Episode 52: You Have to Think to be a Thought Leader, with Nav Athwal

Nav Athwal is the Founder and CEO of RealtyShares, a curated online marketplace for real estate investing. His platform connects individual and institutional investors to private U.S. real estate investments, raising $200 million across more than 400 deals in 31 states. Prior to founding RealtyShares, Nav was a real estate and land use attorney in San Francisco, representing developers, fund managers, nonprofits and public and private REIT's on some of the largest US real estate and renewable energy projects. Nav holds a B.S. in Electrical Engineering from UC Davis and a J.D. from UC Berkeley Law School where he was Class Valedictorian. Nav is also is a regulator contributor to Forbes and TechCrunch.   “You can make the mistake of using data to make premature decisions that aren’t good for you.” - Nav Athwal What you’ll learn about in this episode: Why RealtyShares invested heavily in PR in their early days Why you need to find what makes you different from everyone else in your marketplace How Nav uses writing to establish himself as a thought leader The key to measuring metrics accurately Measurements that Nav focuses on like the cost of acquiring customers, engagement post acquiring them, etc. Why RealtyShares only does deals that produce regular (monthly, quarterly) cash flow for their investors How much time Nav spends on writing every month How to use other writers to assist in your writing but retaining your voice Why the most important element of thought leadership is spending the time thinking Why you need to test a marketing campaign before you spend all of your resources on it Ways to contact Nav: Website: www.realtyshares.com Twitter: @navathwal Twitter: @realtyshares Facebook: www.facebook.com/RealtyShares LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/navathwal