grinding, grinding. Whether you're working a 9-to-5 job or a 9-7 job or running your own business, if you're spinning the wheels that hard and fast all the time, then you're always looking for some kind of external factor to almost alleviate the pain of the constant hustle.

I don't think this is an entrepreneurial thing in specificity with us, but for people in general, people are always looking for something to try to make them happy. For people like you and me that reset every two to three years, we're liable to be disappointed because we're throwing so many wrenches into the system that when we reach that destination, we're like, "Oh my gosh, this really wasn't worth it." I don't know that I'm the perfect person to answer this question, because when you do like to reset and reinvent, then you're also a little more likely to be able to look at whatever is in the rearview mirror and say, "Okay cool, that was good, I've moved on" — at least that is the way for me. I've never really talked through it like this, so I hope I'm not stumbling over my words. But I personally don't get disappointed when I reach the 24-month period — I just see opportunity for what is the next thing. But I do know that the destination disappointment thing is real.

I'll give an example. Before I relocated to South Florida — I know it looks like I don't live in South Florida, but I love South Florida — before we relocated, I was helping run a real estate team in Kansas City and helping run a mortgage company before that. And I always wanted this Florida house. It was like, "If I just get this Florida house, I'm going to be happy, and all my worries will melt away. I just need this short-term rental, because it'll also complete the real estate trifecta of residential real estate, commercial real estate, and investment property." I really wanted that feather in my cap. Destination disappointment. And I got it. And all it did was add so much more crap to my plate, because I self-managed the property. I was communicating with guests non-stop, communicating with cleaners. I tried to do the property manager thing, and I did for a little bit, but of course I did her job for her because I'm a psychopath. I ended up getting rid of her even though she was great, because I didn't want to spend the money. I got to the point where I was like, "This is way more than I anticipated." It turned into a full-time move into that house, which I'm happy for, but it definitely created some heartache and headaches, because this one thing I just wanted to get to, I got there, and all of a sudden it added so much more to my life that I wasn't prepared for, that it then bled into relationships, into my work, into my other businesses. On a small scale, that's a good example.

I had a meeting yesterday down here with a real estate coach, and he's got a big podcast just like you do. I was sharing — and we can get into this too — but more than destination disappointment, I have a difficult time, here I am being vulnerable, with imposter syndrome. I was sharing this with him confidently, and he said something along the lines of the quote about "if I just get to this point then I'll be happy, if I just get this thing I'll be happy." There's a guy I literally just learned about yesterday — his name is Anthony de Mello, and he was a Jesuit priest who died in the '80s, so all his stuff is ancient in terms of technology and recordings. But he has a YouTube video I just watched today for the very first time called "The Rediscovery of Life." And it's essentially about detachment from the idea of "when I get this thing, I'll be happy" — or what is it that actually thrills in life, or exciting moments, that is not happiness. Those are byproducts — things that make you happy when you do them, but in and of themselves, that's not happiness. Happiness can only come from within. You can only be happy because you're a truly happy person, or you're truly appreciative or grateful for the opportunities and the things we have in life. So it's interesting that you asked that question, because I just listened to this phenomenal, almost 40-year-old video of a gentleman talking about this very thing — the rediscovery of life.

As the person I am, I'm always looking for the rediscovery of life — not necessarily to find happiness, but to have fulfillment. How can I add value to other people's lives? For someone like me, sitting in a cubicle 9-to-5 working a job doesn't do it for me. Maybe it's for others, but I love to do something exciting that's going to help a lot of people, which is what I get to do every single day. It's thrilling, but who knows what the next two years brings.

[18:52] Mat Lewczenko: One of the things I'm hearing from you is — again, it's so parallel, which is probably why we get along so well, because we're wired very much the same — you're a very eternal optimist. You're a pragmatist, like "I'm going to work my way out of anything. I don't see any problems. I don't even see failures — I see lessons. I see the next opportunity." So it's kind of hard to answer some of these questions sometimes, because when it's like, "Where did you fail?" it's "I haven't yet" — or "I've failed a lot." And yet, sometimes the question needs to be: where have the people in your life felt the failure, or the disappointment? Where have those who tagged along for the ride regretted it? That's where the payoff — or the promise — never made it to them, and we keep telling them, "just give me six more months."

[19:47] Bobby Kerr: Yes. Luckily I don't do that as much as I used to. With age — I'm 43 years old — you learn a lot in 20-plus years of working. Even 10 years ago, five years ago, those are some of the things: "I just need another six months. Six months and my schedule's got to open up, or I'm going to have this new hire. All the pieces are going to come together at the same time."

[20:16] Mat Lewczenko: Yeah, I get it. People upstairs are probably laughing right now if they could hear, because that's the phrase I'm not allowed to say around here. I want to pivot a little bit back into your coaching. You coach agents, entrepreneurs, and business owners on how to build thriving independent businesses. I want you to put a number on it — how many hours a week were you actually working at the absolute worst point of your own hustle, before you learned and discovered how to manage it?

[20:47] Bobby Kerr: There were years in total build mode where it was 18, 20 hours a day. That's not really sustainable — it's not sustainable for any period of time more than a couple of weeks or months. But I've certainly been guilty of doing it for months and years. I do not do it any longer — it's a non-negotiable for me. Also for Allison, we have come up with a plan that we are respectful of each other's time and respectful of each other. Because if I'm dedicating that much time to something that's helping other realtors or helping other businesses scale and grow, how selfish of me that I'm giving them more energy than the person who's most important to me in life? So it's no longer a negotiable thing — I just don't do that.

But I've certainly done it in the past — 18, 20 hour days, barely getting any sleep. I also want to give the caveat that for me, that was really fun. I don't want that to sound like "my god, he's a slave." But that's the trap — entrepreneurship feeds us, and we become addicted to the dopamine of building. That's exactly what it is. Everyone who reads entrepreneurial or business books — Gary Vee, for instance, a world-class marketer most entrepreneurs know, known for being loudmouthed and crass and in-your-face about what it takes to win in marketing, online visibility, and branding — he's awesome. But he says some things like, basically, "if you're not waking up every single day jumping out of bed full of excitement to do the thing, then something's wrong with you, you need to change course." I think that's a little much. I love what I do every single day, but I'm not thrilled to get out of bed every single day to make sure I hit the gym by 6:30 so I can be back at the house by 8, showered and cleaned up to have my six sales calls. It's not necessarily all glamorous and exciting. But for builders, it is exciting for the most part to build and to help people.

Every sale you make is a dopamine rush. Every new client is really exciting. The people listening to this podcast as entrepreneurs, as family members, as heads of household — you get that rush. If it's a real estate agent, you get somebody under contract, that's a rush. Then to get them clear to close — whoosh, another wave of a dopamine hit. For me, every time a business owner or real estate agent says, "Hey, my online presence sucks. Bobby, can you help me with LOC8?" — absolutely we can. As soon as we get that person set up as a customer, dopamine rush. Get their business profile set up on Google, dopamine rush. They start getting leads from it — not only are they making money and getting the rush, but when they tell me that what we did works, I'm getting probably a bigger rush than they are, to be perfectly honest. And then when they recommend me to somebody else, another giant rush. It's this consistent ebb and flow. And of course there's always the downside too — maybe you lose a customer you had for a long time and you don't understand why, or you worked your tail off and you ignored a relationship and lost that person, and they're no longer responding to your text, and you're like, "what the hell?" Well, it's because you were a jerk and you worked your tail off so much that you lost the relationship. There's a lot to that.

[24:34] Mat Lewczenko: You bring to light a lot of things that not a lot of people consider whenever they look from outside looking in. When we're winning, it looks amazing. And nobody wants to actually experience the lows. If people see you at a 10, what they don't realize is that it gets to zero sometimes. I remember there was a season where I remember taking my dogs outside at night and just looking up and going, "Okay, I know there's a lesson here, and I know I'm going through this for a reason, but man, I could use a little less pressure at the moment. I'm getting crushed here. I don't know how I'm going to figure these things out tomorrow. Could you give me a break?" It's tough.

[25:30] Bobby Kerr: Yeah, it is. We talked about this before we started hitting record — actually maybe after we started — but I personally don't struggle with reinvention. I don't struggle with the hustle. I don't even struggle really with rejection — that happens in business, you're going to lose more often than you win. I personally struggle with imposter syndrome.

[25:49] Mat Lewczenko: For those listening that don't necessarily know what that is, to put it in a nutshell: once you reach a level of quote-unquote success, then you start to question, "Are you worthy of it? Was the way I got here the right way?" Then you start reflecting on all those years of maybe the few relationships that you neglected, and you think, "Okay, I'm actually..." — I've been guilty of this — I've then taken my foot off the gas purposefully to almost reprimand myself, because I felt at times that I didn't necessarily deserve this season of life. Does that make sense?

[26:41] Bobby Kerr: Yeah. The self-sabotage from imposter syndrome is a really real symptom. It's almost like self-justifying the imposter syndrome when the subconscious becomes conscious, and you self-sabotage to validate that feeling, as opposed to leaning into and believing and lending other people's belief in you, and just taking that for a minute. I remember similar stuff — I kept getting invited into these next opportunities and I never felt like I had done enough. I constantly felt like, "I'm going to go into the next meeting, or lead the next thing." I was being called to lead these meetings with agents that have been in the business for 15, 20 years, and I'd been in for four or five, and running sales meetings in front of these offices. What am I going to share with these individuals? I felt like a complete fraud. I remember asking the guy that brought me in, "Do you really think I can do this?" He goes, "Oh yeah, you're it. You're the guy." But I still couldn't take it. And to this day, I still have the same thing.

[27:54] Mat Lewczenko: Look, even — I've been wanting to do this podcast for years. Why hadn't I? Because in the back of my mind I'm sitting there going, "Well, yeah, you put stuff out there that's going to be forever." I wish people could go into my YouTube studio — it highlights the comments, and some of the comments from the randos are brutal, just beyond brutal. And I have to ignore them — they're all anonymous, no profile pic. But I feel the same thing. However, there was a time where I had to create a mantra around it, a new frame of belief around it. Probably one of the best books — I don't know if you've read it — Jamie Kern Lima's "Worthy." Chapter 2 is one you're going to lean into — it's about reframing the story. When I realized imposter syndrome was actually my superpower was when I understood why I was where I'm at. Because let me ask you this: if you don't believe you're worthy, and you feel like you're going to get found out the next time you open your mouth, how well do you prepare for the next opportunity?

[29:07] Bobby Kerr: Yeah, that was the thing. I remember when I was newer in real estate and I hadn't sold anything yet, my number one fear was someone's going to ask me, "Okay, so how many homes have you sold?" So what I did was I went in and memorized the local market stats. I knew absorption rate, I knew velocity, I knew days on market, up, down, trends. I could give you all the stats for the MLS, for the county, for the zip code. I could tell you the last six months of what's happened in the area. So when I went to this meeting and they'd ask, I'd say, "All right, let me give you a quick picture — let me go from 30,000 foot down to 10,000 foot, talk about your property, then we can go into strategy." I would open my mouth and go right into the weeds. Nobody asked, because I was so afraid of being asked whether or not I'm valid that I studied more than anybody ever would. And then you've got guys showing up with no presentation, a couple pieces of paper: "Alright, you ready to list? What price do you want?" So for me, the moment I feel that feeling, I just go, "Okay, here comes the superpower."

[30:19] Mat Lewczenko: I'm going to over-prepare and outperform anybody against me. Like, you have no chance. Again, parallels. I have my own version of that. For me, as a lifelong performer — I've been on stage since I was five years old, singing, acting — that translated into everything I've done in business. It's not about performing per se, but when you are accustomed to being in front of an audience — and I don't want this to be confused — every time I do something like this, or speak at a conference, or perform as Bob Joy, I still get nervous. I get butterflies. Here's the crazy part: all the nerves are in the preparation and the lead-up to the actual thing. A lot of people can probably relate — we grind our stomach and our heart and our mind into this awful scenario, and we dream up all the possible things that could go wrong. But when it happens, everything's cool. "Oh my gosh, I prepared so much — I out-hustled everybody, outworked everybody, out-prepared my competition." That's probably what you're saying. I love how you said it — because of the imposter syndrome, that's what freaks me out so much, so I over-prepare, so that when the thing happens, I'm actually over-prepared. So now I celebrate it. I welcome it. In fact, I embrace it. It's now who I am. It's my superpower.

[31:57] Bobby Kerr: And actually, this topic is likely going to be the next book.

[32:02] Mat Lewczenko: So you heard it here first. Love it. I want to go into — you've seen what it takes to succeed in real estate, in marketing, in business. What do most business owners, entrepreneurs, and salespeople believe right now that you feel is a complete trap? What's the biggest lie that entrepreneurs are leaning into or believing right now that you believe is a trap to their success?

[32:31] Bobby Kerr: A couple of things. Number one, what we've been talking about — "if you just out-hustle and work 20 hours a day, then you're going to win, be happy, and have the thing." Especially new entrepreneurs read or listen to Gary Vee, or read every book possible, and it's like, "for two or three years you just have to work your tail off, lose sleep, damn the consequences, and you're going to be okay." Looking back now at 43 years old, that's a crock — it's a crock of crap to think that you're going to be okay at the end of it. The end of the tunnel sucks if you do that for a prolonged period of time. That's number one.

Number two, we've been force-fed for the last 10, 15 years — and it's still true today — about social media in general, that we've got to be everywhere, all at once, all the time. Holistically speaking, it's kind of the same thing: if you try to be everywhere all at once, all at the same time, you're going to burn out. We all have way better tools now than 15, 10, or even five years ago — AI makes everybody more efficient if you use it properly and don't just use it as noise. But the idea of "I've got to be doing 10 YouTube videos a week, 15 reels on Instagram, a newsletter, my own podcast, Reddit threads, LinkedIn articles every day, Facebook posts to appease a certain audience" — that is where a lot of entrepreneurs get into trouble. Unless you're at a point where you can pay people or pay systems to really dial all that in for you without taking things off your plate, you're going to burn out and crash. For me personally, I did that a lot in my earlier entrepreneurial days. As a natural marketer, I was really just a chicken with my head cut off — a jack of all, master of none.

I'll give a shout-out. One of my former business partners, Summit Lending's CEO Darren Copeland — you know Darren. He's one of the real ones. He's worked his butt off over the last 30 years in the mortgage space. Shout-out to his company — they were named the Association of Independent Mortgage Experts Broker of the Year last year. I was with Darren for five years, and we helped scale Summit Lending — it's a phenomenal large company now, and he's kicking butt because he stayed true to his vision. A very, very sniper-approach vision. This is the point I'm making.

[35:32] Bobby Kerr: It's probably a terrible metaphor — I should change the verbiage — but I'm going to stick with it now: sniper approach versus shotgun approach. In my early career — I was with Darren when we'd just started Summit Lending, four of us in the company, and Darren had the vision to recruit loan officers and grow the company to serve the entire country. We hired a recruiting coach to help us with mortgage loan officer attraction. At the time, I had co-founded Kansas City's now largest and most successful home inspection company, Diamond Heritage Inspections. I was helping Darren as VP of Summit Lending. We'd started a property and casualty insurance franchise under Goosehead Insurance. So we had this massive vertical stack — mortgage, inspections, insurance, and real estate referral partners. I leveraged the heck out of, "I am Bobby, Mr. Entrepreneur, I've got these companies." Everything I plastered on planet Earth showed the logos of all three companies. I was so proud, wearing that like a badge of honor. And it is cool — but all that was an ego play.

It took this recruiting coach that Darren had hired to sit down one-on-one with us and say, "Bobby, you're hurting the end goal of this company, because you are watering down what it is that you do and what you're capable of, by trying to promote your own ego. Someone looks at you and says, 'Is he a mortgage guy? An insurance guy? An inspection guy? A singer? What is he doing?'" Not everybody listening has multiple companies, but when you get that laser focus to say, "I'm only going to focus on a couple of things — whether it be the social media example or going after a specific niche clientele" — once an entrepreneur understands that lesson, that the sniper approach is way better than the shotgun approach. For a lot of real estate agents listening, if you just say, "I just love working with people, I want to help everybody buy and sell a house," you're going to go nowhere. As a real estate coach, you know this better than anybody — you cannot be the generalist. You need to pick a niche and say, "This is what I do."

Another example: when I started LOC8, my real estate marketing agency, I could have said, "Because of our skill set, we're the world's best company at optimizing Google Business Profiles," and go help every bar owner, shoe store, clothing boutique, every real estate agent, every mortgage loan officer. I could do that, but it would actually bring me fewer clients, because no one would know that I'm the expert in a specific area. So the long-winded route to answer — the more specific you can get as a business owner, to drill down to your clientele and your level of expertise and go a mile deep and two or three inches wide, as opposed to the opposite — it really brings a level of focus so you're going to succeed much, much quicker and at a much, much higher clip.

[39:14] Mat Lewczenko: If somebody's listening to Bobby for the first time, I can't oversell this — Bobby's understanding of the Google Business Profile, and now his understanding of how AI is indexing people for search — you have to connect with Bobby to get your business in order. I want to give you an opportunity to share one thing. If someone's business right now is drowning and they're invisible online, what is one tangible, tactical step they can deploy today that they don't need an expert for? What's the highest return on impact — ROI — they can deploy today without being a Google expert, that would make the biggest bump for them if they're sitting there invisible right now?

[40:14] Bobby Kerr: Other than calling you and scheduling a call — locatemybusiness.com — no, honestly, they need to get reviews. They need to get public-facing reviews. If you're asking for the one thing that will move the needle the most, the quickest, and the easiest — obviously Google's going to be the most important. It's the world's biggest platform for business data. If you're not there, you're a freaking ghost. So yes, Google reviews are important number one. To peel the onion back a little bit — we'll speak specifically to real estate, because obviously we're both in real estate, but this goes for any industry. When you have reviews across multiple platforms — for real estate it'd be Google, Zillow, Realtor.com, Better Business Bureau. Every business owner needs an official Better Business Bureau listing, because it's one of the most highly — they call them citations. An online listing on a website is called a citation. It's one of the most valued citations because it's the Better Business Bureau — they give accreditation ratings, and if you're a bad business owner, someone can call and report you and they ding you. So it's a really important citation.

When you have reviews there, and when you have a Yelp business profile — people think of Yelp as food and beverage, but it's one of the most important citations for all business owners. Yelp helps feed ChatGPT directly. So if you don't have reviews on Yelp, you're automatically taking back visibility on ChatGPT, because it pulls straight from there. To go back to the very beginning of your question: getting reviews on Google is number one, the most important. But spreading reviews across other platforms that are industry-specific but also important as a whole — like Better Business Bureau and Yelp, which are all industries — you automatically open up the fields for these online platforms like Google, Bing, ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity. They look at real human reviews on these platforms and automatically give your business credence, because you have real humans talking about real examples of how you really served them in the category in which your profile says you're a professional.

If you're a real estate agent and your reviews have verbiage like, "Matt helped me buy 123 Main Street. He helped me find my mortgage lender, my home inspector, my title company, my homeowner's insurance, pointed me in the right direction, and he even negotiated the price under asking price, and I closed in less than 30 days. He's the best agent in Kansas City, Missouri. Five stars. I love him." When your reviews say things like that — they mention your business name, they mention the geographical location (very important to have hyperlocal content in everything, especially reviews), they mention the problems you solved in that transaction, and they give you five stars — when you have all these things, these platforms look at you as more credible, you have more authority. Google literally calls them trust signals.

When you have real-life clients — whether it's somebody who worked with you 20 years ago or today — if they leave you a review today, in Google's eyes, that's a brand new customer. For real estate professionals listening, thinking, "Man, I used to kick ass — I did 20, 30, 40 transactions a year back in 2005, and my business just isn't what it used to be, I only do one deal a month now" — go back to the well. Go back to your past clients. Anybody, any industry — if you've got a database of clients, and they leave a review for you today, that's a brand new customer in terms of search engine optimization. There's just no way around it. This is what moves the needle. This is what a business owner could do immediately to start helping their online visibility.

[44:31] Mat Lewczenko: This was a gift for the fans, because we didn't drop the gold until 40 minutes in. If you're still here, that was for you — that's for the real ones. All right, we're going to go — last question, one of my favorite questions. You may know what's coming. If someone watching or listening is exactly where you were at your worst — maybe they're putting on a great show for the world, but they're feeling empty when they step off stage — what do you want to say to them right now?

[45:02] Bobby Kerr: Wow. I didn't know that was coming at all. What would I say to somebody like that? I would say, keep going. Keep producing, keep having conversations. It does get easier. I know that sounds so vague, like you can read that in any book, but every time I have a conversation with someone, I get a little bit better and a little more comfortable with myself. The more comfortable we are with ourselves, then the more comfortable we're going to be with potential business partners, co-oping agents, or clientele. That's the vanilla part.

I would also say, to go back to the beginning of our conversation, don't give yourself this finish line to say, "If I do X, then this will happen, I'll be happy." I think that's really important. Before I even knew you were going to bring destination disappointment up, I made a note to talk about it today, because it's really important that we pass that torch to understand that it's not possible. Just because you accomplish something in business or in life, you're going to always be looking for the next thing. So don't set yourself up for disappointment to say, "I'll be happy when I accomplish this thing."

I'd also say — what was it? — a lot of entrepreneurs, especially ones thinking about getting started, say to themselves, "I'm not yet ready to start."

[46:29] Bobby Kerr: "I'll be ready when..." They're always saying, "I need more research. I need to know I'm going to have X amount of clients when I first get started. I can't get into this space because I'm not a thought leader yet. Once I start my podcast, then I'll start my coaching business." That's probably one of the biggest pitfalls for business owners — to say "I'll be ready when," and then I'll do the thing. For me, I didn't do this on purpose — it just happened over the course of my life and career — but I'm a ready-fire-aim person. I'm not here to say that's the right way to do it, but I can tell you for me it was the right way. You're never going to be fully ready. I've been a Google business expert, quote-unquote, for 10 years, because I always built my own businesses on the back of it, and I always helped people on the side, and I get paid to do it. But I always wanted to start this company, and I wasn't ready yet, so I just always put it off. And I said, "You know what? I'm moving to Florida. This is a fresh start. I'm going to reinvent myself and my next business, and I'm just jumping in. I'm going to leverage my sphere of influence." I had zero clients when I started this company, but I started it and said, "We're going to figure it out — grassroots effort, have as many conversations as possible, and then kick ass at doing the thing, and it's going to grow." It's just going to happen.

The biggest piece of advice that no one really gave me — I had to learn from the school of hard knocks — is you're never going to be fully ready. Just do it. Just freaking do it. Ready, fire, aim. Do not try to aim before you do the thing, because you're going to miss, and then you're going to get discouraged, and you're going to talk yourself out of doing it.

[48:25] Mat Lewczenko: It reminds me of my favorite quote, and you can take it with you, package it, share it, give me credit at least three times. It's: "Ready is not a feeling. It's a decision." No one feels ready. If you're waiting to feel ready, you'll never be ready. You just need to decide. It's time to go. It's showtime.

[48:49] Bobby Kerr: I've got a buddy down here in South Florida who owns a home inspection company, and he's a person that doesn't naturally do these kinds of things — he doesn't like to do presentations with realtors. But when he's on an inspection and meets a realtor and a client for the first time, he taught me this, and as a performer I stole it from him. Before he's on the roof, inspecting the roof, waiting on the client and the realtor to come, he literally taps his arm and goes, "Showtime. Let's go." I do it now. I did it before I got on this call with you. I did it yesterday before my meeting with the other real estate coach down here in Florida. And it helps. It's like an ignition switch — it helps me get my mind right to say, "Maybe I don't feel ready, but I'm going to do the damn thing anyway." It's go time.

[49:38] Mat Lewczenko: I can't thank you enough. I'm so excited we were able to make this work. For those that don't know, this was scheduled to be recorded last week and we had some technical difficulties, had to punt and pivot, and here we are. I'm glad it happened, because this episode is going to be 10 times better than what that one could have been.

[49:56] Bobby Kerr: Oh yeah, I came in jacked up because I wanted to make up for my crappy internet situation.

[50:03] Mat Lewczenko: Listen, if someone was resonating with your conversation and really wants to find out more and learn more about you and LOC8, what are the ways people can connect with you? How can they set up a call?

[50:14] Bobby Kerr: Absolutely, thank you for that opportunity. First of all, just go to locatemybusiness.com — that's LOC8, I know it's cheeky, locatemybusiness.com. From there, there's about a thousand call-to-action buttons to schedule time with me on my calendar. Get 30 free minutes with me and we'll just talk through your personal business and what's going on with your online visibility. We are the true world's authority when it comes to Google Business Profiles — that's not hyperbolic, we are the best, my team is amazing. If you're a person thinking my Google presence or online presence — if you use ChatGPT and Gemini to search for yourself and you're not popping up, we need to have a conversation, because there are blocking-and-tackling things you need to be doing that you probably don't know to do. So locatemybusiness.com, number one. You can find me on every major social media channel — on X, on YouTube, on Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, all the stuff. Usually it's @TheBobbyKerr for my personal stuff, and you can just search for LOC8 My Business and you're going to find us across the board. As a digital marketing agency, I try to stay pretty up-to-date on producing content, making sure we're serving as many people as possible.

[51:23] Mat Lewczenko: Right on, dude. This was fantastic, super fun. If you guys are still here and this type of conversation resonates with you, go ahead and click that subscribe button, smash the like, drop us a comment — what's the number one thing you took from this? Come be a part of the fam. It's cooler when we're all together. All right, till next time, we'll see you guys. This is the No Regrets Blueprint podcast.