BiggerPockets Real Estate Podcast - 423: Who Not How: Stop Doing the Things You Hate, Free Up Time, Be Happier and Richer with Dan Sullivan

Episode Date: December 6, 2020

Has anyone ever told you “you’re really good at that, you should make a business out of it”, if so, you may have inadvertently found your “unique ability”. Author and coach Dan Sullivan joins us to talk about the secrets of success behind the 20,000+ entrepreneurs he’s coached over the past few decades. If you’re finding it hard to scale up your business, hire on more staff, or get rid of the stuff you hate doing, Dan probably has an solution for you. As someone who’s built a coaching empire AND been bankrupt twice, Dan knows a thing or two about what makes asuccessful enterprise, and what doesn’t. His key to success? Create a self-managing company, that allows you, the entrepreneur, to do what you really love. Hate going through spreadsheets? Great, hire someone who loves it! Don’t like picking up the phone to talk to investors? Cool, get someone who likes to chat! Love giving presentations to prospective clients? Great, make it your main job! Whether you have one employee or thousands of employees, Dan shows how simple it is to designate tasks, get the right person doing the right thing, and free up time for you and the whole team! The best way to hear Dan’s advice and grow your company? Listen to this episode! In This Episode We Cover: Finding your “unique ability” and using it to build a business The 4 freedoms of an entrepreneur (and why they’re so important) How to create a “self-managing” company Why procrastination is a great tool Why the future of business is reliant on teams How to hold a team together when building your business Whether you’re a “simplifier” or “multiplier” entrepreneur How not to get bogged down in an abundance of choice in the modern age And So Much More! Links from the Show BiggerPockets Podcast BiggerPockets book store Strategic Coach Website Click here to check the full show notes: https://www.biggerpockets.com/show423 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is the Bigger Pockets podcast show 423. I think procrastination is build up lifetime wisdom. It says, I hate this type of activity. Procrastination is not a bad thing. So I often notice that what you shouldn't do, you already procrastinate at. You're listening to Bigger Pockets Radio. Simplifying Real Estate for investors large and small. If you're here looking to learn about real estate investing, without all the hype, you're in the right place.

Stay tuned. and be sure to join the millions of others who have benefited from biggerpockets.com. Your home for real estate investing online. What's going on to vote? It's Brennan Turner, host of the Bigger Pockets podcast here with my co-host, Mr. David Green. David Green. I have a question for you. You want to hear the question? Yes, I would love it. The question comes from today's show. The question is, what do you have to stop doing right now to be number one? Oh, God, this is painful, but I know what it is. You really want me to answer that?

Yeah, what do you have to stop? Here's what I'm going to say. I want you to think about this for a minute. I want you to answer it in the outro. So here's the deal. Today's show is with a very, very well-known, successful. We'll call them a performance coach, entrepreneurial coach, mindset coach. He runs a company called Strategic Coach.

You've probably heard of it before. If not, they're one of the largest coaching organizations in the world. Dan Sullivan. Dan is a very, very well-known name in the world of entrepreneurship and coaching. And we are, I'm so lucky to have him here today, talking about his latest book It's actually called Who Not How. And so it's all about getting other people to do things to help you achieve your goals. In fact, I even took a screenshot from the book.

And I want to read it real quick to you guys what I wrote here. It says this. The promise of this book is dead serious and simple. Every time you apply who not how by imagining a new goal and getting who's, quote, who's to work toward it, you will improve your time, increase your income, expand your relationships, and deepen your purpose. And so that's what the show is about today with Dan Sullivan. And one of the questions he asked in the show was, what do you have to stop doing to become number one or to become the best?

And so, David, I'm going to actually ask you that in the outro of today's show. But before we get to that, let's get today's quick tip. That was a long quick tip. Today's quick tip is very simple. If you are not currently either in a mastermind group or meeting with a performance coach of some kind or an accountability partner, some kind, somebody that's going to hold you accountable to your goals and help you be the best version of yourself, can I encourage you to find a way to make that happen the next week? Now, you can sign up for performance coaching. There's expensive people.

There's cheaper people. I'm not talking about the gurus who are going to teach you how to do real estate. You know, that's not what we're talking about today. You'll hear what a coach is today and what a coach isn't. But I'm talking about like somebody who's just going to help you identify your strengths and weaknesses and be working towards that stuff. So whether it's a group, I mean, if you buy the intention journal from bigger pockets, not. trying to plug that here, but just FYI, if you buy that, you get access to your own mastermind group in that. So it's something to consider. But either way, are you with somebody, a group of people, an individual who's helping you become your best self? If not, make that happen. And you're

going to hear today why that's so important. I know David and I are both big fans of performance coaching, mastermind groups, getting together with other people who are successful. It's been huge, right, David? Back me up, man. Back me up. When you get, when you initially, like, let's say you're a player going to the NBA, you're like, I just want to make the team. I don't want to get cut. How do I make the team? And then it becomes, how do I become a better member of the team? And at a certain point, like let's say you're Alan Iverson, you get so good at basketball. You're one of the best players in the league. You start asking, how do I win? Winning doesn't happen by an individual player. Winning is done by teams. And so if you really want to get to the next level of financial freedom, wealth, the life you really want, the stuff in your life you're doing right now still has to get done. But you need to find the people that are going to do it. So this entire concept of team building, is hand in hand with financial freedom and living the life you really want. This is a skill you have to have to get there. So we obviously spend a lot of time talking about this because we're struggling with these

issues and we're trying to clear a path for the people that are coming behind us that don't want to struggle as much. Yeah, there you go, man. It's a really, really good summary of what we're about to cover. Today's show, again, is with Dan Sullivan, who somebody had wanted to get on the show for years. I look up to him a ton. He has a lot to say about a lot of different topics.

So we kind of go all over the place today. and I mean that in a good way. You're going to pick up some real gems today. It's going to help transform your business, whether you're trying to build a real estate empire or trying to build any kind of business or just be a better anything in your life. This stuff is gold.

So grab a pencil and paper, take some notes. Have you ever lost a DSCR deal because the financing just took too long? Red flags popped up late. The lender needed more time. The deal fell apart. Well, our friends at Dominion Financial just launched a program to help prevent that.

With their new express rental loan, you can close in 10 days or less. And they still offer their price beat guarantee. So you can get great pricing and a timeline you can count on. Fast, simple, reliable. That's Dominion Financial. Check them out at biggerpockets.com slash dominion. That's biggerpockets.com slash dominion.

Here's why savvy real estate investors are obsessed with bonus depreciation. It lets you take that rental property or commercial building you own and depreciate most of the cost against your income legally. 100% IRS compliant. That's instant cash flow improvement. Cost segregation guys is the number one firm nationwide, specializing in identifying these faster depreciating assets in your property. They've completed tens of thousands of studies across all 50 states from remote cabins to

apartment complexes. So if you own investment property, this is a no-brainer. So visit costsegregationguise.com slash BP for your free proposal and find out how much you could save this tax season. For decades, real estate has been a cornerstone of the world's largest portfolios. But it's also historically been sort of complex, time-consuming, and expensive. But imagine if real estate investing was suddenly easy, all the benefits of owning real, tangible assets without the complexity and expense.

That's the power of the Fundrise flagship fund. Now, you can invest in a $1.1 billion portfolio of real estate, starting with as little as $10. The portfolio features 4,700 single-family rental homes spread across the booming sunbelt. They also have 3.3 million square feet of highly sought-after industrial facilities, thanks to the e-commerce wave. The flagship fund is one of the largest of its kind. It's well diversified, and it's managed by a team of professionals. And it's now available to you.

Visit fundrise.com slash BP Market to explore the fund's full portfolio, check out historical returns, and start investing in just minutes. Carefully consider the investment objectives, risks, charges, and expenses of the Fundrise flagship fund. before investing. This and other information can be found in the funds prospectus at fundrise.com slash flagship. This is a paid advertisement. And now, let's get in today's show. Now, keep in mind, at the end of today's show, we're going to unpack a little bit of what Dan talked about for real estate specifically. So hang tight to the end. And David's also going to answer

in the outro, what's the one thing he's going to give up to become number one? So let's get to the show right now. And then after we're done with Dan, make sure you stick around for the final 10 minutes or so. All right, Dan, Sullivan, welcome to the Bigger Pockets podcast. This is a complete honor to have you on the show. This has been amazing. I'm so excited. You don't know what I mean now. I'm so excited.

Well, this is, you know, I try as much as I possible to respond to invitations. Because I think podcasting is just one of the most amazing breakthroughs of the, for me, last six years. So I've been podcasting. I have nine different series that I do, and I do them with partners. And I found that conversations. is my favorite medium rather than just talking to the microphone and talking to the screen. I really like having conversation. So already we've opened up some things to talk about here.

Yeah. Well, yeah, on that note, what's interesting is I feel like, you know, a candidate for president. Like we tried to get a few like presidential candidates from, you know, the U.S. here to be on the show. And we, you know, struck out. We couldn't get either one of them. But what's interesting is like they will fly across the country and they will go and, go to an event, that they go in a jet to fly, to lose two days of their life, to go to an event with a thousand people.

When I'm like, we could put you on a, you could be in your underwear. And you could tell a quarter million people or half million people, like, whatever you wanted. And like, I don't think the politicians have caught on to podcasting yet, but they'll get there. Yeah, you know why I think that is? I think bullshit doesn't travel well on podcasts. You know, I think who you are really comes across. You look at the big stars on podcasting.

They're real people. Yep. You know, and, you know, I follow Scott Adams. I watch Scott Adams. Probably every day, Joe Rogan. I watch Joe Rogan. And I just, I don't do it to learn anything. I just do it because I enjoy how they, one them strictly himself.

And the other one, he's got some of the great guests that you could possibly have. Yeah. Yeah, it's pretty phenomenal. So, all right. Well, that said, we got you for it for an hour or so. So we're going to dig into your mindset. So first of all, for those who may not know who you are before, maybe before you were, you know, Dan Sullivan, the guy we all know in respect and love, who are you?

Like, where'd you come from before that? And how'd you get into this world of a strategic coaching? Yeah, real, real fast bio here, farm boy from northern Ohio. My family had produce farms, sweet corn, string beans, tomatoes. I'm a fifth child of two fifth children. Both my parents are fifth children and their family, and I'm a fifth child. And a fifth child is kind of like an only child with no responsibility whatsoever. So I went wandering as a kid. And I'm a kind of a wanderer, and I got a lot of encouragement growing up. I had good school system, went through that, got out of high school with no money. So I got a job with the FBI for two years in Washington, D.C. when JFK was president. and is Jay Edgar Hoover. I met Jay Edgar Hoover. Then did some interesting things that took me out of school and got drafted in the Vietnam War. So I spent two years in South Korea. And I was the coordinator for

entertainment for about half of South Korea. So I had a background in theater. I had a background in entertainment. And came back and I went to a college that's called Great Books College, St. John's. And all you do is read the great books of the Western world. Small groups, 12 to 18 people. And you just read and you talk and all the ideas. I just wanted to know what they were. I didn't have the discipline to read them on my own. So I went in debt to pay for it, came out. I was on a trip to Toronto the Christmas before I graduated from St. John's. And I was late. I was 23 to 27. So I was graduating from college when I was 27. And at a party in Toronto, I met a co-owner of the second biggest ad agency in Toronto.

And we got talking and he says, boy, what an interesting background. He says, you ever seen an ad agency? I went down and saw it. He took me to lunch. He said, what are you going to do when you graduate? And I said, I don't know. And he said, how about a job as an ad writer? He says, I'll hire you on the spot.

He says, I think you've got what it takes. I'll give it to you for six months. He says, I'll get you across the board. So I went and moved to Toronto, and it'll be 50 years next June. I moved to Toronto 50 years ago. I did it for three years, found out it wasn't going to be my life. And I had this notion about coaching back in the early 70s that I thought the world was going to change rapidly because of technology. And that individuals didn't want managers, but individuals would like to have coaches, especially entrepreneurs.

And so I jumped in the day. deep end of the pool, went bankrupt twice, was divorced and bankrupt on the same day in August of 1978. Oh, wow. Extreme market research, I call it. You know, and met the love of my life in 1982, and she's my wife, and she's the, you know, we own the strategic coach. We created strategic coach.

And strategic coach is for already successful entrepreneurs who have hit a ceiling. And they're young. Most of them are young. They're in their 40s, 50s, and that's young today. And what we show, we individually show them in a group that they can actually structure an entire rest of their entrepreneurial life that's based entirely on freedom. We have four freedoms, freedom of time, freedom of money, freedom of relationship, and freedom of purpose. And so I have 32 of them that are just approaching 30 years. I've seen them every quarter for 30 years. Wow. We have about 2,500 in the program.

They come from 26 different countries. And since March, we've become a virtual company. So everything that was in person before that became virtual, you know. Yeah. So maybe we can talk about those four freedoms here just for a minute because I want to unpack a little bit. You said it was freedom of time. time. Yeah. And what do you mean by that? Let's just go through each one. Well, yeah, what happens with entrepreneurs as they get started and the first day they're an

entrepreneur that got all the time in the world because they don't have any customers. And then as you accumulate customers, complexity comes with it. And after a while, the entrepreneur, who's usually a good salesperson, I would say almost every entrepreneur I've ever met, might not think of themselves as a salesperson, Brandon, but they actually have an ability to get into another person's mind and actually see what that person is trying to achieve. And then they suggest to them that they can help them to actually achieve what they're trying to achieve. That's the way I look at it. And so the, but the biggest thing that I've noticed with entrepreneurs is that they've run out of time. They may be very successful financially, but they don't have any time. And two ways they don't

have time is, one is that they're working 60 hours a week. The other thing is they're working nights, they're working weekends, and there is no such thing as a free day. If there's business to be done that day, then they, you know, they'll do it, which wreaks havoc with their family life, with their spouse, with children, and other relationships. So what we do is we, through a series of tests from the outside and through our own thinking processes, we take the entrepreneur, let's say the entrepreneur has a big circle of activities, and we get them down to just activities where they really have what we call a unique ability. And a unique ability is really something you're born with. You would have been born with it. And I suspect that podcasting

took its time getting around to you, but you had to, but by suspect, accurate just from seeing you that you have a unique ability in this particular medium, that you love the medium and the medium loves you. And, you know, the more that you can build your future around this medium, then that's the real sweet spot for you. So I'm really good at coming up with new thinking processes for entrepreneurs, okay? And I'm a good front stage person. You know, I can, I do audios, I do videos. I'm a good front stage. I'm a terrible. backstage person, terrible at details, terrible at technicalities, terrible at anything. And I've been bankrupt twice because I thought I could do those things and commit myself to, you know, to clients.

And I couldn't deliver. So I, you know, I disappointed a lot of people and I got punished with a bad report card called bankruptcy. Screwed up my first marriage. So the whole point is a lot of entrepreneurs have paid a real price for visible success, but behind the scenes. They're a mess. So what we do is we show them how they can, first of all, right off the bat, we can get them to free up a thousand hours, which is about, you know, you would think it would be half their work life, but it isn't. It's like 40% of their work life of just taking things that they're not good at and giving them to people that are better, you know, and they have the money, in our system, they have the money, so they can write a check for somebody's time. And gradually,

get freed up and then they get more and more simple in what they're doing. They're just doing two or three activities and all of a sudden they become available to opportunity. Opportunity's been looking for them but they've been too busy. Actually great talent, other people's great talent has been looking for them, but they're too busy. They don't have any life, personal life and the opportunities are there but they're too busy to do it. So what we do is we get real simple. It takes about two or three years in the program, and all of a sudden they have a self-managing company, okay, so that everything except creating new opportunity, creating a bigger future, is taken out of the hands of the entrepreneur and given to very, very skilled people

who like being part of a big future. They like supporting someone else, but they're not the person to do that. Entrepreneurs, there aren't many of them. I think it's about 5% of the working population even have the instinct toward being an entrepreneur. But there's tremendous other people who would like to be part of the team. So what we do is so, and what happens is that the money increases really quickly because right now the entrepreneur is working on projects and opportunities that maybe were important for them 10 years ago, but it's not important, but they didn't have time to look for bigger things as they go along.

So that's the basic thesis. But we always say that within three years, you'll double your income and free up half your time. That's amazing. And a lot of it is basic. Because I've been following a lot of what you've talked about and written about and spoken about for years now, including this idea of the unique ability. And I don't want to just, I don't want to gloss over this because this is so important. It's the biggest.

I mean, I went from like not to pat myself on the back here, but like because it's not me, right? But it took me, what, 15, 14 years to get to 100 units. and I just crossed a thousand units in the past year. So I went from, it was like this dramatic ship where I spent so many years grinding doing everything. I was out there looking for properties. I was out there talking to real estate agents, making offers, fixing properties, hauling toilets from one room to another.

People have heard that story multiple times. Like, I did everything. And then the last year, I shifted my thinking entirely to what your new book is, who, not how. Who can do this stuff for me? And so I built a team of like, I think there's six people. people on the team right now, people who are so good, where their unique ability, like, for example, Mike, he's ahead of my investor relations. He's so good at talking with people. He loves phone calls.

He loves building connections with people. I don't like phone calls at all. I don't want to get on a phone call with somebody to talk for an hour about, like, about life and about our fund and about what we're doing. He loves it. So as soon as I did then, I let go of every single thing. And I focused on the one thing that I do best, which is really just podcasting, all of a sudden the business grew tenfold. I mean, tenfold in a year, because all of a sudden I had my unique ability. So my question for you is, how does somebody identify, not everyone's going to be a podcaster, how do you identify what your unique ability is? That feels like a difficult thing for a lot of people. Well, one of the things is that you just ask other people who you think have an insight

into who you are. Okay. So it could be a friend. It could be a family member. It could be someone that you're, you know, you've done projects with and say, I'm in a program where we identify people's unique ability and then create a unique ability team around them. And to start, I just need some feedback. And so I have to ask people whose opinion and judgment I trust, and you're one of them. So if you could say three things that I should always do and not do anything else, what would it be the three things that you think I would do? And then we ask people to get 10 reports back in. They come back in, and, you know, notes and letters or somebody will audio something or they'll video it and they'll just do it. But we get it transcribed. And it's like

a Venn diagram. There's about an 80% overlap of everybody's opinion. And I says, where everybody overlaps, that's who you are. And I said, you can believe that or not believe that. But, you know, it's their judgment that actually, you know, they don't have any stake in you finding this out. They're just telling you what they think. And then we get people to identify experiences they've had in the past that if they did only the things that were identified in the circle, they would think that this is really interesting, Brandon. They'll say, yeah, but it was easy. There was no struggle with it.

I mean, I can't get any satisfaction out of things that are easy. And that's the real problem right there. And this is the problem. Your unique ability is the easiest thing in the world. You don't have to even think about it. You didn't have to go to training school for this. You didn't have to do it. You just have this unique ability. And I think that very few people got to operate in their unique ability until recently because the technology wasn't there to support people. Okay. I think the last 25 years especially has been uniquely good for people to identify their unique ability. Unfortunately, the educational system is the last institution in society to catch up with where people are going. And there's been this enormous emphasis that you have to be good at everything. You have to pass your grades in every subject. You have to involve yourself in every kind of activity.

And it's a big bore for most, I think, most individuals to have to go through that. And so I think that we're in a unique age right now where I think being an outlier is actually advantage to a lot of people because your unique ability can be focused on. You can package it. You can promote it. You can get customers. You can get check writers. I mean, the only thing you need to make a living is check writers who are willing to write a check. And so, you know, it's mine. I'm a born coach. I have to tell you, when I was like six years old, adults would talk. I could get adults to talk to me and I just asked them a bunch of questions about their experience. And I was born in 1944. And I can remember 1950 people would come back from the European war, the South Pacific War. And I'd sit

there and I'd talk to them for two or three hours. There was a 78-year-old lady that lived on the farm next to us. And I'd go over and visit with her, and she'd give me milk and cookies. And I'd just ask her questions. And she had been born in 1874. And I was just, well, how could you be on a farm without electricity. How could you be on a farm without tractors? How could you be on a farm without a telephone without electric? You know, and all the modern conveniences. And she'd just talk and talk. And then she'd call my mother and she said, Danny was over again. And he just, I just say so many things that I've never thought about when I'm with him. Well, that's a good coach. That's a good coach. And so I had it. But I had to go through a lot of hardship like everybody else does. You know, you're told to do this and

focus on this and this is a big opportunity. You know, it wasn't really until I was my late 30s that I got on this thing of coaching. I said, I bet I could just make a living out of asking people questions to clarify their vision. And that's really what's developed, you know. We've coached over 20,000 entrepreneurs. You know, we're in three countries. We have somewhere around 110, 115 team members. And I think I've been lucky and I think I've had the skill of taking advantage of my luck. I think you need both. You have to be lucky and you have to have the skill of taking advantage of your luck. Yeah. You know, Dan, one of the areas where Brandon and I talk about this exact concept a lot has to do with team building. And this relates to real estate investing because I wrote

a book called long distance real estate investing. And what I basically said was you could buy it anywhere you want if you've got a team there. If you got these people to do the job, you can invest anywhere. And now I'm a real estate broker and a loan broker and Brandon's building a fund where he needs to have a team. So this comes up in conversations that he and I have constantly. And I know that as our audience grows, they're going to be in a similar vote. What I found in my experience, and this is from my background playing sports. Like when you said you're a boring coach, I thought, yeah, so is Bill Belichick. And he's the best at what he does. Like sometimes being boring is like fundamentals are boring, but that's what makes you successful. One thing I've noticed with my team is that,

let's say we've got five people involved in the real estate team, someone to show houses, someone to analyze deals, someone to look for deals, someone to do the paperwork and someone to have the vision. It becomes five times better when everybody's on the same page and everything feels effortlessly easy. But there's five times more ways it can go wrong. If four of those five people do their job great and one of them drops the ball. It's like if four of the offensive linemen make their block and one, the fifth guy misses it, the team goes down. So it feels like it's five times harder to make it work, but then it's more than five times better. Is that in line with what you found from other people you've coached? Yeah, well, I think that entrepreneurs are

caught because to a certain extent to be, to even become an entrepreneur, there's got to be a bit of rugged individualism to do this. I mean, you got to ignore a lot of social indicators to actually go off and bet your, you know, your financial security on your own talents. I mean, it takes a certain amount of just ignoring. I always say that the two requirements to become an entrepreneur is total confidence and absolute ignorance. And the reason is if you really knew what the hardships and the dangers were of being an entrepreneur. I mean, only civil servants with a lifetime pension know the real dangers of being an entrepreneur. They don't go anywhere near there because it's really tough. And even those who succeed would grade themselves as failures. You have to be

very tough on yourself to a certain extent. But at a certain point, and I think this is the point of the who not howlbuck, you have to flip gears completely. And it has to be exactly what you were saying, David, it has to be total teamwork. Like I'm 76, and the future I have in front of me is way, way bigger than anything I've achieved in the first 75 years, 75 years. And the reason is that this amazing, especially this year, this gift that we've been given with Zoom, you know, I mean, it's just, I said, I have to tell you, this is the greatest capability that has been presented to me in the first 75 years. And I, I, you know, I have to tell you, this is the greatest capability. I'm I said, I can do collaboration with anybody on the planet right now.

You know, I was on this morning. I had six of our top-level entrepreneurs. One was in Mumbai and India. Another one was in Newcastle, England, Portland, Oregon, Phoenix, Dallas, and we had one in Minneapolis. And we were just talking. And I said, isn't this the greatest thing in the world that's ever happened? I said, you know.

And I said, how many of you to try? travel on a plane now, it's got to be for pleasure. You've got to be flying for pleasure. You're not doing it for business because you don't have to fly to do business anymore. I mean, you can get people to write eight-figure checks and sign it on DocuSign right now. I said, you know, I said, your presence isn't required anymore. So the whole thing is what I think, David, is the real solution these days. is that your vision can be really big.

And what holds a team together is the vision of the entrepreneur. What do you mean by that? Well, if it's just about money, I wouldn't be a member of a team that was just about money. It has to be that you have your personal goals, and a lot of it's about your personal goals, you know. But one of the great goals this thing, I want to create the greatest real estate team that's ever existed. Yeah. Okay. A team requires someone to give the vision and to put the vision out there. Another one requires all the different activities that you told. And we've got to work very, very smoothly. And here's the thing. It has to be great for all of us. The deal has to be great for all of us. And it'll be bigger. It'll be 10 times bigger. As you said, Brandon, it's 10 times bigger. Well, most real estate people can't think in terms of 10 times. They can think in terms of 10%, 10%. They can't think in 10%. They can't think in terms of 10 times.

You can only do that through teamwork. No individual. I remember I had the top real estate, residential real estate guy in my program. This was back in the 90s. And he wanted to be the leader. I mean, he was part of an association, part of a company. And I said, well, what do you have to stop doing to be number one? And he says, what do you mean stop doing?

He says, I have to do everything. And I says, no, you're doing everything and you're like number 23. You think you're going to, I don't think you can get to number 22 the way you're working right now. And what he hated was presentations. So he hired an actress. He hired an actress, you know, who had great, and she loved homes. She loved homes and she dressed well. And, you know, she had a limousine and she'd pick people up and taken for the, and, you know, I mean, he went from number, he went from number 23.

to number four in the first 12 months that he did this. He just hated presentation. He said, I can't stand it. And I says, well, when you're presenting, they know you can't stand it. Yeah. I said, you're the biggest obstacle to your own progress right here just because you're doing something that you hate doing. Okay. And this, you know, this really cuts against a lot of people's morality. You know, there's still this thing, you know, if it's not tough. Well, being born is tough. You know, I mean, you know, learning how to walk is tough, you know, cutting your teeth as stuff. You know, I mean, we get a lot. You know, nobody's worried about that.

But I think that the whole point is the we didn't have the ability to operate in teams previously. I would say 25 years ago. I think you had to have the Internet to do what we're doing right now. This is brilliant. I love what you're getting at because that's very similar to the thoughts I've been thinking is the reason everyone does everything. themselves is because for the most of your life you had to. Yeah. We have this luxury now where most of our immediate needs, if you live in America, at least are taking care of. There's very few people, relatively speaking, in our country, starving to death. And now we can start to get into some of these

higher level thinkings of we have the luxury of paying someone $90,000 a year to only look at spreadsheets and make sure the money's where it's supposed to go. Whereas before, to be a good entrepreneur, you had to be good at that. You had to be good at the customer service. It was harder. Now there's so many more like companies and teams that you can be a part of. And Brandon and I talk about this often to our listeners that you've got to bring that way of thinking into your investing business. If you know you're insecure and terrible with numbers and spreadsheets and analyzation, but you're great with people, you should find a Brandon like Mike Williams did and be the person that talks to his people and fills this funnel up for the analyzers who need

you because they don't know what they're useless if you're not giving them something to analyze and vice versa when you're the analyzer. And that's one of the reasons we were both so excited to talk to you because you're kind of one of the forefront thinkers in getting ahead of this. So would you mind whatever you think is most valuable on that topic sharing with people that are either struggling to find their team or build their team? Yeah. Well, one of the, there's a surefire in addition to the exercise where your friends tell you what you are. In coach, we have a concept called Simplifier Multiplifier. And I found that entrepreneurs

only come in two species. They're either a simplifier. They take complex things and they make them really simple. Or they're a multiplier. They take someone else's simplifier and they take it out to the world. And the best teamwork in the world

is where I committed 100% Simplifier collaborates with a 100% pure multiplier. Okay. And if you look behind any great success story in the business world, you'll see a person and they make it sound. But if you go backstage one room, you find there's the other person. I think Steve Jobs was a great multiplier. He could stop the world. He could stop the stock market. He could stop the tech world. He could stop everything for an hour

because he had some thoughts about a new product that he was going to present to you. And by the way, you could buy it tomorrow. You know, this wasn't vaporware that he was. was selling. But behind the scenes, he had simplifiers who could take, you know, he had this great product design guy who was one of the greatest product designs people. And my sense is that wherever you have a great success story, oftentimes you only see one person, but the other person is a simplifier multiplier, you know. My wife is 100% multiplier. I mean, if it moves, she'll talk to it. I can go five days without people and it doesn't bother me at all because I'm working on stuff. I don't need to talk to anybody.

So I think this is one of the big things. We have a way, you know, in a very short period of time that people can discover whether they're a simplifier or multiplier, you know, and it's just based on experience and you can ask other people what it is. The other thing is that procrastination is not a bad thing. Okay. So I often notice that what you shouldn't do, you already procrastinate at. Okay.

The problem is you obligate yourself to things that you're going to procrastinate at. And that puts you in a real bind. It actually does it. So I think procrastination is build up lifetime wisdom. It says, I hate this type of activity. I really hate it. I love that. You know, I really.

It's like what you're saying, Dan, if I understand you, right, is it's like a signal you should listen to. of your own body or brain saying you shouldn't do that. Don't go there. Don't go there. Don't go there. Don't do that. But we've been trained to do it on our own. Since birth, we've been told, you know, if you get somebody else involved, it's cheating. Yeah, it's cheating.

So you shame yourself when you procrastinate. I should be better. I should willpower my way out of that. And what you're saying is, no, no, no. Listen to that as this is a sign from the universe. or God or whatever. That's the wrong thing. That's someone else's job, bring them in.

Yeah. I mean, there's two parts to it. You have to tell the truth about that you don't like it, you know. And you can tell it drains your energy. It just drains your energy. You put it off, you put it off. And finally, you're in a crisis mode where you have to deliver at the last moment. But that's no way to live your entire life.

You know, I mean, so my sense is then you have to grant to other people the same thing that you grant yourself. They also have a unique ability. Yeah. Okay. So in the book, Who Not How, we have an exercise that you can go through. It's called the impact filter. And if you fill this in, it's, you know, it's just a form. It has a whole series of questions. The biggest thing that you want someone else to do, you have to be sold on the project before you tell them about the other things. So a lot of people have what I called drive-by delegation. You know, it's kind of like like that.

You slide things under people's door and everything else. This isn't delegation, David, this is a handing up to someone who's a lot better than you. This is not a handing down to someone who's only 80% as good as you. This is a handy knob to someone who is just infinitely better. And what makes them better is they can do it every day and enjoy it. And you can do it for three hours and then take a two, two week break. That's so, so good. And this is what I'm really, what I found has been stopping my business's growth is my growth in this area. As I get better at that, both finding the right person

to hand it to and handing it off, both being willing to and the skill with which I hand it off, my business grows. I finally turned the corner with this in 2020. And in spite of COVID and everything else, we more than tripled what we did last year when I was already the top person in my office. And it was this, which is not easy to do. It's, man, it just, it forces personal growth in so many ways, but the ROI that you get on it is immeasurable. You can't compare. Well, the other thing is the experience of teamwork.

I mean, you had that experience and you've, yourself, the experience of teamwork is just an incredible, you know, I have ex-Navy SEALs in the program. I have, you know, I have professional guys who played sports and everything like that. And they said, you know, when you get into a great team, you know, I have ex-navy SEALs in the program, you know, I have, you know, I have, you know, I have, I have a great team and everybody's in sync. He said there isn't any individual experience that's better than that experience. So oftentimes people have things that, I mean, it's procrastination because something's going to require a great deal of commitment and courage to go through it. But I mean, I've tested out lawn suffering and short suffering and I've decided just to go for short suffering.

Take that thought much better. Yeah. But it's the same thing with work that you're doing. I mean, It's like a relationship you've had with an activity that just doesn't make you happy. And you can go and take training courses and everything. It's not going to make you happy. You are just never going to be happy with this activity, and you have to tell the truth on that. And I think it's that. And I would just make a list, everything that if it could be gone in six months from now, no matter what I had to pay for it, no matter, I'll find a way to pay for it.

But in six months, these activities have to. because it's not just the activity time itself, it's the dread time. Yep. Dread time takes up as much time or more time than the actual working activity. It's dreading the activity. Yep. So I've gone through all the pain of this and not like I was a born genius on this. You know, I've gone through all the, you know, the stupid things and getting into tight spots

and working 80-hour weeks and developing bad eating and drinking habits and, you know, and having bad relationships. I mean, I've gone through this, and I said, well, you were stupid. You should have been punished, you know, you were stupid. You were doing stupid things. Don't do stupid things. For decades, real estate has been a cornerstone of the world's largest portfolios. But it's also historically been sort of complex, time-consuming, and expensive.

But imagine if real estate investing was suddenly easy, all the benefits of owning real, tangible assets without the complexity and expense. That's the power. of the Funrise Flagship Fund. Now, you can invest in a $1.1 billion portfolio of real estate, starting with as little as $10.10. The portfolio features 4,700 single-family rental homes spread across the booming sunbelt. They also have 3.3 million square feet of highly sought after industrial facilities thanks to the e-commerce wave. The flagship fund is one of the largest of its kind.

It's well diversified, and it's managed by a team of professionals. And it's now available to you. Visit fundrise.com slash BP Market to explore the fund's full port. portfolio, check out historical returns, and start investing in just minutes. Carefully consider the investment objectives, risks, charges, and expenses of the Fundrise Flagship Fund. This and other information can be found in the fund's prospectus at fundrise.com slash flagship. This is a paid advertisement.

Managing properties can feel like a full-on circus. You're juggling vendors, tracking payments, chasing approvals across multiple properties, and maybe a few HOAs, all while trying to keep tenants happy and owners confident. One delay can throw everything off. and suddenly your day is all clean up, no progress. That's why hundreds of property managers rely on bill to streamline their finances. Bill for property management lets you add all your properties, assign permissions, pay bills, and receive payments quickly and efficiently, without the usual bottlenecks.

It syncs with platforms like QuickBooks, Zero, NetSuite, and Sage intact, so your accounting stays aligned. You can automate bulk payments across properties and HOAs. Choose flexible payment methods like same-day AC. International wires, card or check, and set custom roles in approval policies. There's even a dedicated bill inbox for each property to keep everything organized. Ready to simplify your workflow,

book your free demo at bill.com slash bigger pockets, and get a $100 Amazon gift card. That's bill.com slash bigger pockets. If you think property management is expensive, try mismanaging a vacancy or an eviction or a maintenance issue that turns into a five-figure problem because no one caught it early. That's expensive. A good property manager isn't overhead.

Their protection against small mistakes turning into big losses. And that matters more than ever in this economy. That's why I like Mind. Unlike other property managers, Mind manages your property like an investment. They obsessively measure the things that matter for your bottom line. Things like occupancy, delinquency, and net promoter score. And they have the results to prove it. Go to mine.co slash show me to see how mine performs and get your first month free, which is much cheaper than learning the hard way.

You just realized your business needed to hire someone yesterday. How can you find amazing candidates fast? Easy. Just use Indeed. When it comes to hiring, Indeed is all you need. That means you can stop struggling to get your job notice on other job sites. Indeed, sponsored job posts help you stand out and hire the right people quickly. Your job post jumps straight to the top of the page where your ideal candidates are like, looking. And it works. Sponsored jobs on Indeed get 45% more applications than non-sponsored post.

The best part, no monthly subscriptions or long-term contracts. You only pay for results. And speaking of results, in the minute I've been talking to you, 23 people just got hired through Indeed worldwide. There's no need to wait any longer. Speed up your hiring right now with Indeed. And listeners of the show will get a $75 sponsored job credit to get your jobs more visibility at Indeed.com. slash rookie. Just go to Indeed.com slash rookie right now and support our show by saying you heard about Indeed on this podcast. That's Indeed.com slash rookie. Terms and conditions apply. Hiring Indeed is all you need. All right. So man, this is so, there's a hundred places I want to go and we don't have time for all of them. So I'll point out a couple of things. First of all, I love the procrastination thing. I think that's so true.

I think we are trained from birth to like when things are hard. Well, I haven't met any human being who doesn't procrastinate about something. And everybody's guilty about it. And I says, eight billion people are guilty about something that's wisdom. And so I says, why this is pretty stupid. That's so good. So good. And then the unique ability, you know, there's people who like, for example, I procrastinate it on my email.

If you've ever, people listen to this show, if you sent me an email, you know I probably didn't respond to you either ever or within a month. Like, I'm just really bad at it. Like, I just let it build up because I can't stand it. Yet for years, I thought I had to handle my own email all the time. That's what I do. That's my responsibility to respond to everybody. And I also felt like I had to respond to every single person who reached out to me.

So I'm learning now, like there's things like that. That's my gut telling me that I shouldn't be working on my email all the time. Like somebody else should be doing that. So I started hiring people, like I mentioned earlier, I hired, you know, a big team of people, a small team of people around me who are all amazing at what they do. But one of the things I struggled with a lot in the process, and I feel like I'm out a good spot with it now. It took me a while to get there.

but I want to know your thoughts as somebody who's helped a lot of people and you've hired a lot of people yourself and you've helped a lot of people hiring. How do you? And I asked this question a few weeks ago on the show to some other people, but I want to know your thoughts. Typically, I see like three things when you look into hire somebody. Some people have a cultural fit. They're really, they fit the culture of your business. Other people have the experience. They've done the exact job you're hiring for many times before. And some people maybe don't have the experience, but they have the skill cell. They, they can figure it out like pretty quickly. how do you look at those three things, like the cultural fit, the experience, and the skill set? How do you either rank them or how do you hire someone based on those if you had to pick one as more important? Like how do you, I guess, help people hire correctly?

Because the who not how thing is vital, yet hiring the wrong person is terrible. Well, Brandon, the first step I made is that I'm terrible at hiring people so I don't do it. Okay. I love that you admit that. That's great. Yeah. And are you a good salesperson? Yes, you're a good salesperson. I think I'm okay. The salesperson is the last person you want hiring somebody because they treat the interview like it's a sales situation.

That's so true. Yeah, they're excited, but they're excited about your job, not the job you want them for because you seem to be having so much fun in this job that they want your job. Yeah. So the people who do all of our hiring are poker players. Hmm. They don't, I mean, you can't see anything. There's not a movement in their face in there. And, you know, we do testing. There's some really nice tests out there. One of them's Colby, K-O-L-B-E. It's from Phoenix, a woman there. And it tells you what, left to your own devices, if you could take action, how do you take action? And it's a really great test for entrepreneurs, K-O-L-B-E. And so what they do, and one of the things is, you know, You know, I asked them because we've hired a lot of millennials. There's been a lot of millennials have come in, you know, because it's the main job market. And I'm not noticing any of the attitudes that are sort of, you know, there's parodies on YouTube about millennials, you know, show up at 8.

No, no, I don't do 8 o'clock, 10 o'clock. You know, I do yoga. Yeah, there's a lot of negative stereotypes. I do. Serotypes. And I didn't notice any of the stereotypes. And I said, so are you doing something different with the monials? And she said, yeah, we've got a question. And I said, what's the question? You ask the person, if you come to work at Strategic Coach, what do you think you're entitled to? And if they start giving you a list, they're gone. That's fantastic. But if they say, well, I don't think I'm entitled to anything, but I'd really like the opportunity to learn and be part of your culture. sure that's the right thing to say. But it's amazing. An entitled person won't see the track. Yeah. That's so good. Glad you brought it up because I brought a list, you know. Can I also just point out here what you just did that is so funny. And so like I could just tell it's in your nature.

When I asked the question, how like I basically said, how do I hire people? You immediately took your, like the title of your book, Who Not How? And like, you twisted that to who's going to hire people, right? Like that's just the nature. Like, you can tell I don't naturally think that way yet. I'm trying to. But like, it's like, how am I going to hire someone? How am I going to? You're like, who's going to hire someone?

I'm not good at that. You're like, I'm not going to hire you. Well, here's a question for both of you, David and Brandon. Have you been told in your life that you would be really successful if you only applied yourself? When I was younger, people would tell me that. What about you, David? No, I don't think anyone ever said that to me.

Okay, so we divided in half right here. The thing is that you look like you're capable. Both of you look like you're really capable. Okay. And the thing about it is I can do detail work really well for about three hours. And then I'm tired for two weeks. Okay. If someone's unique ability, they can do that thing every single day.

and love the experience more and more as they go along, you know. And that's really the thing. It's not that you can't do it in a pinch. It's not that you can't do it when you're up against an emergency. I can perform in all sorts of task areas of it's emergency as long as I know I don't have to do it tomorrow. Unique ability is lifetime in the same niche. I like the point you made about you can do it for a short period of time,

but it would wear you out. there's a time a quarterback needs to run the ball. A handful of times in the game, that's a good strategy. He's got to pick up two yards. He can go get it. But you certainly want to hand it to the running back the majority of the time. And there's a handful of trick plays where maybe a running back has to throw a ball. But that's a great way of looking at it that I may need to maybe descend into my business

and play a role for a period of time to get us over a hump. But the majority of the carry should be going to the person that's better. And Brandon and I have really been like ringing that bell. come up with this concept here that says follow your fire because you should be asking yourself like what lights you up inside what makes you want to do stuff and that's the part you should focus on and then kind of let the other people yeah the other the other feedback loop that will really help you is to ask your team and just ask them look could you tell me what i should be focusing on and what i should you've observed me for six months you've observed me for a year and what do you notice

that if I just focus on this thing, then everything would work a lot better. And then all the things I shouldn't be doing, who's going to handle it? And I tell you your team, if they're a good team, I mean, they're honest people and everything else. They'll tell you exactly. They'll tell you because it makes their life easier. That's such good advice. Because that's one of the reasons that I recommend talking to other people about your struggles because every time I do, Brandon knows immediately what I need to do. And when he comes to me and says what he's struggling with, it takes me like three seconds to say, well, why are you looking at it like that? And, you know, Dan, I could probably lay everything out for you. And you could

immediately say, like you just said with Brandon, well, buddy, who's the one that's supposed to be hiring? It shouldn't be you, you know? Well, the other thing is, I'm not experiencing the emotions of it. I'm just getting the framework. So it's easier for somebody outside your emotional field to actually, you know, talk about it. Well, What I've observed is every time you talk about this, you light up and you don't smile when you talk about this. And I'm sorry, I've just discovered from life that people who smile when they talk about something and don't smile when they talk about something else, they like this and they don't like that. It's just an observation. What do you think? And a lot of people, they've got a lot of musts and shoulds from their past life.

You know, you should do this. One of the things is I find this is harder to pull off in a small town than it is a big city. Okay, so I was telling this one guy, he travels about 200 miles a day. You know, he's a salesperson of one sort of another. And I said, why don't you get a driver? He says, in my town, get a driver? Who's he think he is? Yep.

And I says, so what is it? Your town or your future? You know, there was a, I've told the story in the podcast before, but I'll say it again now. One of my best friends in high school, his family owned a plumbing company, a very successful, good, big plumbing company. We have a small town, right? But my friend once admitted to me that he had a house cleaner that cleaned their house. And like, oh, boy, I did not let him live that down.

Like, we made fun of him. All the guys were getting like, oh, look at rich kid over there. Got to have a house cleaner. And what I never realized until I was grown up is that he wasn't rich and therefore had a house cleaner. He had a house cleaner. He had a house cleaner. It's that his dad had this concept that he just understood. I mean, he probably wasn't strategic coach.

But like he had this concept of like his unique ability. And like honestly, his dad didn't go and fix plumbing parts either, even though he owned a playing company. His dad had a very specific thing that he did in the company, him and him and his mom and dad both ran it. And they were very, very successful at it because they focused on the things that they should be doing the most of. And it fired them up. They got them excited. In fact, going back to the coaching thing, you said earlier, like a coach's job is to,

is to really like ask the right questions that help the client like kind of answer almost for themselves in a way just by the questions you ask. right? So like, and then you brought up the fact that you can see the energy in your clients when they're talking to you. And so this is, I would say some of the most impactful things my, my coach has ever done is been simply when he says, seems like you have a lot of energy behind that. Seems like that really excites you, Brandon. I'm like, you're right. That does excite me. Like, like, because somebody else can point that out a lot easier than you can. Damn. This has been, this has been amazing. I just got a couple quick follow up kind of questions as we go through here. First of all, first question, uh, the book, who not how I know you co-wrote it or, you know, Benjamin Hardy, who's a... No, I did it as a collaboration. Can I tell you how I... Please. So I write a quarterly book, so I have a little book that I write. I've written...

When I was 70, I said I'm going to write 100 books and 100 quarters. So right now I'm in the 25th quarter and we're writing book 25. And I have a nine-person team. It takes me about 35 hours a quarter to write a book. And it's mostly talking and it's transcribed. and it's edited. And I have a cartoonist who cartoons it. And so Ben Hardy, who is at Genius Network, Joe Polish, and he came up to me and he said, you know, he says, I've been following your work for about five years. And he said, but I notice you don't do major market books. And I said,

I just don't have the bandwidth for a major book. I said, if I can't finish it in 90 days, I don't want to, you know, I don't want to do it. It's, I just can't do it. I can do a little book. It's about 60 pages. I can do a 60 page book. But I said I have a nine-person team. And he said, well, he said, if you ever wanted to take this idea, who not how, and write a major book, he says, I'll be your writer. And I says, you're on. So we started talking about it.

And I said, so here's the deal. I don't know the publishing business at all. I haven't been out there. I don't know it. So what I'll do is that all the money from the book goes to you. So all the advance, the royalties, everything, sells a million copies, all the money goes to you. I want the readers who sign up for a strategic coach.

Yeah, that's smart. And then he says, oh, I've got this great strategist, Tucker Max. And he knows how to strategize the book, and he knows how to package it, and he knows how to test it and everything else. He says, can we bring him on? And I says, what do I care? It's your money. And then they found the publisher Hayhouse.

And now we have a 10 book every October. We have a major book coming out in October. And I spent 45 hours on this book. And Ben, I mean, Ben really put himself through this, and he really dug deep into it. And he had nights of terror and he had weekends. you know, and everything else. And he got finished.

He says, boy, this has been a real experience going through this. And I says, well, Ben, of the two of us, one of us had to be worried. Yeah. I love that you even took, like, you took this whole concept of who not how and apply. And it's not that you didn't, like, your concepts are in there. I know you are. And I know you know this stuff. Yeah.

But like the actual sitting down to write the stories and the things like that go with him. It's not a word in here of mine. And I said, 10 books, 10 years. You know, I mean, he's, he's, I'm 40 years older than he is. I said, it would be a good 10 years for you. There you go. So if I could have been doing what you're doing when you're in your 30s, I would have been happy with it, you know. So the whole point is if you don't care, the money is the big thing.

I have to tell you, David, you were asking me questions about it. What would you rather have money right now or a hundred times capability in 10 years? The 100 times capability. Yeah. a lot of entrepreneurs, first of all, they don't have the cash confidence that they can even entertain the question. So my feeling is, I love stockpiling. I've got Tucker Max on my team. I've got Hayhouse on my team. I've got Ben Hardy on my team. And I've got all these collaborations. I have about three or four of them with people where basically they get all the money. And I said,

yeah, but I get the capability. I get your capability for 10 years. I said, I couldn't write a check for your capability for 10 years, but I can give you all the money. Okay. And the thing that surprises people is they said, well, why don't you take a little piece of the money? You know, why don't you take 5%? And I says, it's like I build a new swimming pool and I'm having a pool party and just to launch it, I pee in the pool. That's what you're 5%. I said, no, no, let's just keep it clean. Let's just keep it clean for 10 years, you know. And they said, well, what if it sells 10 million books? I says, then you've had a good 10 years. Yeah, you've had a good time. You've had a good deal. I said, you'll get it on the back end

and strategic coach. I get the back end. And I said, I couldn't have your capability. I've just gotten your capability for 10 years. You know, I actually did that. So with my real estate fund, I buy a lot of big mobile home parks. I did the same, like, we make fees when we buy a property. There's like administrative fees and all these things. And that money comes in. But I don't, in fact, I I probably lose money owning this company a little bit. If I make money, all that tells me is I need to hire somebody else who can get me even more. Because I know 10 years from now, when we package up a billion dollars of real estate and sell

it to a big hedge fund or whatever, you know, wherever we end up doing, that's when I get my payday. I'd rather have it down the road. So I just keep looking at that. And I think that's an entrepreneur mindset that's different from an employee mindset. Well, here's I tell you, if you have a capability that goes up 100 times in 10 years, but there's no money, the IRS doesn't see. that 100% increase.

Yeah. You know. And so it's kind of invisible capability. So the big thing is you have to be totally cash confidence so that you're easy with that type of deal. You know, like we do real well, Babs and I, you know, we have great lifestyle. We don't need to really improve it at all, you know, kind of simple. You know, I mean, I'm not a big social guy or anything. Neither of us.

You're not out at the club every night? No. That's not my thing. The Toronto club scene, I don't know. Probably is one. It's pretty locked down right now. Pretty lockdown. Yeah, it's pretty.

Yeah. I mean, Toronto in winter anyway and now lockdown, this is going to be, you know, the liquor stores are up 38% this year. I bet they are, yes. Yeah, they're doing well right now. The cannabis shops are doing well. So, you know, it's legal in across the country here. So well, something you mentioned about that delayed gratification. When I asked Brandon, hey, how well did your business do this year? He literally said, I made X million dollars 10 years from now. That was how his answer was. I don't remember what it was, but it was like I added $8 million to my debt worth in 10 years. He's thinking that way already. Yeah. And I mean, this is an old thing that you can go back to the Greeks and read about what they says, you know, the delayed gratification. It's the person who can see the future.

and doesn't get confused by the present. Well, on that note, who do you need right now? Is there anybody, I guess, anybody you're looking for specifically? I mean, with a quarter million people listening to this, is there somebody specifically you're looking for in your life that's going to help you in any way? Anything we could put a shout out there? Yeah. Well, I want people to sign up for the program, you know.

You got to be making 200,000 minimum personal income. And you got to be talented. You've got to be successful. You've got to be ambitious. but you're hitting the ceiling because you've already achieved your original goals of being an entrepreneur. You've hit the road and you know that you haven't done it in a way that makes you completely happy about your success. And you know there's big opportunities, but you can't do it. Up until now, you've kind of done it alone.

And as David said, the future is all about teams. My whole future is just about teamwork. It's not about me anymore. It's being a part of great teams. And, you know, so that's who we're looking for. And the other thing is that this is, this book is really great for everybody. All you have to do is be human to actually understand the message in this book. And that is that every human is great at something, but they don't get to spend time doing that.

They don't get, they don't recognize that they're really good at it. So my, my sense is that set really big goals for yourself. get excited about the goals, and then a question will say, how am I going to do that? You don't ask that question of yourself. You say, who's going to do this with me? Who's going to do this for me? And that's the thing. You just have to switch a dial in your brain not to say, how am I going to do this?

You're not going to do this. You're establishing the vision. You're communicating the vision, and you can find other people to do it. And, well, I can't afford a full-time person. It's good. Get five hours a week. make more money, move it to 10 hours a week, you know, everything. If you have the goal, you know, it was like you were saying about the guy whose dad ran the plumbing company.

He wasn't wealthy. He wasn't paying someone else to wash his house because he was wealthy. He got wealthy because he had someone else wash his house. And that's the way with everybody. Yeah. You know, everybody I see. And, you know, and it starts with you. you have your sense of future that you'd like to have. You want to have more control over your time and use your time in a way that's enjoyable.

You want to make quality money and you want it at the quantity you want, the relationships you want to deal with people you like being with, and not with people that you don't like it. And then you have a purpose to your life. This has an impact, this creation of an entrepreneurial company has a big impact. you know. So can I share mine just before we leave? Please. Yeah. That in 244, I'm 100 years old. Okay, so it's 23 years from now.

And the total network of Strategic Coach entrepreneurs, and I think it's going to be about 10,000, we're at 2,500 now, so 23 years, I'm sure it will be at 10,000. The GDP of the Strategic Coach network that year is $15 trillion, which would place them second to the United States right now. as a GDP. And that's my goal to create the thinking and the tools and that for entrepreneurs to stay within their unique ability and just create massive unique ability collaboration around the world and using the tool now. If Zoom didn't improve it all over the next 23 years, we've got the tool that we can do it with. That's amazing, man. I love the vision. I love how well thought out you are on that.

And I think that I think accomplishing that is totally going to be in your grasp. So, man, thank you. Yeah. And I don't have to have the 15 trillion. And I'll just check the sofas after they stand up. I'll find it and lose change. You know, I'll find all my money and lose change, you know. But I really want to thank you for inviting me on.

Thank you. Where's the best place for people to follow up with, you know, like follow you or get to know you more, like website and stuff like that? Yeah, it's just strategiccoach.com. You know, just go there and it's a great website. and anything you want there. And, you know, entrepreneurialism has come of age right now.

You know, in the 1970s, when I started, 1974 I started. It was marginal creatures. The personal computer is the great breakthrough. That once entrepreneurs got a personal, and then the software, it was the real software, you know, that you can be a global organization today with Zoom. You know, you can have a special. small team, but you can do work globally. And this is entrepreneurial. And my sense is that the growth in

the economy since the COVID is about 30% of the growth is new businesses. Yeah, I totally say that. Using Zoom. New kinds of teams, new kinds of projects. Look how quickly they got to the vaccine. Yeah. It's amazing when people are. Nine, nine months. I bet the collaboration is greater than the Apollo project when they put a man on the moon. And the next virus we get hit with how much quicker they'll come up with a vaccine then because now people have an established role within a team. They've gone through that learning period. You're exactly right. My team's a lot better right now than they were in February.

Same. One of the things that I think often when we do well is I tell myself my team is better than your team. It's really not that I'm doing better work. It's that I've assembled a better team. Like you want to be on the Avengers. That's what your goal is. Yeah. And I think the checkout point is that is that everybody on my team loves what they do and they can do it every day and they love it more the longer they do it.

That's just the checkout point whether you have a great team or not. There you go. So good. Well, thank you, Dan. This has been amazing. Really, really, really good stuff today. Yeah. Thank you.

Real pleasure. All right. And that was our show with The Dan Sullivan. Awesome, awesome stuff. Really, like he's got so many of those like just like zingers is like the best. word I can use. I was just like, oh, yeah, that's so good. The procrastination thing. Like, and all this stuff, it's just like really, really powerful stuff that if people just take this and apply to their business, they're going to see huge shifts. Well, I think there's a huge

amount of cumulative wisdom in what he's saying. He's been around and he's seen successful businesses and very successful people and he's seen people that struggle to get going. And he's recognized the patterns that the successful people have embraced. Yeah. Well, David, on that, what is the one thing I see in the intro? What do you have to, doing to become number one? I have to stop not trusting people. I have to stop thinking that I've got to be the one to do it if it's going to be done well. And maybe to a second degree, I have to stop avoiding difficult conversations with the people on my team. Because if I think, hey, they're not going to do it like me. I'll just go do it. Then I get out of who, not how. And I get into the

how. So in order for me to trust more, I have to have more difficult conversations and just be willing, like commit to that process and then watch, you know, as people, flourish. And I think if I do that and I put myself back into the visionary role, like what Dan was saying, we should absolutely become number one. Yeah, that's really good. Well, I know you didn't ask me, but my answer to that question is I got to stop managing my calendar. Like, if I literally had somebody else who knew my priorities and knew my goals and knew my vision better than, than I tend to execute my own stuff, I think I would get a lot more of my unique ability done because they would be, like, the person in charge of my calendar would be scheduling those things for

me and saying no to the things I don't need with that and saying yes, the things I do. I'm just too much of a sucker. I'm a sales guy, right? I'm the sales guy. So I'm like, I love everything. and I just want to do everything all the time. I need somebody who's going to be like a no person and a prioritized person. So I'm going to let go on my calendar. I'm actually hiring an executive assistant right for that, our administrative assistant. So that's a team member. That's a team. That's a team member. That's it. Yeah, I would say the advice I'd give to people who want to be more successful is you're either going to build the team or you're going to be a part of a team or you're going to be a part of a team and then build a team. You can also be a part of a team and then build a

separate team. There's different ways to do this. But ask yourself, what would it take for me to be a better team member? Does my attitude get in the way? Does my stubbornness get in the way? Does my fear of doing new things get in the way? What's stopping me from being a better team member? And then find a team you think would be a good fit. So as people hear Brandon talk about here's a struggle I'm having, if you know that's a skill of yours. See if there's a place you could fit on on Branden's team. See if there's a way you can fit on on my team. The bigger pockets is hiring. They're always looking for new people. Could you go get on the bigger pockets team and be someone who brings your skills into that world? Yeah, that's really good stuff. On that note also, I want to talk about a couple

points about today's show and how it relates to real estate investors. First of all, remember what he was talking about at the end of the show that he didn't write the words that were in the book. He had his name on the front cover and he gets a lot of the benefit at the end of the day. Ben Hardy, which we're going to get him on the show as well, hopefully soon, to talk about this stuff in even more detail. But Ben, the reason, like, here's what I'm going to say with this. Like, it was not a random person who came to Dan and said, hey, I can write a book for you and write a book with you and take all your thoughts and put him into fancy words, right? Ben had been a writer of multiple books already. Ben had, he's a member of Strategic Coach.

So he's a member or at least of a Genius Network, Joel Polish his thing. So he got to, like he, he put in the time, he put in the effort, he had the skill set, he had the thing. And then he pitched Dan on it. So that's the thing that, David, you were just talking about a second ago is how can you bring value to other people if you want to get on their team? You really have to ask yourself, have you done the work needed to get them to accept you on their team? There you go. This is probably the big, one of the biggest mistakes I see new real estate investors make is they want to, they want to bring value to me or to do or the thousands of other experienced real estate investors that are out there. And they want to learn from

them, but they haven't done the work necessary. They haven't taken the shots in practice so that they'll succeed when they get their chance. Yeah. It wasn't a random non-writer that came up to Dan was like, I want to write a book for you. I bet you hundreds of people have approached Dan in the past, but wanting to write books with him because Dan has not traditionally published books, like in the way that normal people do. It wasn't until the right person came along because he put in the shots.

He took the practice. So what does that mean? It means if you're trying to get into real estate and you want to be part of somebody else's team, start putting in the shots right now, start analyzing the deals, get really good at that skill the skills needed. And that might be buying your own particular smaller deals right now. Might mean getting really good at analyzing or really good at lead generation. Even if you can't close the deals yourself, start getting good at those skills needed so that when you got the deal, you can take it to somebody like a David here and say, hey, David, I got this amazing deal on a 12-unit

apartment. I will, I found the deal. I'll manage it for you. I'll take care of everything. I don't need anything, but I just need a down payment. We help me get the down payment. And David would be like of, maybe look over your stuff, but if you had proved yourself and you had the experience and you had everything needed, why would David or thousands of other real estate investors out there, millions of other real estate investors? Why would they not take you up on that? Of course they would in a heartbeat. But you have to do the homework at a time. That is the best thing I've heard you say in a long time. That is straight fire advice. That is so good. Thank you. I really can't say that enough. In fact, if somebody did that, I would say it's probably virtually impossible for them to

not succeed. Yeah. If they committed to, like, I'm going to analyze 100 deals before I go say, Brandon, can I work with you? And they're so good at analyzing deals. It's like Larry Bird shooting. Who's going to say, no, I don't want you when you're shooting ability on. Yeah, so good.

So, all right, so I wanted to talk about that. I also wrote a few more notes as we were talking to Dan about things I wanted to cover later. One thing you mentioned about how technology is changing the world to be more team-based. And this is so true with real estate. 10 years ago, 15, 20 years ago, it would have been very hard to do what I'm doing today, which was find people with certain unique abilities, bring them together and we go take down big deals. Today, like, that's super easy.

Like, you can find people. Bigger pockets itself is a technology that has changed the game for real estate investors. If you are good at one unique ability aspect of real estate, you can find people with other aspects and they're just by networking on the forums, going to local meetups, talking on the forum, like talking on the Facebook group, things like that. And then you put it together via Zoom and you can build an Avenger style team via technology and take down some really massive big deals right now, or a bunch of small deals if you wanted as a team.

So that's just kind of another thing. We never talk about on the show, but it's totally true. Technology changed everything. Yeah, technology has amplified the ability to take your skills and get more out of it. And that's, I think, something that people should pay attention to is you might have had a slight advantage if you had more skills,

but technology is like the NOS, the boost, that whatever you were good at, it amplifies your ability to crush it there. So I agree with Dan when we said, hey, the future is teams. I 100% believe it. I see that happening with real estate. I see it happening with business. I see it happen with investing. That is absolutely the truth. So get a head start on everybody else and start embracing the things that will make you a good team member and help you to build good teams. And you'll be one of the people to enjoy the first fruits. Yeah. So good.

All right. Last point I wanted to make here is he mentioned a coach helps you find your energy points or like basically he said makes it easier for you to do your best things, right? To do the things that you do best. and they do that by asking the right questions. I wanted to ask you, David, like, how have you found that true in your life by working with performance coaching with people who kind of like define for you what it is you should be doing? So my coach works with both me individually, my real estate team, and my mortgage team. And we have a meeting every single week. It becomes expensive, but it's so worth it, where all of the issues that we're having,

like let's say that you've got a person on your team that keeps missing things when he's analyzing stuff. And you've said to that same person three times, stop missing this and they keep missing it. You could go to them 10 more times and they would feel like, why am I getting picked on? Why am I the only person Brandon talks to? Their performance will start to drop. They'll feel isolated. When we bring it up in the group setting, it's not David verse angry person or person that has an issue. It's a collaborative group where our coaches can mediate what that conversation is like and then dig in on why do you think you're missing that?

Are you rushing? Is it resentment? Do you not understand how important that is? And they get to the root cause of why the behavior is happening. And then that person doesn't just fix the symptom, but they actually help the problem. That's a huge piece because it's not my voice over and over and over saying the same thing. And then in my own life, they're so useful because they see my blind spots, right? I don't realize how I come across when I talk to other people. I don't know very well the image I'm putting out. Other people could tell you that really easy. A performance coach is someone that has your full permission, you're paying them to tell you, these are your blind spots.

This is where you're making life harder. And we all know what it's like when we have a person who is, I think that the example that Dan said is you'd be great if you really applied yourself or they would be awesome except for this one thing. Imagine how much that one thing is costing. That's what I say is like, do you know how expensive that habit is of not admitting you're wrong or not working with other people well? the thing is, it's so expensive. People don't realize how expensive it is to hold on to character

flaws or traits they have that are hurting them. And a performance coach's job is to get in there, isolate what that thing is, highlight it, and then help you get it out of you. Yep. It's 100%. That's what it is. So kind of like we said in the quick tip today was find a group of people, whether it's a performance coach you pay for, a mastermind group, an accountability buddy. It doesn't matter. Find somebody that's going to hold you to your best self and watch the transformation in your life. So with that says, Ed, let's wrap this thing. It's been a long show, but every piece of it was worth it. So thank you for, thank you for being with me again, David Green. You're awesome, man.

Thanks. Appreciate you. I love doing this with you. I hope everyone listening got a lot of value out of this as well. I hope, as Dan was speaking, everyone was able to relate that in their life to some way and they understand the importance of a team and as far as the mindset shift to make. And thank you guys for listening to this long episode with us. For those that stuck all the way through, you're the real MVP. This is David Green for Brandon, my favorite teammate Turner, signing off. You're listening to Bigger Pockets Radio, simplifying real estate for investors large and small. If you're here looking to learn about real estate investing, without all the height, you're in the right place. Be sure to join the millions of others who have benefited from biggerpockets.com. Your home for real estate investing online.

Thank you all for listening to the Bigger Pockets Real Estate. podcast. Make sure you get all our new episodes by subscribing on YouTube, Apple, Spotify, or any other podcast platform. Our new episodes come out Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. On the host and executive producer of the show, Dave Meyer, the show is produced by Ian K, copywriting is by Calicoe content, and editing is by Exodus Media. If you'd like to learn more about real estate investing or to sign up for our free newsletter, please visit www. www.com. The content of this podcast is for informational purposes only. All host and participant opinions are their own. Investment in any asset, real estate included, involves risk.

So use your best judgment and consult with qualified advisors before investing. You should only risk capital you can afford to lose. And remember, past performance is not indicative of future results. BiggerPockets LLC disclaims all liability for direct, indirect, consequential, or other damages arising from a reliance on information presented in this podcast.