How an Immigrant With $200 Built a 1,700-Agent Real Estate Organization

I had $200 to my name. And so I survived. One of my favorite quotes is: it's not the lack of resources, it's a lack of resourcefulness.

You really didn't care?

Oh gosh. Now I go straight to bed. I believe everything is mindset.

America isn't a dream. It's a decision, and not everyone is brave enough to make it. Americans by Choice. Welcome to Americans by Choice. Today we have a special guest, Gogo Bethke. She is a business entrepreneur, mentor, and speaker. We will talk today about the power of personal brand, how she started out and built all of that in the United States without having a network, and also what success feels like and what's the cost of that. Welcome to the show. Thank you so much for coming. First of all, tell me: what did you have when you came to the United States, and how did you think life would look in the United States?

I think I was delusional. I had $200 to my name, and I came to a continent where I didn't know a single human being. I thought I spoke English, but when I arrived in New York and this big guy was talking to me, I said, 'English, please.' And he said, 'I'm speaking it.' I was like, 'Oh my God, really?'

Slang was the hardest thing for me to get used to. So many words or sentences in the United States are from a song or from a movie. Even if I saw the movie, I saw it with subtitles or translated into Romanian or Hungarian. There were cultural differences in the language portion too, because I'm Hungarian by nationality, and our language is very different from other languages. So that was pretty hard.

Why did you decide to come to the United States?

I was born into communism, and Romania was a communist country. In 1989, I was almost nine years old. I remember when my dad came home with a VCR player and movies. One of them was 48 Hrs. with Eddie Murphy. I remember thinking he was the funniest human I'd ever seen. He was the first Black person I'd ever seen. Under communism, there was very little access to the Western world. I saw him being so happy and thought, 'I'm going to go where he's at.' I had no idea where he was. That happened to be the United States.

When I was 21, I was in Hungary in my third year of college. I was supposed to pass an English exam, and I didn't speak English very well. I thought the easiest way would be to go to a country where they speak it, learn it, and come back home. I just never did the second part of the story. I never went back home.

At the time there were three jobs I could apply for: au pair, working on a cruise ship, or working on an oil rig in the middle of the ocean. I got all three jobs, but the first interview process was for the au pair job, so I accepted it and came as an au pair in 2003, which is a live-in nanny.

When did you think, okay, this is the America I imagined?

I truly appreciate a free country and being able to do what you want with education or without, being a woman or a man, not depending on whose bloodline you are from or whether you have a master's degree. I really appreciate it here. I don't know if I ever felt that it wasn't the America I imagined. It's actually better than I imagined.

What do you think is harder in the United States: not having resources, or not having connections and knowing how to do things?

One of my favorite quotes is: it's not the lack of resources, it's a lack of resourcefulness. I'm a people person. I will talk to just about anybody. I'm a huge connector. I save people in my phone based on where I met them, what they're good at, and what I know about them. That has always served me because I've met a lot of people through the years. I believe every opportunity comes from another human.

If you had just arrived in the United States now, what would you do differently? Would you start with social media?

That's how I did it, and I highly recommend it because social media is marketing from one to many. You don't actually have to know them. You don't need to know that they exist; they need to know that you exist. We don't have to generate traffic to Facebook or Instagram. We need to take people off Instagram and send them to our website to buy a service or product. So I would definitely do social media.

I love technology. You can get so much knowledge and guidance and essentially have a built-in assistant for a relatively small monthly cost.

I built a second brain because there are thousands of agents. Instead of them having to come to me, they can pick my brain at any time. It took us months to upload all of the trainings I've ever done, but it gives me time back. They don't have to call me with every question.

Let's go back to somebody who just arrived here and wants to create a successful real estate career. Social media — what else would you recommend?

I would take social media and start creating. I would schedule open houses every weekend and tours during the week: lakefront property one day, new construction another, lofts another. Go schedule a showing, do a tour, and talk about it. Don't give the address so people have to reach back out to you for more information. Record it, use relevant hashtags, tag the location and the people you're with.

People who are looking can find it and reach out. You don't have to know the people. The best marketer wins. It's not about who you know; it's about who knows you.

You have an accent. Have you ever thought it would be better if you spoke differently?

I actually don't even notice that I have it. I think I speak perfect English. It doesn't bother me. I've never tried to hide it. If you hear me today versus 20 years ago, my English is night and day.

How did you learn it?

My husband's American and our friends are American. I have Hungarian friends and Romanian friends, I go home every year, cook Hungarian food, listen to Hungarian music, and speak my native language. But I feel like you do have to break into American culture.

I think it's very important if you decide to move to another country to blend in. Celebrate Thanksgiving and pick up the things that allow you to participate in the life you wanted.

Is there anything you did at the beginning of your journey that you now look at as a failure or something you would do differently?

No. I look at every failure as a lesson. I'm not saying I haven't had failures, bad moments, or things that cost me money. But everything was a lesson, and I can't think of anything I wish I had done differently because the end result is amazing. If you change one little piece in the puzzle, everything else can go to a different end result.

I used to die over real estate transactions that fell apart because that might have been my only commission. What I learned was that you need ten transactions. If one falls apart, you still have nine more.

American selling and engagement can be very friendly and smiling, which is different from an Eastern European communication style. Tell me about learning that different version of yourself.

When I came to Michigan as an au pair, I went into Meijer and an older gentleman at the door said, 'Hey, how are you? How is your day?' I was thinking, is he talking to me? That was not normal in my culture. I had to learn that they don't necessarily mean it as a literal question; it's a polite way of saying hello.

Another thing that was hard for me was learning to say 'I love you,' because in America people use it much more casually. I'd never heard those words from my parents. When I met my husband's grandparents and his grandmother said, 'I love you,' I didn't know how to respond because I'd just met her.

Another cultural difference was wedding thank-you notes. In my culture, being invited to someone's wedding is considered an honor. After our wedding, my husband told me we had to send thank-you notes. I couldn't understand why we had to thank people for coming. That became one of our first big cultural disagreements.

Was there anything cultural that you already had in you that helped when you started building your organization?

On the business side, marketing and negotiations, that Eastern European blood came in handy because I really don't care what people think. When you put things on social media, people have opinions. They can hurt your feelings if you let them.

For me personally, because there wasn't much physical or emotional affection growing up, I had to learn to love myself. Through the years I learned to love myself, and this is who I am. That comes in handy with putting yourself out there.

It also comes in handy in negotiation. I'm five foot two, blonde, with an accent. I remember selling a $1.2 million home in Michigan, and afterward the buyer's agent came to my car and told me I was intimidating. I thought that was funny because he was much taller than me.

We're passionate, we raise our voices, and that's how we talk. I became naturally comfortable with negotiation. If you can nail marketing and negotiation and not let people get to you, you can build just about anything.

My husband once said he didn't understand how I have friends because I say what I think. But at the same time, you always know where we stand. My true friendships have lasted decades.

A lot of immigrants describe their ability to outwork people as an advantage. Can that mentality become dangerous or become too much?

I worked in corporate America for a while. One quote that changed my mindset was, 'If you don't build your dreams, someone is going to hire you to build theirs.' If you're an immigrant in a corporate setting doing circles around everybody else and getting paid the same amount, that's different. In an entrepreneurial setting, the willingness to work can be an advantage.

If I left everyone behind — my parents, my sister, my grandparents, my whole life back home — it better be worth it. This is why I'm not home for Christmas and why I miss most birthdays: because I'm building something that's worth having.

Do you think the biggest cost or sacrifice of the journey is not being able to see family?

It is sad. At the same time, financial freedom gives you security. If my parents get old, I can take care of them. Even though I'm far away, I can pay for help or go home when necessary because I work for myself. There's a good and bad side to everything.

I never really fit in at home. I had different expectations for my life. I'm happily married, I cook, I take care of the kids, and I also happen to make the money. I retired my husband in 2019.

Now we work together, we're together all the time, and our oldest works in the family business. I enjoy that.

Originally my husband was the breadwinner when the boys were younger and I was a stay-at-home mom. I didn't fully realize the weight on the shoulders of the person supporting a one-income household. Eventually I realized I couldn't do laundry, grocery shopping, cooking, drop-off, and pickup forever. That's when I thought getting a real estate license would be a great idea because I could work evenings and weekends and stay home with the kids.

It was a slow start. I wasn't a top producer immediately. It took about three or four years before I started making what I considered real money as a producing agent.

My husband and I both have dominant personalities, so we had to learn what his lane was and what my lane was. When I started making more money than him, there was an adjustment period. Eventually we found roles that worked for us.

He manages our investments and a lot of the operational side. Our son helps too. I'm excited that one day our children will inherit what we've built, and I want them to start learning early rather than suddenly having to figure it out later.

How did you transition into building your own real estate organization and digital products?

I got my real estate license after watching HGTV like everybody else and thinking, how hard can it be? Then reality kicked in: where are the buyers going to come from? I didn't know anybody. So I started with social media.

As I started producing and getting commissions, other Realtors started paying attention and asking what I was doing and whether I could teach them. My business started with Gogo's Real Estate on Facebook.

When agents started asking me how to do it, I realized I enjoyed teaching. But if I spent an hour teaching somebody how to sell real estate, I wasn't selling real estate myself, which was how I made money at the time. So I realized I needed to package the knowledge in my head.

That became my first digital product, focused on social media. I was teaching Realtors how to use their personal brand and turn visibility into commissions by finding buyers and sellers through platforms such as Instagram and Facebook.

At the time I had one employee, Kristi. Today she's my director of operations. We built things together from the beginning.

I would create content based on the questions agents were asking me. I made short educational videos and put them behind a membership so people had to pay to access them.

I later switched to a brokerage where you can build a downline organization. In the interview, I describe having 1,700 agents and discuss the sales production associated with that organization.

As I built the organization, agents started asking how to build locally, nationally, and internationally. I noticed I was getting the same questions again, so I turned those questions into another training product.

The organization also created a revenue-share income stream. I receive a portion associated with qualifying transactions by agents in the organization under the brokerage's model.

As you expanded, how did you overcome situations where you didn't know the answer, or the psychological pressure of handling a much larger operation?

I believe everything is mindset, and I believe you bring what you think, so get control over your mind. I also give thanks to God for what I have.

I read a lot of books and pay for a lot of coaching. Personally, I prefer coaching and masterminds. I'm always part of multiple masterminds, read books, and go to events. That's how I've worked through many lessons.

I'm a sucker for information. I love feeding my brain. If I don't know something, I enjoy that feeling because I can go read the book or find someone who knows. I hate being the smartest person in the room. If you are, you're in the wrong room.

Looking at your journey, what do you think was luck, opportunity, or your personal character?

I give everything up to God. To me, I wouldn't have anything without that trust. I used to be deathly afraid of flying, but I knew that if I wanted to see the world, I had to get on a plane.

On one flight I met an older woman who had traveled extensively. I told her I was afraid of flying and would pray during takeoff. She asked me, 'Do you always believe in God or just sometimes? If you believe in God on the earth, why don't you believe in God in the air?'

That made me think: the only time we have fear is when we don't have faith. That changed my life.

I also believe ideas can come to us for a reason. There were times when I wondered, 'Why me? Why would I get more?'

During an airport layover I talked with a stranger about why I had been given certain opportunities. He asked me, regarding my sister, 'Why isn't she here?' That made me think about the risks and decisions I had personally taken.

I took that risk. I went to a country with $200 to my name where I didn't know anyone. I barely spoke the language. I worked random jobs, got a real estate license, and did my social media consistently.

We all go through questions like, 'Why me? Do I deserve it? Do I deserve more?' You have to do that soul-searching and get over it. One thing I see through coaching is self-sabotage. People work, burn out, get results, and then struggle to receive those results because of what they're feeling internally.

Do you see people doing real estate social media wrong?

They just post 'listed' and 'sold' property flyers. They're never in the picture or video, and they're not sharing their knowledge. The thing that makes you an expert is the information coming out of your mouth as you're doing this.

When you get a real estate license, they don't necessarily teach you all of the practical mechanics of selling real estate. I went to people who knew the different parts of a transaction and learned from them.

I couldn't afford expensive meetings, so I invited lenders, title companies, moving companies, painters, electricians, plumbers, appraisers, and other professionals for coffee. I would ask about their businesses and understand how they fit into the bigger picture.

Right after those meetings, I would create content saying, 'Guess what I learned today?' I might have learned it three minutes earlier, but I would share it. I wasn't worried about whether somebody thought I sounded dumb.

I'm looking for the people who are looking for me. Not everybody is going to like you. That's not even an option.

The only way I can find the people who connect with me is if I put myself out there and allow them to get to know me. When people find something in common with you, they follow you. When they follow you, they watch you. When they watch you over time, you earn their trust. Organic growth takes time.

People do business with those they know, like, and trust.

When you earn their trust, they can buy what you're selling. You have to get to that trust point, and you can't make them think you're perfect. You're not, and neither are they.

What do you think about trendy videos as a way to gain organic traffic?

I do them all. Sometimes I post silly videos, sometimes educational videos, and sometimes B-roll with the message in the caption. But you have to build a brand around yourself.

Don't put a location or brokerage in your brand name. Build a brand around yourself. Be in the pictures or videos most of the time. Some of the time you can be silly, share something different, or post a quote. And stay consistent.

Especially in real estate, there's what I call the real estate rollercoaster. Agents do all the things that bring leads: posting, events, outreach, calls, emails, and mailers. Then they get two or three leads, become busy, and stop doing everything that generated those leads.

As soon as you sell that property, you're effectively unemployed again and need new buyers and sellers. But getting them can take time, so you create a rollercoaster. Consistency is one of the biggest problems I see. People do the work until they see results and then stop doing it.

Find another job where you can do the work for 30 days, get paid, suddenly stop doing it, and still expect to get paid. There is no other job where you don't have to do the work consistently to make money.

Is there still anything you're afraid to lose professionally?

God forbid I lost the social media platforms that took me years to build. That would be hard. But I feel like my audience is loyal and would search for me. That's also why an email database matters: you have to collect your audience's data.

You work hard to make money, and you have to think about what happens if one source disappears. I hope I've built things in a way where it can't all disappear at once.

I think about three phases of money. There's active income, where you're trading your time for money. Then there's passive income, where you use active income to acquire assets such as real estate. Then there's recurring income, such as memberships, coaching programs, or revenue share, where multiple people can be paying at the same time.

I feel like you have to have multiple sources of income so you're not completely dependent on one. I also believe in diversifying rather than putting everything into one type of asset.

When I think about the person on the other side of the YouTube screen, I sometimes imagine someone like you at 14 or 15 years old in Romania. Looking at yourself now, what would you tell that younger version of yourself?

I would say: follow your dreams, every single one of them. Some work out, some are lessons, and spend more time on the soul level than you spend on anything else.

That's beautiful. Thank you so much.