Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to another SLG Meetup, your host, Alvaro, to bring you another successful and interesting guest. His name is David Goughton, and he's a very different guest because we usually bring people that talk about luxury, whether it's real estate or other type of luxury lifestyle, but this individual, he's a creator with over 2 million followers and has been creating some really interesting content. And at the same time, he's been running his consulting firm to help companies to raise capital and to develop some really incredible projects, whether it's building a hotel, starting a restaurant, or many other things he's been helping along that process. We're going to talk about how he has been able to grow his social media, generate leads and also expand the mind and opportunities through the type of content that he creates.
There you go. Benio, my friend, welcome to the SLG Meetup. I'm glad that this is working and you're coming us live from Mexico City, correct? That's right.
I'm the president of Mexico City, actually live in Guerrero, but it's nice to be outside every once in a while. Perfect. That's what the sake of keeping this international. We're going to continue the conversation in English.
And I'm very fascinated with the type of content that you produce because it immediately takes me to the state of curiosity, right? Curiosity leads to expand your mind. And this is what you're doing through your content. So let me ask you what got you started.
Actually, that's worth. Curiosity got me started. At first, I was just doing my thing, which is finance and a friend of mine. That's really, really wise social media wise.
He told me, you should start creating some videos because people outside don't know what you're doing and you might help them. So taking as a pillar, you know, the try to help others all the time. I started making finance videos and then I started to get a little twist on what actually inspires me, which is curiosity. So the essence of the channel is learn something on every video.
It doesn't matter to the topic. It doesn't matter to the industry. It's just try to learn something every single day. Wow.
Now that's really cool because as I was scrolling down through some of your videos, the topics are completely different, right? And I think that when you are being curious and you're expanding your mind, it also equips you with more knowledge on how you can create something unique because you're combining thoughts and experiences from all the angles. And that's why you brought into your consulting firm, right? That's right.
Actually, that's something I like to say on everyone's in a while. I gave conferences on curiosity. And what I say is every single piece of knowledge that you have is like a little dot on a canvas. The more dots that you have, the more opportunities that you get to connect those dots and you can create different figures and different pieces of art.
But if you don't have enough dots, you're really limited on your options. Let's say if you have three dots, you can make a triangle and that's pretty much it. If you have a fourth dot, then you have an arrow or you can make a square. If you have five dots, then you can keep moving and the more pieces of information that you have, expand your possibilities and you can take it business-wise on your personal life, getting to know new people, getting to get new skills.
So yes, I think curiosity has to be the pillar for everyone's life in every aspect. And so curiosity equals limitless. It's the beginning of reaching that ultimate potential. Now, I think that when we look at technology, right, and how things have advanced these days with now chat GPT and everything that we can acquire online when it comes to information, the question is not so much how much information can we acquire, but what kind of questions can we ask?
So that's right. So I'm really curious again, talking about curiosity. What type of questions go through your head when you're actually asking yourself what to ask next, whether it's for yourself or for just the world. I think the question that I get, like, but my brain tells me to ask itself is how does it work?
It's usually the one that leads me to every other question, you know, like you're just driving and then you wonder how does my phone know where I'm all the time. So now you have to learn how your GPS works. And then you keep moving and it's like, hey, how does Bluetooth work? Because my phone is connected to my car.
How does Bluetooth work? And then you get a call and say, how do telephones work? So everything adds up. And the main question is regularly, how does it work?
And once you learn how things work, you can have different ideas. So I think that's the most important question in my life all the time. How does it work? Really good.
I mean, to be honest, we come across so many people in life that have been fixated with a path and they are doing that because that's the blueprint that they were given and they do things such as ABC and that's it. They just follow that path, but they don't ask themselves the question on how does that work? They're just doing it because they were told so. So how does somebody develop that curiosity mindset?
I think it's a well, when you get new information, there's different paths that your brain takes in order to let's say, prioritize it. One of the largest or most important is surprise. So if you come across information that surprises you, it's really likely that you will retain it. So I think that if you manage to get the skill of looking at the world like a kid, if you if you turn yourself into a six year old every single morning and try to be surprised by everything that's out there, you are going to have a completely different life in every aspect.
You're going to be wondered by everything. Are you going to want more and learn more every single day? And what I say to people is that if you want to find your passions in life, turn yourself into six into a six year old because maybe you're just doing things because you know how to do them and people take you for it, but maybe you're not happy doing it. So if you let yourself wonder and be wondered by the things out there, you might find a passion that will make you more money and that will actually make you happier.
So I think the trick is turn yourself into a six year old. I like it. A lot of people are like, well, if life was that easy, but you're right because a lot of times I actually speak about how to find your passion because a lot of people don't know how to find passion about something in life. And it all starts by being curious.
You're going to try a lot of things. You're going to ask a lot of questions and you're going to end it up learning and finding out a lot of things that you like and a lot of things that you do like. And that's what's going to start the path toward developing your skills in whatever passion you develop. So I think that curiosity is a great first gear towards any type of happiness in life.
But at the end of the day, I want to also bring it back right to your path as a creator because I see that you're able to turn that skill of being surprised towards the audience like people are getting surprised like I was just going through some videos and some of them are like, okay, whatever, but some of those I'm like, huh, interesting. I didn't think about it. So how do you keep on reinventing yourself to find that angle on surprising people with information that you're putting. Wow, that's, that's a good question.
Okay, so brain bending myself. I usually take, let's say that right now I'm going to investigate a lot on let's say neuroscience. And I just start reading and looking at videos and documentaries and whatever and now I learned a lot of how your brain works, but suddenly I started wondering on how your car works so I turn my focus on that other thing. And I wouldn't call it reinventing.
I would call it just adapting to at first I started doing videos like this just me talking to the camera. And then I realized that it was really easy to communicate through conversations which are fake of course I'm talking to myself, but then you can actually put someone you can put yourself on someone else's shoes, just by putting the cap on and the hoodie. And that's not you. It's the person that has a question.
So what I did is, okay, this is a good way to communicate and to solve people's problems just by changing the way I create videos and after that. And I noticed that people really like the, you know, the short transitions in the video so you start changing the ways that you create the content. And then you realize that people are really interested in certain topics like let's say neuro their big version that's how you call them. That's a great topic that I love because there are a lot of people in my family that are their parents.
So I start talking about that people relate and just noticing what people actually appreciate the most like they like learning on, I'm going to say motivation or I'm going to say habits and productivity. And they like a couple of advice. So you just start swimming through the waves and finding which trends are good and which information people actually value. And that's pretty much like socially to be still for a second.
You have to be adapting and you have to be moving all the time because it moves with the world and it's a really fast space. 100% is a very fast based environment you said right there you're gonna be able to adapt but you said something really interesting because at the end of the day you gotta learn what the audience is consuming. And in this case you gotta put content out there and try a lot of people try one thing one time they don't work and then they stop well try something else. And then you can start finding slowly what's the niche.
I think that for you because when I look at creators right I always think in terms of what kind of pillars are the emphasizing on and there is the social media pillars whether you are entertaining you see the occasional or you're inspiring. Right. And I think that in your case you decided to go towards the educational angle because everything that you're putting out there is something that people are curious about is like huh interesting and you're just defining the topics based on what people are actually interested on. So it's something that I always say for anybody that is outside of this particular industry even if you are just selling real estate or you're selling yards or you're selling private jets, you can always decide what kind of creator can you be right whether it's gonna be something that is inspirational, educational or entertaining and your case with educational I feel like there is so much room for what you do to bring it to any industry that's why I love that you have that business the consulting side because you have a very creative mind and when I look at a lot of businesses even business owners that they don't know what to do to increase their business well have you actually try to get out of the box and talk about things that people are not used to like if you're selling a private jet you can start asking the questions that people might have that are different and you create that little scenario of what you do with the content so I like that by the way it's pretty cool I think that it also keeps your mind fresh and sharp Thank you.
That's right. So you need to be looking at the world and I was moving every single day you're gonna go behind. One thing that I asked myself and I'm sure again a lot of people might be asking themselves is like yeah but so much information isn't that a lot of it useless like the analysis paralysis I have so much information that I don't even know what to do with it like how do you kind of clean up and make sure that only for making your acquiring has a purpose. I like a quote that actually only works in English that's a that's a thing that frustrated me because it doesn't exist in Spanish and it's this famous what that says Jack of all trades.
And we usually miss the real meaning of the focus the quote is Jack of all trades is a master of none but still always better than a master of one. So that's like the whole quote is it's the other way around it's like you don't have to focus in one single thing because if that thing goes wrong, you're out. You need to know different things and you need to have the abilities to adapt to different scenarios so that's that's what I think it's the most important thing and if you're talking business right and actually everything. You need to have skills other than knowledge and just you know data and the technicality of your business you need to get the skills and there's you have to be curious and you need to be working on yourself all the time because you need to be working on yourself all the time because if you're a problem solver it doesn't matter which problem that you have you have the skill of problems all that if you are a salesman salesperson you have the skill to sell it doesn't matter if you're selling answer you're selling whatever you have the skill of convincing people so I think the most important thing in business and curiosity is be curious but with skills then you can be curious in knowledge and general data but skills are the most important thing that you need to be a diverse and you know robust.
I like that by the way that's pretty good. I think a lot of people lack on developing the skills after acquiring certain type of knowledge. I mean the curious is the first step. Then once you start getting more into that topic it's about developing skills that will allow you to grow in whatever direction you're deciding to go.
So in this case for example when I look at a lot of real estate agents right within our industry that are stuck with the same thing and it's about reinventing yourself by asking the questions first with curiosity and then starting to create content based on that information which is what you did and that's how you grew your account. What was the question would be what was the most curious thing that you've come across? Oh wow you mean like in social media or in my life? Well your life will be a very open topic I'm saying in social media like as you're curious about different things in life when you talk about social media like what's one of the things that you've been wow this is interesting and it kind of opened up for you.
Okay, it's actually something boring but it blew my mind. Social media people are usually you know looking at social media from the outside they think it's just for certain people and always an influencer because he's got the you know the word to be an influencer and I think it's a completely new world and it's something that's just either you're a part of it creating content or you just look at the content but there's no way that someone that's watching creates content. It's a weird thing it's like an aquarium you know you're looking at the fish or you're deficient you can't be a fish. Okay so what I think was the most eye-opening thing on social media is that it's nothing but numbers.
It's just data if you're good analyzing data you're going to be really good in social media because once you start creating content and no one watches it and then you get a couple of videos that some people are watching once you have like a month of experience doing it you have data and this data tells you who's watching, when they're watching, where they live, how old they are if they're men or women, if they look at your content in the morning or in the afternoon or on the weekends and if they stay to look at your video for 10 seconds or for 2 seconds or 20 seconds you start getting a lot a lot of information and you adapt we're going back to that so it's a once you know when you're watching who's watching why they're watching you can create videos according to your audience and then it's just a guarantee that you're going to make it on social media so maybe it's a boring answer but it's something can open my eyes and blew my mind it's like well you just need to have the skill of analyzing data and you're going to be good in social media. It's a really interesting answer because that's so true a lot of people just get frustrated because they are posting amazing content and they're not getting any engagement or virality and then they see another account that maybe the content is not as good but it's blowing up and it's not so much about the people loving that content more than his content or her content it's just that they understood the game better and the game all comes down to numbers so yeah very good very good analogy and look I want to wrap it up because I know you also have other things to do we always have this question for all of our guests and I'm really curious to see what your answer is what's Luxury to you. Okay I'm going to say that Luxury is kind of a cinnamon of freedom and to me freedom is being able to not care I don't know if it's going to have like a negative connotation I know that's a word in English but I think that the highest luxury that you can have is not being word-proofing and if you can not be worried about whatever whenever you want wherever you want I think that's Luxury besides the you know price tag or besides the you know the Yat or the mentioned or the car or the helicopter I think that's just the cherry and top not worrying it's like not only I don't worry I can't worry on a yet that's just the top of my head. That's my deal to me.
So I think if you take it to the ground and to the roots I think Luxury has to be not worrying I think that's the definition. I love it by the way I mean nobody defined it this way and I've asked this question hundreds of times so I really like it because it is true like you could be in a private jet but you're worried about so many other thousand things that it makes you miserable in fact I've been in private just with people that were miserable and I'm thinking man how is this person miserable but then you understand because they're worried about so much versus being in a completely different environment but you're worried free and life is good so yeah no it's a great angle so look David I really appreciate it. If I had to ask your last question it will be what will you suggest to anybody that is stuck because their brain your other brain their mind is stuck is like always like the same thing what will be a piece of advice for somebody to get unstuck on progressive life. Okay life in general well you know I think it's it's the simplest of of advice is but read a book any book actually you know what ask someone that you admire to recommend a book to you and read it and you know what just eat the book a weekend a weekend just dedicated weekend to read that book because there's I think it's almost impossible for you to not learn something from a book it's I think there's no way it's it's only words I mean you know there's got to be something that you get from that book and it's even better if you if you read a book that's in line with your with your passions or industry or whatever but I think that whenever you're stuck you can ask someone that you admire to recommend a book to you and if you're going to get something from that and whatever you get from that book just apply it the next day I think that's a that's a good hack to be out of the mud but I'm back to my advice that the line always say it's turn yourself into a six year old have a conversation with a kid that would be a great advice wow conversation with a kid and just let him talk or let her talk and let them do the asking and whatever they ask you if you don't know the answer to the question Google it and I think that's that's a good booster you know I didn't get get to tough to someone that's really curious and that's really looking at the world like something that's amazing as it is and I bet that's going to get your your gears going I mean I love those two recommendations I see I asked for one I got double so that's actually very very powerful I like those two advices in fact I'm going to apply them right away what's the book that you're recommending it's Friday so hey we can ahead time to eat a book you know what I'm going to give you the best book in the world it's my favorite book hands down I've read and it's not about personal development it's a novel I don't know if you like novels I actually love novels the name of this book is the name of the winning the name of the win by Patrick Raffles it's the best book ever greeting well the second one it's a white man here that's the best book ever greeting but you have to read the first one so this is a great book all right I'll I'll order it right away and if it's already available I'll have it ready for me so that's a great advice and then the second I'll go ahead and call my knees or any of the kids that I have a deal and start listening to the question so David that was amazing I really enjoyed the conversation so for anybody that is looking to expand their mind or connect or even ask for some advice with your consulting firm workout they find you best Social media is the best place always David Cohen TikTok Instagram Facebook whichever is DM me and we can talk about whatever you want to talk about and I hope I can help you in it somewhere all right amazing well mucha la fia my friend that was a pleasure of a conversation and I can wait to see you soon You guys can ask for another photo and I hope you can make another one of these where I can control you know my internet and my my lights but I really enjoyed this one and thank you so much as always hey just ask yourself a question how can you how does it work right?
all right yeah that was great thank you so much and thanks again for everybody tuning in today we hope you enjoyed it and remember embrace it beautiful success in life my name is Alvaro and I'll see you next time