BiggerPockets Real Estate Podcast - 444: 150 Deals at Age 22 by Putting Relationships Over Profit with Cole Ruud-Johnson

Episode Date: February 18, 2021

It seems like young real estate investors get more and more impressive every week. Today we talk with Cole Ruud-Johnson, a wholesaler and flipper out of the Seattle area. The impressive part? He’s 22 years old and has done 150+ deals to date! Even at 22, Cole’s journey wasn’t a linear path, he had lots of ups and downs to get him to the level of success he achieves now.  Cole tried to be a real estate agent at 18, but wasn’t getting the hang of it. After failing at a couple of real estate brokerages, he entered into a third and learned how they were creating their own inventory via cold calling. He decided he’d give this a try, and partnered up with his friend to cold call for deals. After three months, an agent brought them their first off-market deal. This first deal alone netted them $105,000. Yes, you read that right, six-figures on ONE wholesale deal. This wasn’t enough for Cole, he knew he had to get back out there and work on getting his next deal. Cole’s small business grew to a small empire, but over time this pushed him into a massive burn out. He had to make some BIG changes in his business, many of which even business veterans wouldn’t be comfortable doing.  Now he’s here with us on the podcast, talking through his lean team, his deals, his systems, and how new wholesalers can start getting deals. Cole even throws in the script he uses to get wholesale deals over the phone, so if you’re thinking about getting off-market deals or starting your wholesaling journey, this is the episode for you! In This Episode We Cover: How wholesaling and off-market deals can net big profits Why you need to be consistent when cold calling  The script that Cole uses to get off-market and wholesale deals How to scale your business (and prevent massive burnout) Growing slowly to scale, instead of fast and crashing The types of lists that Cole and his team pull Keeping the flow of communication open between you and your partners Taking action instead of just taking in information And SO much more! Links from the Show BiggerPockets Forums BiggerPockets Podcast 443: 10 Ways to Learn Anything Faster with Jim Kwik BiggerPockets Podcast 403: Developing a Millionaire’s Mindset and Overcoming Limiting Beliefs with Performance Coach Jason Drees BiggerPockets Podcast 365: Ret. Navy SEAL Jocko Willink on Embracing Discomfort and Leading Through Extreme Ownership (+ His Real Estate Investing Tips!) BiggerPockets Podcast 398: 22 BRRRR Properties in Under 10 Hours Per Week with Tarl Yarber BiggerPockets Podcast 394: Making a 25 Deal/Year Business (and Marriage) Work… Together! with Elliot and Chrissy Smith BiggerPockets Podcast 423: Who Not How: Stop Doing the Things You Hate, Free Up Time, Be Happier and Richer with Dan Sullivan Check the full show notes here: http://biggerpockets.com/show444 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is the Bigger Pockets podcast show 444. I think if you really want to be in real estate and make it work and you're showing up every single day with like we're talking about persistent, consistent action, it is something is going to happen. So I think the main thing that separates people together. There's mindsets behind that. There's tangible things you can do. But if you're in the game long enough, whether you're an agent or you're trying to flip

or do development or you're doing buying whole stuff, something is going to happen. 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, everyone?

It's Brandon Turner, host of the Bigger Pockets podcast here in the C-Shed, not She Shed. Somebody asked me the other day, why did you call it a she-shed? It's a C-Shed with my buddy, Mr. David Green. David Green. What's up, man? What's going on? We got some magic today coming out of said shed. We do have some magic out of said shed today. Today's show is phenomenal. We interviewed a guest named Cole Rudd. Let me say that again. Shoot, I messed it up. No, leave it like that. It'll make the outro make more sense.

It will make the outro make more sense. All right. Well, Cole Rood is our guest today here in the C-Shed and he is a good friend of mine, a phenomenal. real estate investor and 22, 23, 25, 27, 22. The kid's like 22. He is killing it in his real estate business. So you guys are gonna love that. You're gonna learn about all the mindset stuff on how he does it, but equally importantly,

the tactical, like how he does it, what are the things he's doing, what does he stay on the phone, how do they talk to sellers, what works, what doesn't work, where he gets the list from all the stuff to unpack all that today. So it's pretty awesome. But before we get to that, let's get to today's quick Quick tip.

Here is my quick tip for everyone today. Sometimes on these shows, we talk about terms that you might not know. For example, today's show, we talk a lot about wholesaling. You might be like, what's wholesaling? I don't know what it is. And then, like, just not look it up. So here's a very simple quick tip. If you go to bigger pockets, there's a little magnifying glass at the top, you go up there

and you click on it and then you type in any real estate term whatsoever. And then hit enter and you will like get, like, it's basically our search result is categorized by like forum, blog, podcast, webinar, blah, blah. blah, blah, blah, blah, people, companies. And so you can, like, really dig on on any topic. So don't let, like, I don't understand what that is. Stop you. And by the way, wholesaling is basically where you find good deals.

And then you, instead of doing the work yourself, you find somebody else who wants that good deal and you make kind of a fee for kind of being the middleman. That's kind of probably not a great explanation. But that gives you the idea is you're basically making money without actually having to do the flip. You're finding the deal. You're getting paid to find deals. And there are ways to do it that work in every state.

There's where that don't work in every state. There's legal way, the illegal way, so make sure if you're going to do a whole thing, do your homework. But anyway, the quick tip is to use bigger pockets to learn stuff. It's really good. Yeah, Cole's 22 going on to 52. So in today's show, we cover how to start a business, how to get out of working in the business to working on your business, basically converting everything into different steps that you can

manage people. We talk about adding different streams of income to something that you're already doing well. And probably most importantly, the mindset behind how successful people operate, which as today's guest shows, they work even at a young age. Yeah. Such a good show. So you guys are going to love it. There are two kinds of real estate investors, those who have reviewed their insurance,

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I think it's time to start our interview that we just did here, live in Maui in the C-Shed with Cole. So without further ado, let's bring them in. Cole, welcome to the Bigger Pockets podcast, man. Good to have you in the shed. Thanks for having me on, man. It's good to be in person out of Maui. Yeah.

So tell us a little bit about how you got into the wide world of real estate investing. Actually, wait, before you do that, how old are you? I'm 22 and three quarters. Turn it's 23 in there. Okay. So that's a very young age. And give us a quick, before you got how you got into real estate, give us a quick understanding. What do you do?

Like, what's your thing right now? Like, like, set some, like, I guess I want to set the table because I want people to know, like, like, what you have right now, what your business looks like. And then we'll go into how you got into that. So how in depth do you want to go there? Just give us a broad overview of your current business. So broad overview right now, we have an off market direct to seller company and rent in Washington. So we have an office, 2,000 square feet, salesman. managers, guys, a whole team. And right now we're doing 90% wholesale. So direct to sell or sell

on those deals, other investors, then 10% flips. So we have three flips going on right now. So transitioning into that slowly, but still primarily wholesale. Okay. And then tell us approximately, like, how much volume in a year do you do? Like in the last year, like, what have you done? Like, what kind of like revenue you see? Yeah. So in the past year, um, we do about six to eight transactions a month in the Seattle area. So before that, we were in like four different states. that number was higher, but right now we're back down to six to eight and just comfy and the three main counties around Seattle. Yeah. So whatever that comes out to, like 70, 80-ish deals here. Wow. Okay. So that's crazy. I did like, I think three whole sales once in a five-year

period and that was, I was impressed with myself. So let's go into how you got started. How'd you get into real estate? I mean, you're a young guy with a business that most people would be jealous of, you know, jealous of and wine. How'd you get in? Yeah. So growing up, I grew up in a real estate family. So my great grandma started a brokerage called Rood Realty, which is one of the first brokerages. Rood. Rood. All of Seattle. Like RU-D.

Okay. Okay. I was like, that's how it's pronounced. Yeah. Okay. RU-D. I thought it was Rudd. No.

I've been pronouncing your name wrong for like, rude. We've hung out a number of times. We play poker together. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. And I called you Rude.

A lot of times just let it slide. Even when I tell people the next time it's back to Rud. He pronounces a lot of words wrong. Don't feel bad. Rough instead of roof. magazine and I don't produce anything wrong. Shut up. Now we exit now.

Exactly. So she was kind of the, she launched my whole family in real estate. So then my grandparents, they did a lot of commercial stuff in Seattle. They owned a bunch of buildings. She was an agent. And then my mom got in the business. She became an agent and my brother followed her. So growing up, anytime I wanted to make money or be involved at all, I was, you know,

going with her to open houses, putting signs out for the open houses. I was a staging. She had a staging company on the side, so I was moving furniture around. So I was always around the business in some way. So transitioning to when I actually wanted to make money, naturally I got my real estate license at 18, 19 when I left school after a semester. And I absolutely hated, hated, hated or being a residential real estate agent. Switched brokerages three times because, of course, it was the brokerage.

That was a problem. It was not me. I showed up to every sales meeting. That was everyone else's fault. It was not my fault. I sat on Facebook a couple hours a day, scrolled, you know, through a few posts how they were cold-called my sphere, which at 18 or 19, they tell you to cold call your sphere.

It's like all your friends. So you graduate in high school soon, huh? How's that? How's that looking? You want to buy a house? Yeah, so it was brutal. I mean, it was a, I was making like a couple hundred bucks a month just doing like showings for their agents.

Yeah. And then the third brokerage I moved to was an off-market company where they were doing every Tuesday night, they'd bring a bunch of investors in, and they would show them what was going to be coming to auction that week, and they'd pretty much, then they'd go to the auction. That's what they were running their company. So I learned that side of the business and how they were creating their own inventory, and I'm like, that seems like something I can get behind because people don't care what my age is

then, 18, 19, 20, rather than in Seattle selling the million-dollar house. They're like, something's going on here. So that's when I learned it, and then a couple nights later, I was like, when I've learned about wholesaling, me and a buddy were at Appleby's. That's my origin story kind of started. Half price appetizers? We shared half price advertisers, wings. It was how I survived college.

That was that was right there. And we were on Instagram and these other two young guys in the area had posted this like $40,000 check on their Instagram. And so I was like, what are these guys doing? If they can do it, we can do it kind of thing. So the next, literally the next day he came to my, to my parents house because I was living at my parents at the time and up in there pretty much their attic. We started cold calling.

And then for the next three months before we got a deal, we were just sitting up in that room, cold calling every single day. That's cool. Why did, I guess, why cold call? Like, why is that the first? Now, most people don't jump to cold calling is the first thing. Usually they're like, well, I'm going to go drive or something. Yeah, so we did that.

So we actually drove around like the most expensive neighborhoods of Bellevue and Seattle, like three to six million dollar homes. We're like, we're driving for dollars. Yeah. And because I don't know, I always want to feel like I'm doing something. Yeah. So I had no idea what I was doing. But I just was like, I'm going to put one foot in front of the other.

So we were the same time driving for dollars and going to all the meetups. You know, I was Facebook messaging, you know, all the guys in the area. That's what you do is asking to go to coffee. Yeah. Normal process. And then landed on cold calling because, I don't know, just felt we were getting the most traction on that out of anything. Yeah.

That's cool. Let's pull a couple things out of your story here that we can highlight for listeners. And then we'll move on to the next piece. First thing, very impressive. You realize early on this is not what I want. This does not match up with where my passion is and what my identity is. You didn't force that square peg through the round hole like we were talking about that Rosie was doing the other day.

You had you adapted. Okay. I don't like how this feels. This is not my identity. I'm moving on, which pushed you into cold calling. And I'm going to assume that was because your age group was not in a point that could help you get to the goals you wanted to get to.

So calling 18, 19 year olds in your sphere, looking for people to buy or sell a house was an uphill battle. But cold calling, you're calling the people that, that, can do what you want to do. And I just want to highlight this story you're about to tell us, which is incredible, started because instead of saying, I guess I can't sell houses, I'm only 19 years old. What am I going to do? You said, well, what can I do, which led to this awesome story that everybody else, you know,

can follow in that same path if they take that same approach. Yeah, backtracking a little bit on that point. I think that came from, I grew up a basketball player. So I remember I was in seventh grade. I came home one day. I love it, man. I came home one day. I just got the feels.

I came home one day from seventh grade from middle school and I was like I want to be the best basketball player. I want to play college basketball. And my parents didn't give me one of the like, oh, yeah, you'll be fine. You're really good. It might happen. It was like, okay, we'll have a trainer show up here tomorrow to pick you up. And they did in the next five, six years every single day I was working out. And I got a chance to play in college.

I didn't actually play in college, we got a chance. So that was so ingrained in me to as long as I show up and put one in front of the other and do something. every single day, something's going to come out of it. So even though the residential stuff wasn't working for me, I knew it was just so ingrained me at that point that if I show up the next day, try something else, eventually something is going to shake. I'm going to meet a person. I'm going to go to the right event.

I'm going to, there's going to be one seller that wants to help me out. And it happened. So, yeah, I think the cold calling was just a piece there, but it was really the mindset behind that that I think it was the biggest key to not just, okay, real estate's not for me, moving on. Yeah, I tell, I have a very similar story where basketball literally created the foundation of I can. I didn't grow up believing that I could do anything. Basketball was the first thing in my life that I worked at and got better.

And I saw the relationship between action and working and the result that I wanted. And just like you, I got super close. I actually didn't play in college. I broke my ankle when I was getting ready to go play there. I actually am glad that happened because I think that created a fuel that I used to do all the other stuff that I did. But I wish everyone else could have an experience like that. where you just see trying to take it all out in one shot is why people get discouraged. But just this understanding that if I just keep moving that ball forward,

if I keep putting myself in the right situation, that turnover's coming my way. I'm going to be the one leading the fast break. I'm going to get better. So at 22 years old, the fact that you figure that out young, I mean, credit to your parents and credit to you for. And the funny part is,

like, I wasn't that good for most of the time. Like my freshman year of high school, I was like on the C team, wasn't that great. But I was still like, every day. I was working out every single day, crazy three, four, five hours a day. It wasn't going to dance. I wasn't doing anything besides playing basketball. Sophomary wasn't that great. Junior year was on varsity finally wasn't that great. And senior year, MVP and everything, it just all clicked one year. So I knew. And that's kind of how my real estate

journey has been too. It kind of all, I had a few years of struggle and it kind of all came together. Well, what you, what you did is you went, like, you went all in on something, right? Versus like, you went all in basketball and you went all in real estate. And it just shows what happens when somebody focused and like, and like, we kind of laughed about earlier. You were driving. for dollars in like these multi-million dollar neighborhoods that you're probably not going to buy anything like but it doesn't matter you were you were doing something then you tried something else and you were doing something and trying to you know like we talk a lot about focus here on the podcast you know david and i will talk a ton about like how you need to like pick your bridge but in the beginning like

you probably don't know what your bridge is like a lot of your bridge is going to get them to success island so by just like trying this and trying this and you're like oh i didn't like the agent thing so and try this thing and oh i didn't like to drive him for devil when we were working oh cold calling's working good that's when you lean in and you go to that that bridge so hard just like you know i tried basketball then i leaned into it and i just i kept going that's awesome yeah and like what you were saying i think what that developed in me is like i didn't really care about the how with stuff like basketball i don't know how i was going to score in a game or how it was all going to shake out um so the same thing in a real estate whether it's cold calling whatever's working it's not worrying about the

how it's just picking a direction to go and showing up every single day and the how usually like if i look back in my life the past three years sitting here right now, how it does not make sense. It does not make sense. Well, you also are hitting on a point. Brandon, I have been talking about a lot, which is the pivot, okay? You did everything you had. You threw it into basketball. You had a goal. You wanted to play in college. It didn't happen. But you just shifted all that momentum into real estate, which is why now you're crushing it. You had 22 years old, this is incredibly impressive what you put together. That was largely because this momentum you built, your work ethic, your belief system,

them, the habits you had were formed from basketball. They translated pretty well into business where it doesn't matter if you're not tall enough or fast enough or strong enough. I always tell people in business, your athleticism is your mind. Your talent is your mind. And all of us have complete control over how that works out. Like we just talked with Jim Quick yesterday explaining like how to program your mind like your body.

So as people are listening, I just want them to hear that's the key. You start, you build momentum. And if it doesn't go the way you wanted, you shift that momentum into something else. but you don't completely, you don't wait until you know exactly what you want to do before you ever start moving. So thanks for that little segue in background. Yeah. Let's kind of get into where you took it after you.

Cold call. Yeah. The cold calling business. Yeah. So like we were cold calling every single day for three months. And finally, our first deal didn't even come from that, though. So an agent brought us this opportunity because that we were, you know, I was letting people know what I was doing.

And it was this, I've never done a deal like this. It was in Seattle and the Sunset Hill Bower area, which is, you don't do a ton of wholesale deals there. and the deal was brought to us like 800,000 purchase price. And the one buyer we had actually met that we knew was buying that we had a good relationship with. We sold them on this like, hey, man, if you build up two stories and you build a bridge over to an ADU on top of the garage, like might be something here.

And he bought it from us. And that first check was 105 grand. No way. First deal ever was 100,000. 105 on the first deal. We had to pay a few people out, but we took home a good chunk of that. And that was like a listed like an MLSS property or what was? Okay. So the agent found it off market brought it to you.

Is that how that went, wow. Yeah. That's crazy. And so how my mind works is I kind of, my mind immediately went to, I don't know why I went to crap. Yeah, I have the check, but what if I don't do another deal? Yeah. So right away, I was like, how can I turn this thing into a repeatable model where we can keep doing deals? So we know how do you make, how do you make a business out of this versus like I got a check? Exactly. And I don't know why my mind. Huge mental change there. My mind went right to there. Yeah, that's awesome. And so we didn't spent any of that money. Like none of it. I didn't get car the time, closed, nothing, stayed to my parents' house. And next day, we're cold calling again. And then it was actually another three

months until we got the next deal from cold calling. Or it's our first cold calling deal. So six months of cold calling before we get actual cold call deal. And then from there, hired another, got another person to cold call, another person to cold call. When I was 19, after we were three deals in, we signed a three-year personally guaranteed lease on an office and rent-in just went all in. Yeah, went all in. And then we had to figure it out at that point because we had some overhead. So we started filling that office with just buddies that wanted to try out real estate and do sales.

And we had like seven or eight guys in there eventually. We're doing random markets. We're doing deals in Spokane, St. Louis, Fresno, California, Sacramento, California, all over Washington. Weren't making a ton of money at the time because we weren't tracking anything. You weren't getting $105,000 hotel fees every other day? No, no, no, no. Most of them were 20, 25. We'd get up 60 here and there.

but with eight people on an office, it was just, it was chaos. I learned so much of that this first year after that, but it was absolute chaos. You mind if I jump this and take it a different direction we normally do? We always cover the big picture stuff, like how you did it, which we want to keep doing. I want to dive in for a second and have you talk a little bit about how you developed your cold call skills. It's not just a matter of I make 100 phone calls. I'm going to get X amount, right? It averages into that, but it's just like if I shoot 100 shots, if you suck at shooting, you're not making.

making as many, right? Like part of success is getting better at shooting because you shoot so much. So for people that want a cold call, what advice can you give that you learn about how to do it better, how to build rapport, how to recognize motivation, that type of stuff? Yeah, I think the tactical stuff with rapport motivation is huge. But I think before you get into that, it's sticking with it for a long enough time for it to pan out. To get good at it. Because no matter how good you got, you get good at it. Repor, no matter if you have the best script, best rapport, best everything, if you only do it for two months and you're like, oh, I'm going to go to the next shiny cool marketing thing that I heard on a podcast.

It's not going to work. So first to foremost, stick with it. But then, I mean, for us, it's really just having quality conversations. So many,

like we train our cold callers when they get on the phone with someone. When I was cold calling to really do the best they can to adapt to that culture and find out what the real reason those people are selling is. Because a lot of cold call centers and people who are cold calling to start, they don't care about the other person on the other than the phone. It's just that's a check. It's a dollar sign,

not a person. So they skip over a lot of deals that are there. Most people aren't going to come out and say, hey, my dad passed away, just inherited the house or whatever situation may be. So really not being in a rush to just get a quick number and move on. We really take the time to get to know every single person. It's harder at scale, but especially starting out, we really wanted to get to know every single person we were talking to without, you know, spending 30 minutes and wasting all of our time.

So what have you found has worked? I want to dive into cold calling a little bit. Absolutely. Yeah, what works, what doesn't work? Like how has it changed like over the last couple years or has it? Because yeah, like David said, it's not just the numbers game. You make 100 phone calls. You're going to get it.

There's things that you're doing right now that are better. So first, why we start with the who are you calling? Let's start there. Yeah. So right now, I'll kind of put that in two answers versus where we are now versus. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. So right now we call pretty much everyone.

Okay. And I'll pick up the phone book and just start dial. Pretty much. Pretty much we buy a whole county. Okay. And we call pretty much everyone. And you look for people like have equity. buy a list like equity or do you right now for how many leads we need right now we know okay you just call

yeah we just call yeah when we're getting started absolutely we go we niche down into you know absentee list and equity and you know higher equity longer ownership all that kind of stuff but i think the biggest thing with cold calling is uh it's a separate business than your real estate business yeah like whether you're doing yourself or you're having someone do it for you it's a whole another business we have to track kpi's on that business you have to look under the hood all the time making sure people are performing that they're being managed otherwise you're going to be throwing money in a garbage can uh So people look at it as just, oh, no, it's just my marketing, but no, it's really, it's a marketing business, especially if you're wholesaling or flipping going direct to seller.

Your marketing side of your business is a business. And your acquisitions, dispositions, your acquisitions is a business, it's a sales team. And your dispositions is a business in itself with networking and building a buyer's list. So, you know, that's such a good point to highlight when Brandon and I give webinars for bigger pockets. We have to talk about the lapse funnel, which is just, you know, four steps to getting something in contract. You've got leads, then you analyze them, then you pursue.

them, then you find success. Those first three steps, the L, the A and the P, actually involve completely different skill sets, completely different resources. You should look at each of those like they're a different business. How do I generate leads? Who analyzes them and how do they do it? And then what's our position when we're pursuing it? When someone looks at this like it's a job and they treat everything the same, they typically aren't going to be nearly as successful. I really like that you're highlighting. You really want to take this whole process, pick out the parts either that you're the best at that you want to learn or that you're the worst at that you want to leverage off find other people that are better at doing those things and view it

from that perspective is that similar to what you found as you're running your company absolutely yeah the biggest growth for us came and we when we really sectioned off every piece of our company and put a really good leader in charge of every single thing yeah and it was hard to let go of that because i naturally i feel like i can do everything better than everyone else so if it was up to me i'd still be cold calling and selling stuff and something to our buyers and so putting, like we have a, we have a manager of our coal callers who's really, really, we give him, we trust the guy, we love him, that's his section of the company. And yeah, from, from a bird's eye view, I'm always looking at numbers on that section, but besides that,

I don't get involved too much as long as we're meeting our numbers. Sales team, we have a sales manager who's my partner in the business, Mike, and that's his thing. It's like his baby, that section of the company. And then I'm on the, the dispositions system side. And that, when we got, when we were scrambled and everyone's kind of doing everything, it was chaos, weren't making money. But when I, stepped out, said, okay, how can I make everything kind of just funnel up to me at a bird's eye overview, but we have someone who cares about the business in charge of every little piece. That's when we really took off.

Brennan, I'm curious, did you have a similar experience with Open Door Capital, splitting things up like that? Yeah, I mean, exactly. I feel like that's everything that you just explained in the last five minutes. I want people to rewind this because that, like, that last five minutes might be the most important five minutes of any podcast we've ever done. And what I mean by that is like, for people who want to scale. Like, that is the key to scale.

is like you run your business like a business. You have your KPIs. You know what each person's doing. And even if it's at the beginning, it could be all you. Think like this is now I'm an acquisition person. Now I'm on disposition. Like think of business.

Then you can put people in there as you need to. And the great thing about real estate, especially things like wholesaling and flipping is that you make money back pretty quickly so that you can afford to hire people to this because like the business generates the money for these people. So in other words, like you became a leader. Like a word that I used a lot.

And we talked about this with my coach, Jason Jerez, when he was on the podcast back a few months ago. It's like, I had to use the word general in my head. Like, I'm a general in a war. Like, I'm not a cadet anymore. I'm not a lieutenant. I'm not down on the battlefield most of the time. Unless, like, they overrun the gates.

They're now in, like, my compound. Fine. I'm going to grab a gun. I'm going to go out there and shoot. Just like you, you look at the numbers at a high level. And if there was a problem with your, like, calls come in, I guarantee you jump in there and start figuring it out. Yeah.

And it's a hard. It's a hard balance to know when to jump in and when not to it. When I see stuff every day, it happens. I'm like, I want to, I can fix that right now. Yes. When we interviewed Jocko on the podcast and in his book Extreme Ownership, he talked about this lesson he learned where he was on a team of operators that were and they were infiltrating like a boat or something.

And they were all looking down the scopes of their guns looking for threats, which is what every one of us does when we're scared. We focus on what can hurt us. It makes sense. It's a survival situation, right? Yes, 100%. So they all get off the boat. They're all looking down their scopes.

They're looking for the enemy. He was a training exercise. And he realized that no one knew how to direct any of the people where to go. Because when you're just looking for a threat, you don't understand the big picture or how to maneuver yourself to be in a better position to even address that threat. And he took his eyes off of the scope. He took a couple steps backwards. So now he can see all the troops that are on the field.

They're looking for the threats. He's trusting them. And he recognized, oh, we're going the wrong way. We need half of you to go this way and half. And he makes the call, everyone moves into it. And it was a turning point in his life where he understood when you are. are doing the job. You can't do what he recognized, which was lead the people.

And what you're describing is every leader's problem is that they see somebody miss a shot and they go, oh, I better be the one to get in there and get behind the gun, right? We can't have those misses. And then you lose having an entire platoon of people that you're moving into another position. So I think you're right. There's that art of, can the business survive if we're fumbling the ball this often as people are learning, do I have to get in there and do it? But the ultimate goal is to get yourself in the position.

of general, just like Brandon said, because you see how all the pieces fit. You recognize the resources. Maybe I got to take this person out of dispositions and put him in acquisitions because he'll be better there. And for everyone who's going through that same struggle, it's normal. You're not bipolar. This is what all of us have to go through. It's really hard. But the longer you do it and the more steps of faith you take, it does get easier. Yeah, I think again, another way to summarize that is like, I heard it one time. As you get spread more and more thin, would you rather have, you at 40, 50, 60, 70% doing a task or because you're so spread then versus someone at 80%. They might not be able to do it as good as you. That's the only thing you're doing, but they're

going to do it. I think I actually heard that at the mastermind for the first time. Someone said that and that finally clicked because I was not doing any of this stuff then. I was like doing everything. That's the first time I clicked and then we did the VIFID Vision. I kind of saw my business for my business. I over you for the first time. And then it rolls into a whole other like that journey to be able to actually do that as a whole other piece. Yeah, that's cool. Yeah, what, what, What Cole's talking about here is we did a mastermind thing we called the Maui Mastermind Mataril and I led it about a year and a half ago now. And yeah, like everybody in that group is still like close with each other and friends.

It was a great, crazy good time. I've done a deal with or done a business transaction with like, probably 80% of the people from that. That's crazy. Yeah, it's just a good indication. I don't want to dive into that too deep here, but just like if you're not getting together, people are not getting together with people in their, in their world, you know, like in the real estate world, whether it's in your area or

whether you go to a go somewhere, go to a conference. And I know things have been difficult for the last year here, but just as, you know, we get back in the world again, just remember there's such value in that networking and connecting deeply with people. It was just phenomenal. So anyway, all right. So I want to go back to cold calling a little bit more here.

And let's talk when you're calling somebody, what do you say? Like what's the first? You got the list. They'll say you're going to call. Let's say they're just starting out, right? Yeah. Let's go. Let's go there.

Somebody's listening to this podcast. They've never done podcast. They've never done cold calling. What should they, What list should they target? Or what would you recommend their first steps for cold calling? Yeah. So if I was just today, if I was right now starting in real estate

and I was going to want to deal in the next couple months from cold calling, I would buy a higher equity absentee list for an area. Explain what that is. So an absentee, like most companies, you go online to list source or atom data, most companies online, they'll give you an absentee filter, which is someone that their mailing address is different than the property address. So fairly simple. And then you want to, they all have criteria.

So you want to, you know, stack equity. on top of that. So you don't want to be marking people with 10, 20, 30 percent equity. You might have really got seller financing and stuff, but just starting out wouldn't recommend it. So get a 40 to plus equity list. And you get a skip trace and you get phone numbers back. And then you want to keep it simple at first, especially as you're learning the business, you don't want to have too high level of conversations, the first couple calls because they're going to come out off of that. I think you don't know a ton of stuff. So keep it as simple as you can and leverage other people and real estate agents have questions come up through the process.

but the first call should pretty much be, hey, Mr. Seller, this is Cole. I always tell people if they're just starting themselves, reference another, say, hey, I work for a local company. So you don't come off of a, hey, I'm a CEO of a real estate company. Hey, this is Cole. I work for a local real estate investment company. You know, we just sold, we buy and sell properties and stay a all the time. We have some money set aside for another one this month.

Are you open to talking more about potentially selling that your property, blah, blah, blah. That does two things that it's a soft opening and it confirms. affirms the information that yeah they are john smith and they do own one two three main street and maui yeah it's really like i think people probably overcomplicate this a lot where yeah they're thinking like oh i don't i need my exact script i need to know exactly what words to say in the right order and like yes you should you should have a list of things you're trying to get across right but how important do you think like i mean like it'd be genuine i think it's such an important

thing because i've been cold called many times before and it like i can tell some people like reading off a script or you just completely impersonal. And other people are just like, hey, you know, like I got one another day from a KW, like Caler Williams agency. They want to like, hey, is this Brandon? I'm like, yeah, it is. I'm like, yeah, hey, this is, you know, whatever. I work with Callie Williams down here in Kihei.

We just sold the house like two blocks from yours. Got a really good price for it. Just curious if you wanted to sell it all, if you had any interest. And I was like, no, I really like my house right now, but thanks for call. I was like, this was such a nice, genuine person. And they probably had a script of some kind, but like she was a normal person and a normal conversation. Yeah, I think so much of it is how you position yourself and reference the seller.

So if you come in as super like, oh, I got to make 10 more cold calls today. Because I heard on the podcast, I'll make 100 this week. I might get a lead that might turn into a deal versus sitting down and wanting to have conversations with people. And like we're talking about making it complicated. I think it's hard not to do that when you get started out because part of your brain does not want a cold call. You're getting started out. So you find ways to, oh, I got to follow the script. It's so hard to follow.

Or they're going to say no or no one's answering. So those little things, I think, are huge to really sit down, take the time, care about who you're talking to. And, yeah, use a script, like the kind of what I just went through. Use something like that, but you don't have to go 100% off it every time. Yeah. Conversations are going to go where they go. Yeah, I didn't do a ton of cold calling ever because I'm not a big fan of the phone. But I would like, I would send out direct mail and I would take the phone calls, right? And when I did, I had a list, like, I had a piece of paper.

I kept with me everywhere I went when I was doing this more heavily. Everywhere I'd go, I'd have this piece of paper, a bunch of them in a stack. And it was just like all the questions I need to make sure I got. But it wasn't like a script like, like, hello, thank you so much for calling me today. It was just like, like, how long have you on the property? Line. And I would just like, pull out this piece of paper and I would just like, oh, the next one, I got to make sure I get that question.

When did you buy this property? And then I just find a way to like make it natural in that conversation. So I had a script, but it wasn't a script. Like I had a list, but it wasn't a script. Yeah. That seemed to work for me. Yeah, that's exactly what I would recommend. Have it.

It's my, I wouldn't call it a script, a guideline. Yeah, yeah. A framework maybe. framework of how to guide a conversation is what you're looking for. You're not looking for, you know, word for word. Otherwise, it gets robotic. Would you agree if somebody's new and they're just nervous as heck that actually having words they can read is a good way to break into it until you get a little more comfortable?

Yeah, absolutely. That and understanding that it's not going to suck the first few times you do it. Oh, yeah. So many people are like the thing. That was not what I thought it was. But like with anything, like the first time I was. And like last time I was in Maui is like, I suck at it. That's what I sell people.

And then you look around, people are like, everyone's laughing at me. I suck. I'm on the big surfboard because I'm not good enough. They're like a little surfboard. And like everyone goes through the same thing. The first time I called out like couldn't speak English. Like the same thing, the first time I spoke like on a podcast or I can talk. So it's the same thing.

It's gradually and improving and giving yourself the freedom to. That's, I think, what the secret is. If you walk in with low expectations, like I use a snowman. Like I use a snowboarding analogy. I don't know a human being that ever snowboarded and crushed it the minute they got on a board. It doesn't happen. They don't want to go back the next time after the first time.

Yeah. That was me. It was miserable. But the reason I eventually learned how to do it so-so was because I didn't want to waste that first experience of misery and say I got nothing out of it. It was so bad I was going to make sure I learned. But if you go in thinking I'm supposed to be good at it and then when you're not, you'll think this isn't for me as opposed to, well, everyone sucks at this.

It's impossible to be good at doing this without something. some practice. You have to get that feedback. Oh, that worked. That didn't work. When I changed my tone, I got more engagement. Brandon, do you mind if I read your quote that you have behind you? I think this is so good for the people. Going back here? Yes. For those that are that struggle with that feeling of like, I don't want to be laughed at because I was on the big surfboard. When you compare yourself to the surfers, it is embarrassing that you're on the big surfboard. What about when you compare yourself to the 99% of people that are on the beach watching? And they never even got in the ocean, right? So this quote was it Teddy Roosevelt? Yeah, I believe.

the credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who at best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement and who at worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither knew victory nor defeat. It's such a beautiful quote. I love that you put it up here. I love thinking that all the time because it highlights the big loss is that you never tried. It wasn't that you tried and fell off the surfboard or that you didn't get on the good surfboard.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think people getting started in real estate, other forms of entrepreneurship, they feel like there's no margin for error. We're like, I think the reason I've scaled and accelerated so quickly because I realized there's infinite margin of error. Like, I can make as many mistakes as I want. And what's the consequences? I just get a try. There's no one really keeping score. Like, what's the other word? It's like a spotlight effect. You think everyone's thinking about you all the time? But everyone's thinking about themselves. Oh, 100%. Yeah.

It's like no one cares. Acknowledging human narcissism is the best thing you can ever do for your business because they all care about themselves so much more than you. So that was the biggest thing for me is in sports help with that, realizing that there is infinite upside and doesn't matter how long it takes me to get there. I can fall and stumble all I want. Okay. There are two kinds of real estate investors, those who have reviewed their insurance,

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phone calls and then acquisitions and then dispositions. Let's hear a little about how you scaled that to what it is now. Yeah, so it was really, I had a lot of advice from people who had been in the business a long time. I didn't listen to any of it. They were all like, you know, more checks, it's not always better, you know, slow down a little bit. I was like, no, I'm going to keep hiring.

We're going to go to every market in the world. We're going to wholesale from Washington to Australia. And we had 10, 12 guys in the office and crazy overhead. We were spending 40 to 60 grand a month in marketing at one point across cold calling mail and everything. And we got to the point where I had a bad burnout a year and a half ago because I was like, I realized if I'm going to do all this work to bring home and bring it home, I might as just go get a job.

And at that point it clicked. I'm like, this is what everyone's been telling me. I just went to a mastermind and I was told this stuff and it's happening. And so from there, I'm like, okay, we're going to redo this. We're going to keep our fundamentals and our foundation, but build it up the right way because I always like the quote. I forget who is. It was talking about you can't build anything good on an unstable foundation. Our foundation, we had to go back down to the ground patch holes pretty much before I built back up. And that looked like pretty much clearing house. So we got

all the way down to me and my new business partner because me and my other business partner had separated. So we got back down to two people and we were still doing deals and making it happen. And then the right way putting KPIs in place, making sure that we were actually taking home money the month and then somewhat enjoying what we were doing, we started putting the pieces back together really, really slowly and carefully. So then now what our operation looks like now is we have a sales manager. We have a marketing management team. We have me. I still run dispositions. I love doing it and like having a challenge, something to wake up and do. And then a transaction manager. So it's really simplified. Like I was talking about before, we have everything segmented.

Yeah. You got your lie lie lie lieutenants in place. Yes, versus before it was 12 guys in an office running. It was like a frat house. Yeah. Real estate frat house is what it was. We literally had, something called wine Wednesday where people would bring bottles of wine and then on Wednesday mornings. Yeah. Yeah. And it was a mess. But through that learned in my life is like, it's like day. I'm glad I went through that because I know like I'm never going that direction. Yeah. But that's the pivot, right? You, you would never would have got to the point where you recognize I need to rebuild if you wouldn't have started building. Yeah. And it's very similar for me, 2020 was that year for me where I had to go back. And I had to say, okay, the way I'm doing this is not going to get me where I want.

It will get me forward, but not at the pace or the life that I want to have. Can you share a little bit about what that experience was like? Because it takes some faith. When you step away from knowing I can take the shot to I got to trust other people to. You're probably making less money when you stop pushing forward and go back to rebuild it so that you can make more money later. And that's always scary because you don't know if it's going to work. I think what did it for me is I was seeing so many like my personal problems become business problems. Like the stuff was happening in my business was when I sat back and reflected, it was the same problems I was having.

in my personal life with, you know, not trusting people, not letting one let go of anything or have hard conversations. So I realized that I can fix this both places at the same time. So it really came with just absolute trust and willing to accept the consequences of that and learn from it. So before my previous partnership, we'd be micromanaging each other. Like, hey, you left the office at 350 today. I was here until 5.30.

All that kind of stuff. Versus now it's he's responsible. He was responsible for. We talk and we check in with each other. but it's that absolute almost not blind trust because we have stuff, KPI's we look at and stuff, but trust enough where I think you have my best interest, I have your best interest,

and then learning from mistakes through that process. That's the biggest thing. Do you have a system in place for having those difficult conversations? So we talk once a week, like we have a scheduled time for an hour, we sit down and we just, everything that's on our mind because I think the biggest thing that's hurt me in the past is business, business partnerships

is letting stuff brew underneath the surface for weeks and months where like little things. And I was doing the same thing in my, personal life with family and friends. And so instead of that, putting in guidelines in place to, hey, when something comes up, let's talk about it on Monday morning, whatever it is so that it doesn't brew. And I found that when I'm getting all that stuff out, I'm so much more productive too. Can I actually ask David a question here? Like, David, you do something because on that point, it's so good, like not letting yourself brew and doing it. Now, David, you do something I've never

known anybody else do is you have a performance coach every single week, meet with your real estate team. Can you just like, that's right, right? And you're like, yeah, and that's what's so impressive about the fact you figured this out at 22. I'm a little jealous because at 22, I was nowhere close to being able to do any of this. But what we realize is those difficult conversations have to happen. Otherwise, resentment forms. And we were basically like being poisoned by different people on the team having resentment for different reasons. Not only do they have to happen.

You have to have like a GPS check in, right? Like you can be going the wrong way. And if you don't meet with everybody, that's when you, you get signal again and your GPS says, oh, you missed that turn. You got to go back around. You can go six months the wrong direction if you don't ever have these check-in. So we sort of combined it all together where once a week, my real estate team, my mortgage team, and my operations team, I do three of these meetings, all get on a Zoom call with our performance coach, who's basically there, he's a psychologist to mediate that so that it doesn't get out of hand.

People don't take, don't get nasty. They can't take it personal. It's kind of like a relationship counselor for the business. Like if you and Heather go to a relationship counselor to discuss your marriage, you're not screaming at each other and bringing up hurtful things when there's a third party right there that's going to call you out on it. And that has been tremendous. It is expensive. That's what everyone says is how could you possibly pay that much money? It's another one of those steps of faith. I know if we meet weekly, we discuss what's causing the resentment. We bring it to the surface. So it's not me versus them. It's really everybody on the team is all in agreement. We're committing to this is what we're going to do. Then it will.

turn into more revenue later. And I think that's part of why we've had so much growth. It's I would never, ever, ever try to run a business without that method. So it's sort of like, you know, you mentioned your business problems and your personal problems were similar. That's what I was about to ask you, do you have a coach? Because they're so good with this. I have a lot of, that's, that's another thing that I was, I wanted to talk about is how many people I've surrounded myself with that I would call mentors and coaches in some way. That's been the biggest reason that I am where I am. Like, and a lot of, the hard thing about that I didn't hire a coach at first like when I got into real estate and

have a performance coach or I didn't have a business coach but I did have people in real estate that I'm in around for a while that I had added enough value to where it developed into a friendship and a mentorship where I could pretty much take any situation and call them any time a day and say here's what's going on and it just accelerated me night and day now where I'm right now I do have a business coach and a personal coach I have like three or four coaches that I pay just because I found every time I do that and I commit more money to myself and I I never regret it. And it's, yeah, and that's where I actually learned about that whole meet once a week,

get everything off. From your coach? Yeah, it wasn't, it wasn't like a randomly one night where I was like, oh, I think a weekly meeting. I can't take, I can't take credit for that. But another thing it's done is we also have amazing ideas that come out of those sessions that we wouldn't have had because when we're laying all of our issues on the table at the same time. Yeah. And seeing all that, and we put our brains together, we can plug holes faster and it's a pretty

cool thing to see. That's cool. So how many hours a week you work right now? Do you say? Oh, man. This week in Maui. Bad example. Probably 10 to 20 active, like focused hours on the computer.

I mean, the rest is phone calls and emails and where I'm needed. But I like, because I switched to more. I read the book, Deep Work. Oh, yeah, yeah. And I kind of switched that model. I sit down in the morning and I give myself my three or five big things, two to three hours. I lock in, try to put my phone away, sit there, knock everything out.

And then because I was bad when I first got started to work. just because I felt good to work and I felt like I was in motion, but unlearning that and really sitting down, getting my work done, and then trying to enjoy my life. And that's another big thing is, what do I fill my free time with? It's been a challenge too. But yeah, so about, I'd say 20 to 30 hours a week of. That's cool. And you moved, right? Yeah, so September, kind of mid-COVID, everything, I was just, I was drained. And so, yeah, I moved to San Diego, a couple of buddies. Yeah, that's cool. But you're still doing all the work up in Seattle. Yeah. So, yeah. the office. I'm still up there. I'm out. I try to be up, I'm trying to be up there a week or two a month.

Okay. And make sure we're rolling. But it's been awesome. I've learned so much just being away from the business and seeing that's the ultimate letting go of the vine as being in the state. And so yeah. I know, David, you're doing the same thing right now where you like you came to Hawaii for like an extended period of time. Yeah. Like you're forcing yourself to figure out how do I make this business of business and not just dependent upon myself? Like what have you learned about that so far? Well, what I learned is that it, my goal is to stay away until something breaks. And then look and see why did that break? Not to the point that the whole thing could collapse, right?

But that's kind of how you figure out where you've been cheating, where you're supposed to be the general, but you're actually in the field a little bit too much. When you take yourself out of it and like, let's, you know, say that you've been putting more houses under contract than you probably should be. Your acquisition manager should have stronger skills when it comes to closing. But you step in and you see what things seems to you like the last one little percent, a couple phone calls. And then you stop having them and you guys go.

front like 30% of what you were doing. And you think, holy cow, how are we missing this much? You now immediately know my acquisition manager needs either more training or more accountability or more oversight or more skill, something so that they can get up there. A lot of the time what I found was that when my presence was there, I have somewhat of a strong presence. The agents on my team thought, oh, David will handle it. He'll take the shot.

He'll do it. When I walked away, they didn't have the confidence to actually go in there and get it done. They knew what to do. They knew how to do it, but they didn't have the confidence. and I had to step away for them to face that fear. Okay, I got to be the man or the woman. I got to get in here and do this. So like Brandon, what you mentioned was really smart.

When you're in a business and you want to see what needs to be improved, step away, see where the water starts coming in. That's where your leak is. Yeah, I couldn't really describe what I've been doing. But you kind of describe what I've been doing in a kind of an unconscious way of just, yeah, what's been breaking. I fly back up there. I try to put it back together.

Plug the leak. Put it back together better or try to. And then fly back to. to San Diego, it happens again. Yeah, that's a great way to put that. Yeah, I just can't believe you're doing this at 22 years old. I mean, have you been thinking that too as we're listening to this guy's story? Yeah, a little bit. Yeah. Like, yeah. It comes with the like the mentors and coaches. It's just the I love action. Like coming from sports, I just love to be in motion action. I love to have something to do every day with like I'm moving forward. I have this thing.

I always feel like I have to earn my free time and stuff. So I just love pushing the ball forward in some way. Well, what it just shows to me is like, it shows us if you want to be successful, anybody wants to be successful in any way, like there are a series of things that they can do that are very tangible. And you can find that out by talking, like you talk to these people. You talk to Tarle Yarborough, you talk to Elliot Smith. You're like, what are you guys doing? Like you learn from these guys.

You attend mastermind meetups. You hang, like, you learn. And you're like, okay, I'm just going to put that in the practice. And then it works. So I say this on the show a lot. Like, you should work so that success is not a surprise. Right? Like nobody with a six pack ever woke up and goes,

I got a six-pack. What? Like, nobody does that, right? Like, nobody says, like, I just read a triathlon. And how did I do? Like, you know, I did the Iron Man or the Half Iron Man right last year. Like, I, like, I was not surprised that I finished. And, like, I didn't do well.

I wasn't surprised I didn't do well. I mean, I didn't do bad. But, like, I did exactly how I thought I would do because I did the level of work that would get me to exactly the level of spot that I got. And so, like, it's not a surprise that you are where you are today at all because you did exactly what a person should do to be able to get in that spot. And so people are listening to this. It's really a fairly simple thing.

Go find people who are already doing what you're doing or what you want to do. Find the people who are already doing what you want to do. Ask them, like, what is it you do every day? Like what's the key there? And then do it. And the great thing is you don't have to ask them. You can listen to podcasts like this. Like everybody listening right now, a couple hundred thousand people can literally go do

exactly what you did because you just shared everything that you did to get there. And I'm sure there's more than that. And they can get deeper and they get to know you. but like success is not super complicated. So one more question I have kind of before, you know, we start moving towards the famous four. And I know David, you had one more you wanted to ask too in there.

But I'm curious, like I know you added flipping to your business now. You start with wholesaling. I'm wondering like, why did you do that? And how is that been? Like where do you see yourself headed with that? Yeah.

So we started flipping a couple months ago, mainly because we kind of felt like we hit a plateau and want to challenge ourselves again. We thought that would help not only create more revenue with flipping but also help our main business because we service investors who are flipping. So you get to know that world a little better, we feel like we could package up deals way better on the front end. And then a lot of it was just the challenge of learning something new, building new relationships

in that field and having a whole other, I mean, we want to grow. Yeah. So that felt like a natural thing to grow into. And a lot of people do it in reverse. They go flipping, oh, flipping so hard it sucks. That's wholesale. But for us, we feel like we're connected enough. We have good enough relationships with people where we can make it happen and do it the right way.

So big key that was just wanted to challenge. That's cool. I love that you said like you're looking for a little bit more of a challenge there. I feel like that's such a sign of a strong team as well. Not that you get like bored necessarily of what the business is because like business is getting really good at stuff. But you added another basically lane to your bridge. Like you built the bridge. It was working.

You have people now working the bridge for you so you can relax a little bit more. You're like, how do we make this bridge stronger? How do we make this better? How do we get more cars across this bridge? You add in a lane. You didn't go and start a, you know, like a wooden sunglasses business, right? But you started thinking, my open door capital, we're this year, where we've been having a lot of investors ask us this question about why aren't we getting into apartments and we've been

to ask ourselves, should we add those on? So this year we're actually going to add on apartments. I add another bridge because not that we're bored of mobile home parks. I love mobile home parks and we're going to still do them, but I'm like, I want to add another lane to that to be stronger so we can do more deals, get more investors in and start a bigger fund. So like for the exact same reason, it's like, I love that, and I love the challenge of going something a little bit new. So you and I are in the same high. And we only did it once we had our

foundation really set. Yeah, exactly. That's the key, right? That's the key is not building the bridge before you have the foundation set. That's huge. Yeah. So it's been, uh, now that we have something that pays the bills and keeps a successful business now, we can kind of veer off a little bit. But I'm glad we waited as long as we did for that. Yeah. That's cool. So what kind of where are you, where are you flipping it? Mainly just King County. Okay. Okay. Pierce County a little bit too, which is a little more south, but we're trying to stay local, just because that's where our relationships are. I lean a lot on people like James Dainer,

who's been on this podcast before. It's awesome. Who helps us a lot. And it just makes it, I don't want to veer out too much where we're doing stuff that's, we're pulling permits and everything. We do like carpet paint, appliances, put on the market,

in and out kind of stuff. And you're getting all that stuff off market? You get anything on market? I've never done a deal off the NOS in my life. Really? Wow. Out of the almost 200 transactions I've been a part of, not one of them's been an MLS deal.

Wow, that's cool. It's because you got really, really good at doing off market. There's better deals off market if you're willing to put in the work to get there. Yeah, you can pretty much write yourself a check because whatever you can negotiate and put together is paying yourself. That's awesome, man.

All right, David, any of you that question? Yeah, before we do, I want to highlight your bridge analogy just for the people that are hearing this that are trying to figure out what we mean. Because I don't know if there's a better way of understanding what we're talking about when we're describing building a funnel or a business to run leads through. You have to look at every deal you close and sell

like a car or a truck that was carrying goods that got from one location to another. And the more trucks you can get from one place to the other, the more money you can make. When we first start off, we're putting them on this bumpy dirt road. We've never done this before.

We suck at it. We're getting halfway there and then we get a flat tire. The shocks break. You didn't put enough gas in. Every mistake you can imagine stops these and you barely get anything across just to be somewhat profitable.

And then the more times you do it, the better you get at maybe driving. or anticipating what route to take them on. At a certain point, you pave that road and cars, the deals can flow very much, like, more simply. What Brandon is describing what you're talking about is once you've got that bridge built that the cars and trucks can travel on, you start adding extra lanes, which are extra components to that business, the wholesale component, the flipping component, the retail sale

component, maybe selling some of the services you put together to other people, a property management component. That's what it feels like when you're building a business. business is you are trying to create an infrastructure that you can move deals up and down. And at a certain point, when they can go 65 miles an hour and just shoot right through, you've got this passive business that then you can stop or you can take your bridge, skilling abilities that you learn and go build another bridge somewhere and do another thing, which is what most entrepreneurs do.

So thank you for, you know, kind of highlighting that that's the same thing that you're doing at, again, 22 years old. Yeah, yeah. All my spinoff businesses have come from not even on purpose, just so we have, we have this thing. We're using the other things to help that. Yep. Other people need that too.

That's exactly right. So you guys have a cold calling thing, right? The cold calling. Yeah, that's exactly how that happened. I started that internally because we needed good eight sales guys. We needed a lot of leads. So then buddy was like, hey, can I use that? And then it just kind of, it was a natural thing of this works for us.

Other people need the same thing. Here you go, but it wasn't a purposeful. Oh, I'm going to go out and start this really cool call center. Yeah, you built it out of need. And you're like, yeah, like I'm going to, now other people are going to use it. Great. like you leaned into it. It's a very lean startup way to build a business.

It's the best time. Yeah. It's exactly right. Same thing I'm trying to do. You just got like a 16 year head start on me, dude. It's very impressive. All right.

So my last. It's longer than you though. I don't know about that bad. I think I damaged my body quite a bit trying to figure out how to do all this stuff that you've learned it, you know, going to brand his mastermind at 21 years old. My last question for you is there's clearly something special about you

that's different than other people where you discuss this. It's a smile. It's really nice. Yeah, I would agree with that in your eyes. They're very hypnotic. I find myself staring you for getting what I was trying to say. You make it sound so simple to do what we're doing. In fact, you show, maybe I should re-say that, you reveal how simple it is when you get

out of the obstacles that talk yourself out of it. To close, can you share a little bit about how you develop this mindset, what you do differently than other people so that others that want to follow this path can have an easier journey. Yeah, I think the biggest thing is most people operate like out of a model that's 99% information, 1% action. So they're gathering information all the time, but barely taking action on any of that information. So I don't feel like you accelerate as quick that way. For me, I'm always learning. I'd say more like 70, 30, 30% action, 30% information. So I'm always learning new things, but I'm taking really precise, deep action on everything I learned. So like an example

of that, it was cold calling. When I first started the cold calling side of my business, all I did was cold calling. I learned about cold calling, implemented what I knew about that, stuck with that for a long time, took extreme action on that instead of learning six different marketing channels and doing 10% on each one. So I think I've taken that replicated across everything I've done. I think that's what's allowed me combined with the not really caring if I fail. And I don't know, I haven't pinpointed where that's come from, to be honest with you. I think sports helped a lot with that. But I don't know exactly where that never thinking about failing came from, like just not being a thing to me.

A lot of this probably how I was raised and it was never like, you got to meet this grade, you got to do this. could have graduated high school and been like, oh, I'm going to, I'm going to Africa to be a safari guide for the next 10 years. It would have been awesome. So I think a lot of it came from that, but I haven't nailed that down, but that combined with just going deep and showing up every single day with persistent and consistent action and the pursuit of my potential is like what it comes down to that. I want to find out what I can do, what that bar is. That's cool, man. I love, I love to hear that. I think that it's, I think, again, if you can, if you can get the mindset of somebody successful, and then just do what they're doing.

Like, it's almost impossible not to achieve that level of success. It's actually given over the long haul. Yeah, you might encounter a, like, oh, the market crashed or whatever. There's always a reason. Maybe somebody holds back temporarily, but long term, like five, 10, 15 years from now. Like, I don't understand how anybody that listens to this podcast is not going to be a multimillionaire in the next, like, five or ten years. Like, everybody, if they just put into action this stuff, the mindset and the tactics, like it's, it's there for the taking. Yeah, it's so fun about real.

state in entrepreneurship and all this. It's like it's just there. Like the it's not just what you were given. It's like we can take whatever we want. You can have whatever you want the kind of left that you want to lead if you just are willing to put in the work needed to do it. And like the stuff that we've learned from you today is it doesn't even mean it's like a hundred hours of work. You know, maybe there's times in your life we have to really power through. Right. But you like you put people in charge of different things. You scale up and you bring people in. You become a good manager and you get the higher dollar per hour skills and do that. I think one of the biggest lies that stops a lot of people that in our culture is of the, you know, work 100 hour weeks.

I don't think you don't have to do that to be successful. There's ways to put stuff together with other people that it doesn't have to look like that. So, yeah. Yeah. And that's where I think like things like performance coaching come in so handy where, you know, like Dan Sullivan, you know, like the strategic coach that we had on, like what had said, his like company like slogan of their mission or their goal is like that you, I think it was double your triple your revenue was it and then half the amount of time you work

or something like that. Like their goal for everybody that bring in their company is like, we're going to make you work half as much and you're going to make two or three times more money like minimum that's like their baseline that's a they just worked again and it might sound crazy people listening but like I would almost say that's like way undershooting like I feel like if I had a performance coaching business I'd be like our goals have you work four hours a week like we believe everybody can work four to 10 hours if they want if you want to now you not what else would we do with our time so we all work more than four hours but like I want every person to be like to get to that level where they can take a week off

take a month off, go travel to Hawaii for three months because they want to go hang out, go to Europe without a cell phone for a month. You know, I want people to get to that level. So when they come back or spend time with their kids, it has to be travel. Could be spent time with kids. When they come back, they can like do what they love to do and invest them and be holy in it. So anyway, dude, this has been amazing. We got to wrap this up in a few.

But first, let's get today's famous four. All right, let's get to the famous four. Question number one. These are the same four questions. We ask every guest every week. So I'm sure you know what's coming. But number one. Favorite or I like to say favorite.

I need to rephrase this question, but basically favorite real estate investing book or a book that's made the biggest impact on your real estate. For me, it's the book called Flip by Nick Ruiz. He's a fixed-a-flip guy out of Wisconsin. And that was the book I read when I was first getting into wholesaling. It's a really basic level bird's eye view into real estate, but it made it click in my head, like what I was doing, my path,

where I could take it. So for me, that was business-wise, that's been my, I still reread that book. So it's the biggest impact on me. Yeah. Awesome. All right. Okay, favorite business related book?

It has to be traction. I was given that book. I was going to ask what you used for your operating system. Yeah, I was given that book. I have not been that good about following all that stuff, but I was given that book about two years ago. And I'm decent at falling a lot of it, like a lot of the meeting stuff, the level 10 stuff.

We do a lot of that. But I don't mean. I would highly recommend because we just did it open or capital. It's bringing a consultant. Like, it's not super cheap. Like it's thousands of dollars to have a, but it's so, like, because like I feel like we were operating at like 85% traction, like tractionable.

Like we were doing like 85% of the work there. And it was fine. Like we're good. But that, that, now we're at like 98% I feel like we're like. And it's that little bit dialed like I probably cut five hours a week, 10 hours a week out of my own like work just by bringing that consultant. Because all of a sudden like, it just like fine tuning all these little things. And when you're operating at a business size at a pretty high level, it's, it's, it's,

so good. So I'd highly recommend that. Bring in some consultant. Yeah, we need to take it up a notch with that stuff. Yeah. We're probably at 50% right now. Yeah. Which is better than, I mean, than 99% of businesses out there. I don't know how to run any of it. But it still open my eyes to that direction. Yeah. Yeah. Cool, man. All right. All right. When you're not crushing in a business, what are some of your hobbies? When I'm not crushing in a business, I'm skiing or I'm playing basketball or I'm working out. I'm on the beach. I love to travel. So I'm all over the place with that, but during the winter, you can find me on a mountain. Absolutely, I'm skiing summer.

I'm on a boat or I'm playing basketball. I want to know, this is the three and a half question. If you and David Green here were competing against one another in a game of one-on-one basketball, who wins? I'm going with me for sure. You think so? You can dominate the huge? David's pretty good.

I would say you would probably be me one-on-one. I'll just give you that. But if we put us on a team, we will. destroy you. I had a basketball hoop in the backyard. I don't have any more. So me and David against you, who wins that one? You still win. I'm still probably doing. All right. I don't know. I can't. I put a lot of work. All right. Yeah, yeah. You should claim that. I like, I like the confidence. That's great. All right. Last question for me. What separates successful real estate investors from all those who give up, fail, or never get started? Yeah, I think it really comes down to staying in the game long

enough or something to shake out. I think if you really want to be in real estate and make it work and you're showing up every single day with like we're talking about persistent, consistent action, it is something is going to happen. Something is going to happen. So I think the main thing that separates people. Yeah, there's there's mindsets behind that. There's tangible things you can do. But if you're in the game long enough, whether you're an agent or you're trying to flip or do development or you're doing buying whole stuff, something is going to happen if you're in the game long enough. So I think that is the biggest thing. All right. Very cool. All right. Last question of the day. Where can people find?

out more about you. I'm most active on Instagram. It's at Cole Rood Johnson, RUUD. That's how you spell that, not red. So yeah, it's I answer everything on there. I'm not great about Facebook or anything else. So that's where I spend most of my time. What's your side business is give them a plug in the cold calling stuff and everything else? Yeah. So we have call magic leads and I'm part of a couple of good buddies on. We are a full service call center for investors and agents. So we provide really good lead flow for that. And that was out of I took it out of my internal business and we made it something awesome that other people can use. And then besides that website for that, callmagicweeds.com.

Yeah, perfect. Yep, submit a form. It's super easy. Yeah. Very cool. All right. Good deal, man. Thanks. It's awesome.

It's been amazing. It's fun. It's fun. It's been a long time coming ever since you were here in Maui last time. I was like, we've got to get this guy on the podcast. I'm glad we did it in Maui. This was much better doing it in person. I like doing these in-person seashed.

Awesome. All right. Well, David, you want to get us out of here? Thanks, man. This has been great. Thanks for having me on. David Green for Brandon. It's Roof Not Rough.

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 hype, you're in the right place. Be sure to join the millions of others

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