Building (Inc) your personal brand with Matthew Schneider [003]
Episode Summary
In this episode, Gus talks with Matthew Schneider, founder of Building, Inc., a company focused on data management and tokenization for commercial real estate. Matthew shares his unique approach to marketing, emphasizing the importance of personal branding, consistency, and authentic networking rather than traditional advertising.
Key Topics
- Building, Inc.'s mission to bridge technology and commercial real estate
- The importance of personal branding for founders
- Creating consistent, high-quality content that provides genuine value
- Event marketing and speaking engagements as effective strategies
- Networking as the most valuable form of marketing
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Introduction to Building, Inc.
Gus: Hello everybody and welcome back to another episode of Founder Facing! My name is Gus and today I'm joined by Matthew Schneider who is building something called Building, Inc.. So Matthew, it's so great to have you on the show. Thanks for joining us.
Matthew: Yeah, thanks for reaching out and setting this up. Looking forward to our marketing conversation. I don't get to talk about founder marketing too much, especially because I'm sort of unorthodox with it. So this should be fun.
Gus: Very cool. We'd love to hear that. I mean every founder has a different approach to marketing - some start right out the gate. So I'm interested to hear your thoughts on that. But before we jump into the marketing side of things, tell me a little bit about your company. Give me the quick two to three minute elevator pitch on what you're building.
Matthew: So the company is called Building, Inc. and we focus on data management and tokenization for commercial real estate. This is super tech-infused, but we're also dealing with non-tech industries like construction and institutional investors. We're building a bridge between those parties and technology that's going to help them with operational efficiency, keeping track of important information that we need in an important industry like commercial real estate. It's the built world. We better build it right? And then also bringing them to capital markets - so getting investors involved or getting the banks involved and helping the flow of capital around the world.
Funding Experience and Investor Profiles
Gus: Fascinating! I actually just spoke with another founder who was kind of in the finance industry, talking about getting capital as a big piece of that puzzle and being able to have the backing and funds to create these systems that allow your company to be successful. So what was your funding like and what stage are you guys in right now as a startup?
Matthew: So I qualify us as pre-seed. I've done some fundraising in the past in a couple different ways. I've received angel investments, I've crowdfunded, and I have attempted VC now with our current states. And with the industries that I sit in with blockchain and artificial intelligence, you got to hit that just right to get the funding that you need. Nonetheless, we've demonstrated that we don't quite need it at this time. Of course, we have our scaling plans, and so I didn't create a pro forma for nothing - capital would be great, but we can sustain ourselves.
Matthew: It's also been interesting being exposed to real estate funding because there's some similarities to venture capital in how you're crafting a story. You're putting your numbers out there and then you have to market it and get investors in the door and win them over. They just prioritize different things and so it's super interesting dealing with different personalities of investors where some are supervision oriented and then others are just "show me the numbers, help me be profitable on this, what's the IRR?"
"As you market those things, I've been on both sides of the coin where one year you're trying to show how this is gonna change the world with a startup, and other times it's just 'here's the most boring investment you could possibly imagine - it will not go under, invest.'"
– Matthew Schneider, Founder of Building, Inc.
Gus: Exactly. That's actually super interesting because we haven't talked too much about getting capital and getting investors interested, but it is like going after different ICP profiles entirely, right? Some of those investors are very much like "I will buy the vision" - it doesn't even matter what you guys are currently doing or what your roadmap looks like. If I can get behind and understand the story that you're trying to tell me, I'm all in. But then the other side of that coin like you were saying, it's more calculated investors who are much more concerned with the finances and when am I gonna get the return on investment.
Marketing Philosophy and Personal Branding
Gus: So in terms of the marketing and things like that for your company - you're not actively seeking investments, you're not courting aggressively, and it's great that you can sustain your business without super large injections of capital. So congrats on that. But when it comes to marketing your company and getting the word out about what you guys are doing, what's your approach been so far?
Matthew: Well, whether I'm courting investors for the company or clients or raising awareness about technology and trying to be an educational figure, it always traces back to what I'm doing as I - don't like the term thought leader, but we could call me a thought leader - what I'm doing for my personal brand, what I'm doing to demonstrate that I have a level of experience, I have expertise, we are building something interesting.
Matthew: So I'm always actually courting people, and I'm doing that with the posts that I put out and demonstrating leadership in some capacity so that whether I'm engaging them now trying to get them onboarded to the platform, or I'm thinking about 12 months from now, if I announce a new round, I want someone who can say "Oh, you know, I've been quietly following what you're building and seeing your LinkedIn posts and engaging for a while. And this is finally my chance to throw some money your way."
Matthew: So I'm always indirectly marketing because I believe that what we're doing to present ourselves, how we talk, what events that we go to, what we post on social media - this is marketing. It's publicity. It's perception. What's interesting is that I put a lot of thoughts in the marketing, not as many dollars, but a lot of thoughts. Everything down to how I format my paragraphs on a LinkedIn post, how many lines I want in each paragraph, where my spaces are, because I know that it could be attractive to people. It gets them to read it. If they read it, they're informed, they see my name, it becomes a touch point, and then we can rinse and repeat that. And hopefully over several touch points, I get them to convert in some capacity.
"Early on it's not really about the company. I could be doing something super fascinating, I could say I'm gonna take us to Saturn, but can the founder execute it? So I have to prove that I can execute. I show up, I put stuff out, and I market myself."
– Matthew Schneider, Founder of Building, Inc.
Gus: Yeah, I mean I think that is a big part of my business - helping founders understand what you just described perfectly. Which is you're not actively throwing out "this is what we're doing," but the passive growing of that audience. It seems like you have the right idea behind that in a big way. And I think that a lot of the founders that I talked to, it is big and growing - the whole concept of building in public, founder-facing content, and really engaging with your audience.
Content Consistency and Quality
Gus: How do you see consistency playing into it? How important do you think posting consistently on the different platforms that you're optimizing for is? Because sometimes people post infrequently. What have you learned throughout posting consistently over the course of your building in public, and what could you maybe recommend to other founders who are trying to start?
Matthew: Well, I've built inconsistently and consistently, and I don't really know how to describe that pattern. But I'd say that there's a value to both because sometimes disappearing for a little while, putting your head down, and then coming back with a big announcement is great. It's sort of like supply and demand - if someone sees you posting every single day, they might scroll past you, especially if you haven't really nailed that value proposition of your posts.
Matthew: But at the same time, something that I've been experimenting with more lately is putting out consistent educational posts on certain days. I format it the same way, I line things up, and I get it out there even if the previous post didn't get high engagement. And I just want to stay consistent with that because I know that even if it's not showing up in someone's feed right now because LinkedIn's algorithm is kind of nutty, they might investigate my account in the future or try to check out my social proof. What have I put on our website? Where am I linked in other places? And still having that content gives me relevance and shows, "Hey, maybe this was not a home run post and that can dismay people like 'oh, I only got four likes, I'm not gonna try this again.' But if someone can come across it even three months from now and think 'Oh this was valuable, I'm glad I scrolled down on his account,' then it does its purpose.
Matthew: In part because I've been demotivated when you don't get the engagement that you're looking for. But then I've also been disciplined to put stuff out because I know that there's that long-term benefit, that long-term investment that I'm making where even if I have ten viewers on an episode, if I can link in an email two months from now: "Oh, you're in such-and-such area, I was there a couple months ago speaking. Here's a video. You should check it out." That's worth it. That's an investment that you can't realize up front, but I'm glad that I got content out, I was persistent with it, and built that digital footprint.
Matthew: So in terms of advice, you don't want to force yourself to put out content, especially if the quality drastically drops. But you should have some sort of consistency plan that works for you. Consistent doesn't have to mean every single day. It could just mean once a week, but then you are going to stick with that long-term and just continue to show up. I think people will appreciate that. So it's just being adjusted to your work-life balance and what your audience is expecting. If they don't want to see three posts a day because it's spam and it's gonna get people to unfollow, then don't do that - do once a week or every other day.
Gus: I think that's great advice, and something that you touch on too is the quality aspect, right? I think there's a lot of advice around there that's for just growing a generic audience online - like I am of the belief that anybody can become big on YouTube, Instagram, LinkedIn, whatever it might be if you just post enough. If you're posting twice a day and it's not just like the lowest effort garbage, there's a pretty good shot that eventually you will not only improve your skill set and thus make your content better, but over the course of enough time anybody can become an influencer or become a thought leader in the space. But I really don't love when I see low effort content, and I do see a lot of that on LinkedIn.
Gus: I think there is a very specific balance between posting just for posting's sake and actually thinking about: Who am I trying to reach with this? For your educational content, who is this for? Am I actually bringing value to the conversation? And really kind of pausing to make sure that you're going through that checklist every time you create content because again, there's enough low effort content on the internet. So maybe try your best not to just blindly add to that. Would you agree?
Matthew: Oh, absolutely. I can sniff out right away when something has been written with ChatGPT, and it's just too common nowadays. People think that "I'll just consistently post and have this block of text" and it's always the same format. "Five reasons why you should be interested in this," and you can just tell by where the asterisks are and how it's written that they didn't put any effort into it.
Matthew: So if you're gonna consistently post garbage, then that's the reputation that you're going to build up. Whatever you're consistent in, make sure that it's like "I'm consistently posting something valuable. I'm consistently posting something with this end user in mind on this day" and they can come to expect it, and then they're going to see me as a reliable figure. So it's easy to be consistent in bad habits, right? This is about building good habits and a good reputation. So you have to be careful with it.
Gus: Absolutely, absolutely. I'm curious about what your content diet looks like. First of all, is LinkedIn the primary platform that you are trying to grow your audience on? Do you feel like that's where your ICPs are, that's where you want to put your content out most of the time?
Matthew: Yes, absolutely. And it's been very effective. I've tried a few different platforms, but LinkedIn, because it's professionally oriented, has been fantastic for us.
Gus: Awesome. In terms of your content diet, what are you consuming on a day-to-day basis? Where do you kind of get your information from, and what other kinds of content do you get inspired to maybe try out in your own content that you're publishing?
Matthew: That one is interesting because generally I abstain from social media use. Now since I'm not posting on Instagram, I don't need to be consuming a lot of Instagram. I'm on LinkedIn a little bit more, but even then I'm not endlessly scrolling. And I think it's actually been beneficial long term because I'm not latching on to any pre-existing style. I'm there to write my own stuff, and I've put in enough work over time that I know what works or what doesn't.
Matthew: If I am browsing, it's generally for research purposes. It's not to copy someone else's marketing techniques because marketing is not copy and paste. It has to be fascinating and unique to you and your brand. And that just means that you have to be super involved in only what you're doing and engaging only with the people who are engaging with you, not looking at what's got a high response rate on a completely different industry or a different company.
Matthew: There's going to become a personality that's recognizable with what you're putting out, and you have to experiment on your own. How are people reacting to my stuff, and then how can I improve? A/B testing pretty much. And I've done that - longer posts, shorter posts, more professional, more casual, because I could find all those different examples on LinkedIn where they succeed and where they don't, but it doesn't mean that it applies to me. So I've really fine-tuned my approach over time but try to avoid any sort of influence from external factors that might not actually be a good influence.
Investing in Marketing
Gus: In terms of allocating finances and capital to marketing but also just other pieces of your business - you're very early in building your business, you don't have giant VC backing you. At what point do you think that you would maybe shift over and build a marketing department? How would you maybe suggest other founders walk through the process of knowing when it's time to pull the trigger on really getting serious about this type of marketing that seems to be working for us?
Matthew: Well first we have to recognize that marketing comes in all shapes and forms. It doesn't necessarily mean running ads. It could be sponsoring an event, attending an event, or finding a way to speak at an event. I bring those examples up because I have found that that is super effective for us. It's not been promoting posts.
Matthew: So I have put thousands and thousands of dollars into these different mediums whether it's hosting our own events, sponsoring something, or trying to find my way onto a speaking panel and needing to travel there. When do you know you need to deploy capital into something? I'd say first start with what's free. You can market for free, and you can do it really effectively, and that's what I do on LinkedIn.
Matthew: Then if I see "this has traction, people are turning to me as an influential figure, and they are listening to what I have to say," how could I put myself on a platform? And that's when I'm willing to put money into maybe speaking on a panel. And why that's actually a really good feedback loop is because if I speak on the panel, then I can take the videos and pictures from that and put it on social media and begin to promote it again.
"My highest engagement on LinkedIn has been pictures of me holding a microphone or speaking somewhere - that social proof where I'm next to other professionals. You need something worthy of posting and promoting, and a great picture or a great video does that."
– Matthew Schneider, Founder of Building, Inc.
Matthew: You have to figure out what sort of engagement works the best. Is it you putting a post out? Is it attending something? Is it a picture? Is it commenting? Is it a reel in your bedroom? What is it going to be? And if you get traction, then you can put money into it. And hopefully, if you put money into it, you get a return on investment and you can recirculate that. Because just because you're VC backed doesn't mean you need to put 200k into ads. You need to figure out what works first, then put money into it.
The Power of Networking
Gus: Do you find that networking is your best marketing approach? As someone in Austin, Texas, it's relatively easy to network here. People are young, friendly, they're oftentimes looking and excited to learn about what you're doing. For you, do you think that networking plays a big part of your experience as a founder, and what would you advise another founder who's struggling to build that network?
Matthew: Well, I'm glad you mentioned that because networking is the best way to market - having individual conversations, that personal connection, and then having that other person speak on your behalf. That's free marketing, and it's super valuable and a high return on investment because people trust each other, and if someone else is gonna vouch for me, that's what a warm intro is essentially.
Matthew: You need to be networking at all times, and this goes back to what I'm doing with my personal brand. I'm setting myself up for networking. I'm demonstrating that I am someone who can be approached if you see me on LinkedIn, that you can schedule a meeting with me. If we schedule a meeting, that perhaps I'd be happy to attend an event with you or meet you somewhere. And I've done this on an international scale now - I've traveled outside of the country meeting people who saw my posts, they were inspired, we jumped on a call, and then they say "when you're in town or when you're in this country, let's meet up and let's chat further."
Matthew: So networking is everything. If you want to meet people, go out and network. There's nothing more to it. It's that simple. If you're not networking all the time, I don't know what you're doing.
Gus: That's very keen advice, and I completely agree. I think maybe sometimes it's just getting out of your comfort zone. I can't tell you the amount of meetups I've gone to and been like "that was not the right fit," but every time I go to an event or go to a dinner, there's always at least one person, but oftentimes two or three, that I find immense value in having in my network.
Matthew: I've had to jump out of my comfort zone, but it's those sorts of random encounters or random events or impulsive decisions that lead to some of the best results. I've met amazing people, and those relationships turned into partnerships or I received capital just because I did something that I wasn't expecting to do. I thought "well, I'll take a leap of faith, I'll do it," and I've never had a leap of faith that hasn't worked out. Generally speaking, taking calculated risks works out, and if it's not a home run, you still learn something from it.
Gus: The founder mentality. I love it. And I think that's if there's anything to take away, it's: try things out. Founders aren't afraid to fail. If you're in a startup, you're fighting against the tides of failure all the time. But failure is some of the best lessons out there. So fail fast and fail often, and hopefully it's not catastrophic. But oftentimes like you said, those things really turn into some of the most valuable experiences that you have. So it's great advice.
Conclusion
Gus: Awesome! Well Matthew, thank you so much for coming on, man. I really enjoyed our conversation. Tell the audience where they can find what you're working on, where they should follow you to stay up to date with you and your business and all the different things that you're working on.
Matthew: LinkedIn, right, so that's my number one guy. If you look up Matthew Schneider, you'll see my smile and face in the profile picture, and you'll see Building, Inc.. It's stylized as "Building, Inc." because I found just putting the word "building" is too generic for a lot of search engines. But you can also check out what we're doing by heading to our website, www.building.ink. Happy to connect with anyone.
Gus: Awesome. Well, we'll put all of that information in the show notes. We'll link your LinkedIn profile and your company website. And yeah, everyone feel free to reach out to Matthew with any opportunities, any conversations that you want to have if you're in the same industry. Maybe take a shot and reach out and start building in that network if that's something you've been meaning to do. Really appreciate your time, man. Thanks for coming on.
Matthew: Yeah, thank you. Take care now.
Gus: Cool. We'll see you next time.
Resources Mentioned
- Matthew Schneider on LinkedIn - Follow Matthew for insights on commercial real estate tech
- Building, Inc. - Data management and tokenization for commercial real estate
