BiggerPockets Real Estate Podcast - 469: Why Do Investors Lie to Themselves? +More Audience Q&A (Part 2)
Episode Date: May 16, 2021We interview a lot of great guests on our Sunday episodes of the BiggerPockets Real Estate podcast, but we rarely hear from agents, investors, and BiggerPockets listeners who are in an early stage o...f real estate success. Both Brandon and David know what it’s like to be grinding, day in and day out, to get your real estate business off the ground. That’s why they’re here today to answer questions from live listeners about mindset, mentality, and growth. We talk to Brody, Joseph, Wale, and Mike, all in different stages of their real estate journey, and all very committed to success! You’ll hear questions like: If given the chance to go back, what would Brandon and David do differently? What deserves more emphasis, mindset or skill set? Is it okay to explore different opportunities at an early stage of investing? How to find balance when SO many opportunities are exciting? How do you make time for family, a job, side businesses, and real estate? Why do investors lie to themselves? Thanks again to our guests for coming on and throwing such great questions at Brandon and David! In This Episode We Cover: Leaving your W2 job to pursue real estate and other opportunities How to harness your mindset to grow your specific skill set The power of house hacking, and how it pushes your portfolio forward Scaling bigger and faster (even if it’s scary) Developing the ability to adapt, so you can survive any situation How to stop making promises that you’ll fail to uphold And So Much More! Links from the Show BiggerPockets Forums BiggerPockets Pro Membership BiggerPockets Youtube Channel BiggerPockets Podcast 209: Flipping 83 Homes in the Last 18 Months with Kevin Carroll Gobundance Getting Started with Real Estate Investing: An Interview with My Real Estate Mentor Click here to check the full show notes: https://www.biggerpockets.com/show469 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Transcript
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This is the Bigger Pockets podcast show 4669.
I cannot tell you how many people say, yeah, I really want a house hack, but what if I don't like it?
What if I don't like having roommates or what if I get cramped up living in a small house and I want a big one?
And then move out, move back into where you were.
Go get another apartment.
There's not a law that forces you to live in a house that you don't like.
It's such a small percentage of the time you're not happy.
But if you're not happy, it's such an easy solution.
Go back to what you did before.
and now you have a house and rent out where you were going to be living.
Thank you for just pointing out that so many of these things are easily reversible.
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.
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What's going on everyone?
our host of the Bigger Pockets podcast here for a part two, a sequel episode with my co-host,
my host, my fellow host, David, not as beardy as beardy Brandon.
Thank you.
It's trimmed up.
I have to take a new headshot today.
There's an appointment scheduled because I've been using the same headshot from when I didn't
have a beard for a long time and I'm taking some plaque for that.
That's why you're wearing your handsome shirt also.
I get it.
That's funny that you said handsome shirt.
That was an inside joke with Brandon I where he had one thing that wasn't a t-shirt and
he would wear it whenever we had a dinner.
Yeah, I went to a dinner. Yeah, I went to a Kiaviyah outdoor dinner.
Kiavado is like my buddy Yeshua. He runs this big company called Kiaviao Door, a little small company.
But they do like this fancy dinners, like fine dining on the side of a mountain. We call it fine dining in a field.
Anyway, I went to a fancy dinner with Ryan Murdoch.
So you wear your handsom shirt to dinner with a bunch of dudes.
I wore my handsome shirt to a dinner. Yes. I felt very handsome. It was great.
Anyway, it was a good time. So on with today's show. Today's episode is a follow up from last week, last Thursday.
Thursday's episode, which is a Q&A episode. So David and I just answer a bunch of questions.
So we're going to jump into it pretty quickly here. Before we do, let's get to today's quick tip.
Quickest tip of all time. Go listen to the Thursday's episode. You don't have to do it first. It doesn't
matter which order you listen to these episodes, but there's a lot of really good questions on there as well.
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want to say before we jump into things, David Green. Yeah, I noticed on your Instagram, you got a little
new thing going on. You have like a behind the beard text newsletter. Is that right? I do have a text letter.
I think I made that word up. I've never heard it before. That's why I'm asking you. I don't know
what that means. I'm thinking I made it up. You need it. That means you haven't signed up for it yet.
So if it's, it's like a newsletter except for it's via text message. So people get a text message from me
once a week. Anyway, I just wanted a place to connect with people outside of like the normal like
podcast channel. So that's what it is. If I sign up for this, what kind of.
of information will I be getting?
Oh, look at you. You're letting me plug. This is amazing. You know what? You know you have a good
friend when they let you plug on a podcast. You get an weekly email from me that says like one thing
that I've learned this week, one thing that I've read this week, like a book that I'm reading,
something that I photographed, something I'm excited about and then a few other things in there.
So anyway, if you want to check that out, just beardybrandin.com. Beard with a Y, beardybrandin.com.
So I get free access into what's going on into one of my role models lives and we're going to call that a plus.
I don't think so. I don't think you're charging for this, right? I'm not charging. No. I'm going to sign up. Let's see what you got.
All right. Yeah. Go sign up. Check it out. I put random photos and books and stuff I bought. Yeah, well, stuff I bought. That's always fun. With that said.
This sounds like a Pinterest for Brandon Turner. Is that what this is? This is basically a Pinterest. No, this is me like borrowing Tim Ferriss's five bullet Fridays and just making a text message version. And it's my own version now. So that's my evil plan. So, all right. Well, with that,
As said, let's get to today's show. I, Brody, welcome to the call, man. How you doing?
I'm doing great. How are you? In the words of Dave Ramsey, better than I deserve.
I'm going to be doing that all day today. It would be great. Tell us about yourself. What's your story?
I am. I like to call myself a real estate investor. So I'm 28 years old, I'm 29 next week.
But I have currently 16 units, probably nine or so different properties. So a lot of single family
houses and then I have another 26 that are being built slash under contact right now.
So one of all I'm excited about it's actually a tiny home resort like in a in a snowboard resort
town.
So I'm super pumped about that.
That'll be done this summer.
And another one is an apartment complex with 16 units.
It's like student housing.
So that's awesome.
That's awesome.
So looking to like triple my my portfolio in the next, you know, eight or nine months.
So why triple it?
Why not 10x it?
that's a good point grant cardone for me it's been good because i feel like i started out slow and then
it started to pick up pace pick up pace pick up pace probably for a lot of a lot of people out there
but um on that note my my main question for you got two questions but the first one is if you guys
could go back and do it all over again what would you do differently and in what ways would you
scale faster and think bigger maybe yeah david you want to start
Oh, that's such a good question.
It's also painful because I don't like thinking about how much money I've lost doing things the wrong way.
So I didn't listen to the podcast.
I house hacked for five, six years in a row, but I was on the wrong side of it.
I was renting a room from somebody else where I could have been buying houses.
That's one of the first things I would have done is I would have owned the property and rented rooms out to others.
I think that for my entire investing life until maybe a couple years ago, my default was prepare for what could go wrong.
defend, defend, defend, don't lose what you have, which is not wrong, but I did at the expense
of growing. What I should have said is I'm going to make moves. I'm going to take territory. I'm
going to expand and I'm going to do it in a way with a plan to defend if I have to. I was so
into defense that I just didn't make moves. That's the thing that I regret quite a bit. If I would
have just bought one house every year, just one stinking single family home and then rented out
the rooms or bought a house that I could house hack or whatever over a 10, 15 year period.
We're talking about millions of dollars that I didn't do in the California market.
I was buying out of state.
I was buying in other areas, but what we've seen happen in California, one property could
dwarf 10 properties somewhere else.
So I would have basically what I'm saying is I would have been aggressively safe.
I would have aggressively expanded and done it in a way that was living within my means.
And just trusted what I know in my mind.
Real estate appreciates.
Real estate is a safe investment instead of the worst case scenario that was always
pop it up in my heart.
Well, all right. I'm going to follow that one, I guess. All right. So what I would do differently,
a couple of thoughts. Similar to David, I would have grown faster. I lived a long time in my comfort
zone where I was buying a duplex, buying a triplex, buying a single family, flip in a house,
buying a duplex, buy a single family home. And for five, six years, I did that.
And then I bought an apartment complex, which, like, you know, helped me scale. And then I
stayed there for like five years. What I would have probably done is tried to scale a little
faster. Now, granted, there's the whole, like, you know, if I would have done that, maybe I wouldn't
be where I am today and I'm happy where I am. So, but having done it again or giving advice to other
people, yeah, I'd say I'd probably would have scaled faster and not lived in so much fear.
I'm a big believer. And I talk about this a lot here on the podcast and other places that, like,
the mindset that we operate from, like my coach Jason Drees, he's always telling me about like,
you have like level one mindset, level two, level 10, level 20, level 30, right? And the level
mindset that we have dictates kind of the actions we take. This is why some guys,
like, you know, like, we'll come on the podcast and they're like, yeah, the first house I did was like, you know, last year and now I own 100 houses.
And you're like, how did you do that?
It's like they just had a level 100 mindset or whatever that takes, right?
Which obviously you have as well because you've scaled up pretty, pretty fantastically yourself.
So I would have worked on that.
Do you feel like you can scale too fast?
Yeah, I definitely do.
Because here's a thing.
Like if you're going like, okay, we had a guy in the podcast years ago named Kevin Carroll.
Kevin's first year, David, you know Kevin.
Actually, Kevin's one.
I think that introduced me to David.
or not directly.
Anyway, somehow he was involved in that with the Go Abundance organization.
But anyway, Kevin, like his first year, flipped 100 houses.
And when we asked him why, he was like, well, I didn't know that wasn't what will you do.
Like all his friends were flipping 100 houses a year, like all his community, the people around him.
So he just thought that's where you start was like 100 houses.
You just go flip them because he adopted the mindset from other people around him.
So I think that's the way you skip.
You level jump, right?
Like Super Mario Brothers, you jump from level one to level three, then from level three to level eight.
and then you go through level eight and you win and defeat Bowser for the princess, right?
The way you jump levels, I think, is by getting around people who have that different mindset or by partnering with them.
So when I did Open Door Capital, I jumped from level, you know, whatever, 10 to level 50.
That's because I surrounded myself with guys like Brian Murray, who already had 2,000 units of his own.
And so then it wasn't like a weird thing for me to go and buy, you know, in the last year we bought 2,000 units.
So I could not have done that on myself and I should not have done that by myself because I didn't have the mindset.
I didn't have the network.
I didn't have those things.
So that's my answer.
I love that.
I love that.
That leaves my second question,
which is how much of the success that you,
I mean,
you both see today,
like life,
real estate,
business,
all of it comes down to mindset versus skill set.
And then how do you build that?
I had to have actually cleverly worded.
Brandon,
did you note that mindset versus skill set?
Yeah,
that was well done.
That sounds like a book title to me by Brody,
eventually.
Brody,
make sure you trademark that.
because trademark done well it's funny it led into it naturally so yeah i didn't even know that
question was coming so um yeah yeah so the the question was again like how much was mindset versus
skill set i i think 90% of it is mindset um i think that skill set follows mindset uh i don't think
you can do it without both right i think both are required but yeah uh i had that a conversation with
drew drew is my uh he was my intern now he's kind of my assistant sort of like out here in hawai
lives here, does a lot of stuff for me.
And he's going to him.
He's going back home.
It was like a six-month internship.
He's going back home.
And he's going to go start buying his first project.
And he's buying a single-family house.
Good for him.
He's getting in the game.
And then I asked him what he's going to do after that.
And he's like, well, I don't know, I'll probably like, you know, flip some houses or buy
buy another house.
And I said, that's cool.
That's great if that's what you want to do.
But why not buy a 40 unit right now?
He's like, well, I mean, that's just really big.
And I was like, what is it?
I mean, is it that much more complicated?
especially when he has people like me or he could call up David here.
You could call up a lot of people because he's been my intern for six months.
And really what it boils down to is like, does he have the mindset?
And I think he does.
And that's why I was pushing him on a little bit.
So I think I think skill set follows mindset and not the other way around necessarily.
David, what do you think?
I think that I tend to focus on skill set and skills are useless without the right mindset.
And if you have the right mindset, you will build the right skill set.
I'm struggling to come up with an analogy on the spot for what I'm trying to say.
But there's, I know a lot of very smart talent with people with great skills that just do nothing with it.
It's like, it's like the athletic ability maybe, but you don't have the desire to play the game.
You don't have the love of the game.
It doesn't matter if you're amazing at that sport.
If you don't want to go play it, you're not going to do well.
And conversely, if you have the right mindset, you love the game.
You'll build the skill set just by sheer practice and repetition and being around other people that play the game.
you'll sort of find yourself. And that's kind of why Brandon and I have shifted to focusing more
on mindset because we've been teaching skill set for years. And we've been watching people learn a lot
about real estate and not make any money with it, not build any wealth with it. And so we're seeing
that mindset's really that ingredients that's missing. Skill set is important though. I'm not trying
to make it sound like it's not. It's just that it's very easy to become the person who's great
with it Excel and great with analyzing and a great networker but never actually makes a commitment
to pulling the trigger.
Hey, question for both of you guys. How would you, I'm going to start with Brody.
How would you define, like, because you're the one I asked the question, how would you define mindset?
For those people listening going, well, what are they talking about? What do they mean mindset versus skill set?
Like, I read a book, I go do the thing. So how would you define mindset?
I'll give you an example. Here's an analogy, right? You're ready. So I ran a race on Saturday.
It was a trail race and 15 mile race. And I ended up placing, I think, sixth overall, which I wasn't expecting.
And so because of that, my mindset going into it, I felt like my skills weren't there, right, to go and perform that well.
And I was actually four minutes away from second place.
And so the first five miles of this race, I started out.
And it was more of like a cool.
Like I'm just kind of taking this easy.
I'll take it as it comes.
Take it for what it is.
And ended up, you know, the last, you know, half, last 10 miles of the race, like started feeling good.
Really started picking it up, passing people.
And went really hard.
And looking back on that experience, I was talking about it with my wife on our way home.
And I was like, man, I totally could have went in place, at least second place in that race,
had I had the right mindset going into it of like, hey, I'm a top 10 guy.
I can do this.
And so I feel like that's a good example maybe because having that mindset actually does take you further than what you thought originally was possible,
just from having that mindset versus the skill of, you know,
obviously your skill is going to take you there for sure. But it's like almost the mindset is that
little extra umph at the end that's really going to get you over the top. At least, I don't know,
that's what came to mind. That's cool. I like it. That's a David Green level analogy.
If you identified as I am a top five competitor in this race, you would have competed as if you
were trying to be in the top five. And you found out that you were even before you tried. So I think
that's a great point to highlight. Yeah, that's that we've been talking a lot about identity lately
here on the podcast and it's something that David and I both kind of fascinated by is that, yeah,
like if you went into that race believing you were a top whatever, you likely would have done
better. So the identity that we bring to a situation. So then how do we develop, how do we develop
that identity? How do you go into that? Is it something you say? Just like, oh, I'm a top 10 person.
Is that identity or is belief more than that? Because I think it is, but how do you get there?
What do you guys think? I think the first thing I'd say is you get a property under your belt and
now you identify as a real estate investor, which is why what Brandon and I find is once they get their first
deal, it's all of a sudden not hard. It's the same thing, but before you had one, it seemed insurmountable
after you have a house that seems easy. And that's why I'm always talking about house hacking,
because it's breaking that mental barrier with the least risk, the least capital, the least everything.
Get you that momentum. I kind of live by these four principles and that it's dream it. It's on my wall.
I'm looking right now in my office. But dream it, write it, build it, live it. And I feel like to answer your
question, like it starts, maybe starts in our mind, right?
It's this dream of like, what if?
What would my life look like with this amount of passive income or what would it be?
That's ultimately why we all invest in real estate.
And the next step is getting it down on paper and writing it down.
Something like I've done every day for probably the last five years, every single day before I do anything else aside from wake up and pray is I write down my top 10 goals that I want to accomplish in the next 12 months.
I feel like that's the first step from like that dream in your mind to getting it on paper.
and then there's the build it phase it's like the action right then you actually take the steps and do it
and then last but at least you go live it you know you go live your dream and actually reap the benefits
of it but i feel like it takes all four of those you can't just go build it right without dreaming it up
first and you can't just dream it and never actually live it so i don't know that's kind of how how i
try to live my life that's awesome man i think that's i think that's great i think it's a good way to close it out
because it's a good mic drop moment right there. So thank you for joining us today.
Absolutely. Thank you. All right. Joseph's coming in. Joseph, what's up, man?
What's going on, y'all? Oh, you know, it's another day in paradise here. It's a, you know,
75 degrees, sunny. It's a tough life. But where are you at? It's about the same. I'm here in Raleigh,
North Carolina, but I don't have the beach view. So that's the only thing I'm missing, I think.
That's right. You got the southern accent, and that makes up for it. So it's all good.
That's right. All right. All right. Well,
tell us about yourself. What's your story? And then we'll get into your question. Yeah. So I,
I graduated college in May, started my career job in July and just bought my first house hack in November.
Nice. And a lot of that is thanks to you guys. Yeah. I, um, it's luckily my parents, they invest in
real estate. So I kind of grew up knowing that I wanted to do this, but didn't take it very serious
until probably about midway through college. I read Rich Dad, Poor Dad. And I was like, wow,
this is there's a lot more to this than I thought.
But so now I'm at a point though.
It's where my job is going to transition over to commission here pretty soon.
And so I'm going to lose that opportunity of getting the, you know, traditional mortgages and stuff like that.
So I'm trying to explore just the different opportunities that I could use, you know, my job.
I travel around the area for my job.
So I'm able to see a lot of houses and a lot of.
of opportunities. So I'm exploring different routes. And I guess my main question is just,
being that I'm new, is it okay to kind of explore building different bridges is what you guys say.
You know, I know you'd say at one point you want to focus in on one and just run with it until
maybe something breaks and then you can look there. But at this point, is it okay to kind of
look around at different opportunities and explore all the options?
There's a thing we talk about a lot about say no, right?
Like say no to things being focused, having the one bridge, not building 10 bridges all over to Fantasy Island at the same time.
But I consider that once you know what bridge you want to build.
That's when that becomes super important.
Kind of like in any career.
I mean, forget real estate.
Just in general life, in the beginning of life, say yes to everything.
Because you don't know what, you don't know what career you want.
So someone's like, hey, you want to go in backpack Europe.
Sure, let's go do it.
You want to go and, you know, start to do the startup with me.
Sure, let's do it.
Like saying yes.
to so many opportunities. But then at some point, you're like, oh, this is my thing. This is my baby. This
is what's going to take me to Success Island, Fantasy Island, Millionaire Island. That's the bridge I'm
going to do. And then if you want to be successful at that thing, I think that's when you eliminate bridges.
So if you're like, I really just want to buy one house a year or two houses a year and I want to buy
real estate's my thing and I'm going to buy just single family, whatever, then yeah, I would
focus on one. But if you're not exactly sure yet, I think explore all day long. David, what do you
think. Brandon and I are on the exact same page with this. We've talked about it several times.
So yes, in the beginning of your life or your career, you say yes to everything. And then as you
find your niche, you start saying no to more and more things. But here's why we talk about don't
build more than one bridge. What you're talking about, Joseph, isn't necessarily building bridges.
It's sort of doing the research on if you want to build a bridge. This is why this is such
important advice when it comes to bridge building. How much value do you get out of a bridge that's 99%
completed?
That's a good question.
So you want to build a bridge from California to Hawaii so that trucks can drive back and
forth and drop off rate.
If you never start it, you get 10% of the way there or you get 99% of the way there.
It's all exactly the same result.
If you've got an extra 10 feet, that bridge can't cross because it'll go in the ocean.
You have a worthless bridge.
The only value in a bridge is if it's been completed.
And that's what Brandon and I are really emphasizing here is don't commit to something
unless you are going to see it through to the point that it becomes profitable because,
getting, it's just something like same thing with real estate sales. If we have a client that we go all the way
up to the very last day and they don't close at the last day because they never should have bought
that house, we should have told them that on day one rather than saying, yes, let's get you into
contract and see what happens. That would have been better to not start building that bridge than
to put all the work into it. So what you should be doing, Joseph, is looking at every single bridge
imaginable, study every single bridge, look at all the opportunities, look at this way of building versus
that say yes to everything, be around architects and engineers and bridge builders and construction
people. And when you find out where you want to go, that's where you don't start your second bridge
until your first one is done. Don't have bridges that are partially complete. Does that make some sense?
I want to add one more piece of that as well. You mentioned that your job shifting to commission.
Now, what career? What line of work are you in? Industrial sales, repair parts, manufacturing facilities.
Perfect. So you're in sales. You're going to make commission off of the sales that you do, right?
Yes.
If you at least enjoy the work, if you can live a somewhat fulfilled life.
I think so many people start building a real estate bridge when the obvious bridge they should
build is the sales bridge that they can make stupid money doing.
We're in the best economy for selling things in human history.
We're in the worst economy for trying to find good deals.
I'm not saying you shouldn't do real estate.
I think real estate's great.
But I would love to see you making half a million dollars a year from your career in the next
two years because your bridge that you're building is being the best salesman at your company.
They've been the best guy that you could ever be. And you're reading all sales books and marketing
and how to win friends and influence people and all that stuff. And you're just killing it.
Making half a million a million a year. Now real estate becomes a whole lot easier. The loans are easy.
You've got several years on your belt. So a lot of people are like, well, I'm going to put in the
minimal effort at my job and then go do real estate on the side. Well, yeah, that's great.
If you love the real estate and you hate your job, but if you like your job, I'd look, I'd look heavy
into building that bridge as well. Yeah, I think I think that's a great point. And kind of actually
leads me into kind of my next question, if you guys don't mind, was, I guess, you know, I'm a very
action-oriented person and I'm very excited about just different real estate opportunities and
stuff. So sometimes I kind of overwhelm myself between, you know, being a sales job, I do work
50, 55 hours, 60 hours a week sometimes. And then I'm trying to do the real estate stuff on the side.
and it just gets overwhelming sometimes.
And so I guess it's like, how do I know that I'm doing enough to, you know, that one or two things a day,
but also taking time for myself to enjoy, you know, the life.
I have 23.
So, I mean, I want to enjoy.
I got a lot of time to build real estate.
But at the same time, I'm just so passionate about it that even though I'm working so many hours,
the next thing I want to do is it's just work on my real estate business or start or I can jump in.
Well, that's really good.
So is the question you're trying to figure out how do,
I know if I'm giving my all versus how do I know if I'm split between too many different places?
Yeah.
Yeah.
So I mean, so just like an example of David, I mean, you, you work so hard in your police
job that you would sleep in your car to make the next shift, which is not always the
healthiest decision.
And now I'm not sleeping in my car for the next shift or anything.
But I guess it's just kind of how have you made that balance?
You know, we're all doing this to make life better for ourselves.
know, do the things we want to do. And I'm sure you guys sometimes would battle with this too,
where you're just so excited about all these different opportunities, you know, the different
businesses you're building that sometimes, you focus so much on that that you kind of forget
about like, oh yeah, hey, I got to sit back and actually enjoy life a little bit. So it's like,
how do you, how are you guys reminding yourself to make that balance?
Man, that is such a loaded question. I could talk about this for a whole podcast. And it's a great,
great philosophical question. I think if more people ask this question, they would have richer lives.
So a few things that I'll tell you that I've incorporated into my life so that I can do all
the stuff I do and not feel like I'm either stressed and overwhelmed or not enjoying life.
The first thing is you've got to ask who, not how. So I've got a strategy of learn it,
leverage it, and then lead others and how to do it. Those are to me the three dimensions of success.
So to sum that up, learn how to do something really, really well in your business, analyzing
deals, finding deals, filling up a funnel, closing on deals, whatever. Leverage that to somebody
else. The second you're like, I got this down, I'm really good, teach it to somebody else and
leverage the work to them. Then lead that person to make them be the best they can be at learning
it and doing it themselves. If you can get that down, you can do anything. You can have a hundred
companies. You could be like Richard Branson and have plenty of time. That's the first thing I would
say. When it comes to actual, when do you sleep in your car versus not sleep in your car, I use a
sports analogy to understand that. There are times in a sport where you're sort of on cruise control
feeling out your opponent, okay, like you're in a boxing match. You don't want to walk out there
and throw everything you have in the first five seconds of the fight and just wildly punch trying to
knock them out. There's a getting in a rhythm, getting warmed up, feeling them out, picking
your spots, getting to see, maybe like with Brandon with jujitsu, none of the guys that are
great, just walk out there and try to immediately submit somebody in the first five seconds.
You're trying to gain advantage in that struggle. But there are moments when you have the advantage,
when you do go all out, when you know I've taken their back, I'm really close to a choke.
You're not conserving energy at that point. You're giving everything you have to knock out your
opponent. When I was sleeping in my car, I knew I had a ridiculous opportunity to make so much money.
Over time was there when it's not always there.
We were able to get double time.
Nobody wanted to work.
There were tons of shifts.
And I, and real estate was priced really well.
Like it's very hard, Brandon said, to find deals.
At the time I was doing it, deals were everywhere.
So I had the targets I wanted to take down.
I had great financing.
I had opportunities to build capital.
It was the perfect thing.
Okay.
So I was sleeping in my car because I was trying to sink that choke in.
I might not get this person's back again.
I need to go for everything I've got.
When you're not in that situation,
situation, though, it makes no sense to be going with everything you have. And I guess that's the best
advice I could give is there isn't a script that you just follow. Just go work, you know, 20 hours a day
for the next 20 years and you'll get there because you probably die before you get there. And as you
can see, I think that's what you're getting at. I, yeah, 100% agree with David on that. I would say
a couple of thoughts. One, when you're in your young 20s, you do have a fair amount more, I don't
say free time, but like you likely don't have kids and like that obligation that takes up the
vast majority of your 30s. So if you're going to have kids someday, that takes up a lot. It's like this.
You can sacrifice now or you can sacrifice later. And I would say sacrifice in your 20s is more
important than sacrificing time with your kids when you're in your 30s. So I guess I'm not saying
work, 100 hour work weeks for the next 10 years to get somewhere. But just know that you're like,
It's not life.
It's not going to happen forever.
If you put in a few solid good years now, you'll have a whole, like, you'll have solid
decades later, right?
But if you don't put in it now, you're going to have decades of nothing later.
So it's kind of an a, what's the word, asymmetric bet?
Yes, asymmetric bet.
It's a, if I put in a lot of work now, I get way more down the road.
That said, a couple things that I do just to make sure that I'm like, have that time is like,
I calendar schedule my breaks.
I deliberately schedule things and I find ways to obligate myself to those breaks.
Like for example, I've talked about this before, but I get a massage every single week.
A lady, like the best masseuse in Maui comes to my house on my lanai, like Ocean View,
and I get a massage for 90 minutes.
Why?
Because that's like me time that I get to just think and all my best ideas.
In fact, like, I just launched this whole like news text message newsletter thing behind the beard.
That all came from during a massage.
And that'll make me a like long term a ton of like I'll raise money from it.
I'll build a lot of relationships.
Like that all came from that moment that I set as like, this is me time.
Now, I don't get a lot of me time.
I get jujitsu for a couple hours a week and I get this massage once a week.
But because I have it scheduled, I make sure it gets done.
It makes all the rest of the week go by.
So in other words, if you just like hope that like naturally you're going to have those fun
moments that you had in college and high school, it doesn't happen as much.
Those, those die out.
So as you get older, you got to intentionally plan those breaks and those adventures.
insures and that fun stuff. And the great thing is it doesn't have to be 40 hours a week of fun
stuff or of amazing stuff. It's like, hey, I'm going to go play my call of duty for two hours
on Tuesday night. That's my time. And it's scheduled and it gets done. So there's a couple
ideas for you. Yeah, no, I think that's a great point. I mean, one thing is like you said,
the time now, it's kind of what is my end goal. And, you know, is it, do I want the time later
or time now? So I think that's, that was a huge, a good point. And, and I think also something I
definitely in bad at is scheduling that time for myself. And maybe that's something I really need
to focus on to make sure that I'm, you know, I'm still working towards my end goals with real
estate, but also having some me time. Yeah. Yeah, that's that's, I think that's a good tip for
to everyone listening to the show right now is go pull up your calendar right now on your phone
and just put something in a two hour block next week. That's just you time. If you got a family,
you got kids, fine, get a babysitter because you're, you're intentionally planning those moments.
And then take it. Like don't don't let yourself go.
in the moment, oh, well, you know, it's a busy day. Like, you have to take those moments because
those recharging moments are what actually makes you way more productive the rest of the day.
So good stuff, man. Well, thanks for coming on the show. Appreciate you. Yeah, thanks for having me,
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Here comes.
Yeah, I'm here.
Can you hear me?
I can.
Is it Walet?
Am I saying your name?
Yeah, Waleigh.
Like the rapper Waleigh.
There we go.
All right.
Well, welcome to the show.
What can we do for you?
What can we answer for you?
All right.
Firstly, I want to really thank,
you know, big shout out to Josh Dawkins
for sticking out this, you know, Bigger Pocket has started very small several years ago.
I can say Bigger Pocket has changed my life and he has changed a lot of people's life as well.
So that being said, I am a very, very loyal follower of Bigger Pockets.
This is my man, David Green, and this is yours here.
Oh, I got you.
Yeah, so, and if you can see my book, I read a lot of books.
So I've been taking action about me originally from Nigeria,
came in as, you know, HF1 students, you know,
get my master's degree in engineering,
start consuming content from Bigger Pocket,
and eventually I see that, hey, this is the part I want to go.
Bigger Pocket has helped me a lot with mindset, you know,
things is not possible.
We just have to go and figure out, you know, how to do it.
So, yeah, that's about me.
I'm an investor agent.
I call myself on fire agents, you know.
There we go.
We're changing the terminology.
On fire agent, you know.
So that's what I do.
That's what I encourage people to look for when they're trying to work with an agent.
Because like you said earlier, it helps them shorten the learning call.
As an agent, I'm buying rental property for myself.
So I can easily transfer that knowledge to help them achieve the same goal they're trying to achieve.
Instead of paying a guru's $50,000, $40,000 for something.
that you might not even close a single deal.
So that is what I've been doing.
So now back to my question,
I think one of my question is balancing family life
with, you know, investing in real estate.
I'm also a project engineer, by the way.
I have a full-time job as a project engineer.
So I've been juggling this thing, you know,
real estate, family, and W-2.
So, but I'm at a point where I'm kind of like closing, you know,
comfortably, I would say two transaction every month now, while still working full-time as the project
engineer. So my question is this, what is the practical step of if I don't want to let my W to go yet,
and I still want to be crushing it in real estate? What is the practical step to really take to,
you know, balance everything out? I know I'm not doing good with family wise, because it's just
very hard, like you guys know, for every entrepreneur is very hard. So what will be the practical
steps. I know you kind of answer it a little bit with Joseph, you know, but just give me that
one, two, three, you know, and I know you're doing well with your wife, Heather, so.
I don't do as well as I should, but yeah, balancing family is so hard. So, yeah, the main things
that I do is, okay, first of all, I mentioned this a lot on the show, but I'll say it again
now because it's a powerful analogy. When Dr. Oz, right, so Dr. Oz is the famous physician
that's on TV, right? He had a TV show. He was on Oprah. He had a bunch of magazines. He had
he was writing articles. He was like everywhere in the media. He was also doing like 200 open heart
surgeries every year. And the question is, how can a guy that's that busy with media and TV,
how can he do that many open heart surgeries? And the truth was, he wasn't cutting people open.
He wasn't delivering the anesthesia. He wasn't walking them from their room to the,
he wasn't doing anything that stuff. All he was doing is taking his knife and doing a cut and
walking out of the room. And the knife was all set up. It was washed. It was ready to go.
He's like somebody probably helped put on his shirt.
In other words, he was doing the thing that only he could do.
That's the doctor Oz.
It was like the doctor Oz cut, right?
And so if the first thing in balancing, and you know this, we all know this, but it's just hard.
It's like, what is that Dr. Oz cut for you?
What is that one, two, three things that you should be doing that nobody else should be doing?
So for me, like I stopped attending almost all meetings for bigger pockets.
Like I don't go to any of the stuff.
I don't go to the board meetings.
I don't do anything with bigger pockets.
I show up to do this podcast and I do the webinar once a week because that is my Dr. Oz cut.
I do very little else because that's the one thing I can do that affects everything in my world.
Open Door Capital.
I meet with Brian Murray and Walker.
My two like kind of like the executives, I guess you could call them.
We meet with we meet.
And then I have one meeting with my whole team of everybody else that's running things.
Those two hours is about all I do from a like high level because they're my Dr. Oz cut.
So that's huge, is just identifying what are those few things that matter more than anything else.
And like David said earlier, who not how?
So if there's anything else I got to do, I'm wondering who's going to do that for me?
How can I bring in an internship?
How can I hire another employee and be able to afford that?
How can I do that?
So those are the few things that I do.
Then I actually have to schedule dates with my wife.
I put it on my calendar ahead of time because if I'm not intentional about it, it won't get done.
I just know that family tends to be the last thing that most people, especially entrepreneurs,
prioritize when it should be the first.
So I schedule vacations on my calendar.
I schedule date nights with my wife.
I schedule walks with my kids.
And I try to build some routines in there because once, like here's the thing that I got wrong for a long time.
I know I'm throwing a lot here.
But I thought that when my wife would not complain, but would she would bring up to me that I'm working too much.
I thought that she wanted me to spend equal times working and equal time with the kids.
And then finally what she made clear was it's not about equal time.
I don't need to spend four hours a day wrestling with my kid on the bed in order to
have a fulfilled, being a good father and fulfill my role as a father.
But I need to be regular about it.
I need to be when I'm in the moment.
I need to be there doing that thing and not other things.
And it needs to be like, it just needs to be done, like at least every day for a little bit.
So if I spend 20 minutes giving her a 30 minute break or 20 minutes,
a break or an hour long break once a day. That changes everything for her, for the kids.
So anyway, those are a few thoughts. David, anything you want out on there?
Well, let me ask you this. When you're asking doing real estate while doing a W2 job,
that was your original question, right, Wale? Yes, yes. Are we talking about being an agent
or are we talking about being an investor? Okay, I'm an agent. I'm an investor agent.
I focus on working with investors. I try to help them to take action. So also buying rental
property using the burr for myself. So he's like, I have a three job. W-2, real estate agents,
working with investors that like to crush numbers and looking for deal, buying it,
and burying it for myself. And you know, I have to also manage contractor in between. So you get
what I'm saying. Let me ask you a couple of questions. At your W-2 job, do you have downtime in the
day or are you completely focused on that work the whole time? Well, there is some downtown and
that that is why I've been, you know, been able to be.
closing consistently, you know, two, three transaction every month because I use, you know, I squeeze in time,
my lunch time, you know, work late after work, stay behind, you know, schedule, phone call in between,
all those kind of stuff.
Well, congratulations on closing two to three deals a month. That's no joke. You're a very successful,
Waleigh. That tells me several things about you. Not only are you a hard worker, people trust you,
you're a man of character. Even though you have a job, your client still feel comfortable having you
is their agent. So you may be downplaying your own success already. I just want to highlight that.
Well, that's good. And that's why I'm here so you can give me the experience from you managing
a team. What have you seen? Specifically, do you have a team member that is in my shoe and they're still
crushing it? Yeah, that was me. I did it as a police officer. And now I'm running like seven different
companies or so. And I've got it. So we're in the same boat. I totally feel your pain. I needed to get
some background on where you are. Earlier in one of these shows, I gave an example of when you
should sprint as hard as you can and when you need to kind of hit cruise control and just jog.
And there's an example of like if you're in a fight, there's moments where you have an
advantage that you can knock the person out and you need to give everything you have in that
moment. There's other moments where you're sort of half engaged. You're kind of feeling them out.
You're getting to know them. You're not giving it everything you have. You've got to understand
business works the same way. There are.
moments where somebody says, hey, I have a question about this house. And if you don't get back to
them immediately, that's okay. A couple hours go by, they're all right. There's other situations
where we want to see this house right now. And if you're on the clock and can't go show them
the house, you're going to lose the deal. So what I did was I took a list of, like, say a buyer,
because sellers are a lot easier to work around. And I literally numbered every single step,
one through 50 that has to go into closing on a buyer. And it was as specific as schedule a call.
to find out what they want, conduct the call to find out what they want, put them on an email
drip, give them a presentation that I have delivered, all right? And once I had that whole list
put like, schedule a call with the listing agent so that I can go show them the house,
make sure it's on my calendar. Those are different steps. That's how detailed this was. I went
and I highlighted in different colors the steps that had to be done urgently right away. There
was only a few things on there. I also put a different color for something that David had
to do. Okay. Much of what was on that list did not have to be David doing it. I needed to be involved in
negotiating directly with the listing agent because that was too important and I didn't want them to end up
overpaying. I needed to be involved in reviewing the numbers if this was an investment property to make
sure they got good advice. I did not need to be involved in opening the door to let the home inspector
in the house to do the inspection. I did not even have to be the person showing the house. I didn't have
to be the person scheduling the phone calls that I told you had to happen. I did need to be the person
making the calls. So here's my advice to you. Systemize what you're doing that specifically
and then find another agent in the office that can do the things that don't have to be you.
Now, if you have them scheduling your calls, you time blocking your calendar when you're working
and when you're not free and they schedule it around that. When you talk to the client and they
want to go see that house on Main Street, you have somebody else from your office go show it to
them and then you call them when you get off work and talk about how it went down.
I promise you, Wale, this is so much simpler than people thinking.
it is when they're in the mode of like, well, do I do this or do I do that? You can do both. You just
have to be smart about how you arrange it. And your clients will never even know. They don't know
that you're at work. They don't, they're not going to know that they're not important. They
have this other person communicating with them, setting up showings, taking them to see houses,
answering questions, doing some research and then giving you all the information that you need
to actually make the decision. And you use that system while you're working your W2. And here's
the beauty. When you get out of your W2 and you become a full-time agent, that doesn't mean you
go show homes. You spend that time lead generating, looking for deals, putting stuff under contract
for yourself, finding new clients, really high dollar productive stuff. And you keep using other
people to do the stuff that doesn't make you money. And now you have a business. Now you have a
system. Now you have a way to scale much faster. I think the people that had to work the W2 job
and work a second job are at an advantage. It's just like my long distance real estate investing
system forced me to systemize what I was doing, whereas someone like Brandon, who invested in his
hometown, could get lured into, hey, I'll just go change the door lock. That'll be okay. So look at this
like a blessing. Not only can you make good money while you're learning a new business, but you can
learn how to be a business owner and not just an employee in your own business. Thank you so much.
Yes. I'm leveraging on a local assistant. I'm also, I also have a VA that is doing some of my,
you know, stuff for me. And definitely I am being very wise using my time.
But a quick follow-up question is, or answer, right?
I'm a full-time agent as well.
I work in real estate about 80 hours a week, and I have a 40-hour commitment to my W-T.
So I'm working 120 hours a week.
So that was where my question comes in.
Hey, of course, the family will suffer, right?
Because, you know, you just married to your job, according to my wife.
So that's why I'm kind of like going there.
But I would really like if you can help with that.
you know, cheat sheets, you know, if I can look at it and see how I can, you know,
internalize it to suits my own kind of style. So is that something you can do?
That's going to be. So that book that you held up sold, that's the first in the three-part
series. The second book, yes, that one, is going to be how to be a top producer. So how to
dominate your market. Okay. The third book is going to be how to build a team, which is going to
focus on what we're talking about here, systemizing what is done and delegating it to different
people. So hang tight. It's on the way. Can I also push you on one thing? Not push you on it,
but ask why not if you, I mean, you're a good agent. I can tell like you're closing deals.
You know what you're doing. Is it and it may not be this way, but is it fear that's causing you
not to quit your job and jump into real estate full time or is it a love for your job? You just love
your job. Yeah, that was my follow up question. I would think he is, I, I hope my employee is not
listening to this. I don't love what I'm doing. So I don't love what I'm doing. I went to school,
you know, bachelor's, master's degree in chemical engineering. So of course, engineering is not,
it's not easy, right? So, so I can say I'm smart. So, but the thing is the corporate America,
you know, I fell in love. We realized it about two years ago. So the goal is, hey, you know what?
I hope this is not a fluke. Let me have a lot of time. Let me get a lot of data to be able to, you know,
really analyze and make sure, yes, this actually works.
So, and, you know, if you're closing two, three transaction every month, that's about, you know,
I mean, Texas, I mean, Houston, Texas, that's about $15,000 on the average, you know, in commission.
So, so that's not bad.
So I would say it is fear to keep it very simple in World War.
It is fear, hey, fear of the unknown.
And I'm currently putting in contingencies to accommodate those fears that may not even happen.
But, hey, as human, we do have that fear.
So that's the answer to that.
Yeah, it's kind of David said earlier too about when you have more reserves, like the more reserves you have, it can protect you.
One thing Tim Ferriss says in the four-hour work week is he mentions like almost all decisions are reversible.
I mean, like, now he's talking about quitting your job to travel the world, but if you, like, I am not saying you have to quit your job, but I'm just saying this for everyone listening to.
If you saved up a bunch of money and went and quit your job for a year to go try your hardest at real estate, you were putting in more hours on the real estate agent side.
like I believe most people would probably make more than what they're making other job because
it's scalable and jobs aren't.
But if it didn't, almost every job, like with a few months of looking, you'd probably be able
to get back into another job again.
And if you don't absolutely love your job, then who cares?
It's another asymmetric bet.
It's like there's not a lot to lose, but there's a lot to gain from taking those risks.
So don't be afraid.
But anyway, you had a follow question?
Yeah, I have another question.
The question is, like I said, I'm on fire agents.
work with a lot of investors. As a matter of fact, my specialty is working with investors. And like
David, understand, investors are very analytical. You know, they're not as easy. You can't easily
close a deal like a traditional, you know, buying. So some of them reach out to me. They will, you know,
do the buyer consultation. They will just disappear. And my goal is to help them close a transaction.
I usually have like a 90 days, you know, taking from your 90 days journal book. So, so kind of like
automatically setting up a goal for them. Like, hey, in the next.
20 days, I want you to have the keys to your first renter or next rental property.
And I'm going to be pouring in the knowledge that I have because I'm doing it for myself.
I'm not just a regular agent.
I'm just selling.
I am buying for myself, right?
I'm also taking the risk.
Whatever issues they're going to be facing or potential issues, I've also been there, and I'm
still there.
I'm still facing challenges.
So, but you just see that some of them never take action.
So what are the common mistakes you see that new investors making and that you think
as an investor agent, this is all I can help them.
One thing I want to highlight that we just talked about before is they're easily
reversible.
I just wish every single person listening to the podcast could grab that point.
I cannot tell you how many people say, yeah, I really want a house hack, but what if I don't
like it?
What if I don't like having roommates?
What if I get cramped up living in a small house and I want a big one?
And then move out, move back into where you were, go get another apartment.
There's not a law that forces you to live in a house that you don't like.
I don't know why that doesn't occur to people, but it's such a small percentage of the time you're
not happy.
But if you're not happy, it's such an easy solution.
Go back to what you did before.
And now you have a house and rent out where you were going to be living.
That's totally fine as long as you intended to occupy it when you bought it.
So thank you for just pointing out that it's so many of these things are easily reversible.
Wally, your question when it comes to working with investor clients, where you're saying,
how do you put the time aside to actually make sure you can close them?
My question is some of them, they take the information and they never come.
They never follow up.
You call them, they don't pick their call.
You know, I just see that they are not motivated enough.
That's the problem of you not qualifying that lead when you first got it.
So I have a sales funnel that I talked about and sold.
I've also just created a lead funnel that are just the steps that you take when you qualify a lead.
The first step is contact.
You contact the lead with speed.
You talk to them right away.
The next step is qualify.
You find out, am I the right fit for what you want to do?
and do you have the capability to even buy this house?
If you contact a lead and they've got no money and no investing experience and they're like,
hey, I want you to find me an off market deal that you're not going to get paid a commission on,
that's not a lead for you to work.
They're not qualified.
We skip that step a lot of the time.
The third step is pursue.
This is very similar, Brandon, to your laps funnel.
If they look good, you pursue that person.
You could even say that my qualified step is the same as analyzing the deal because you're qualifying the deal when you analyze it.
And then the last step would be move them, close them, move them into being a client.
Too many agents are not direct enough with the investors that approach them.
In fact, I just had a case where I referred somebody to my Hawaii team and my agent in Hawaii
didn't do a good enough job qualifying that person.
And the investor wasn't very happy.
They didn't like the qualifications that the agent had.
And so they said, hey, like you could tell they were a little salty when they said,
I don't want to work with you guys.
Had my agent done a better job of telling that person up front, what you want is not something
that I can do. I can find someone to do it or if you can do that component, I can help you
with here. The relationship would have been solved. So those of you that are listening to the
podcast, we tell you all the time find a good agent. Also make sure you're a good investor.
If you know you're not going to pull the trigger and you just tell the agent ahead of time,
look, I'm not going to buy anything with you, but I want to learn. Can you help me with that?
And I'll send you referrals. Can you help me with that and when I'm ready, I'll use you.
Just be upfront about what's going on. I think what Wally's talking about here are the buyers who aren't
ready to be a buyer. And they think if they tell the agent that ahead of time, that the agent
won't work with them. So it turns into this somewhat deceitful situation where the client is not
being upfront with Wale about what they really want to do. And then the agents end up doing the
same thing back. They just sort of beat around the bush and they don't communicate directly.
They stop responding to emails and the whole thing just falls into a bad place. So the cure for that,
the cowbell, is direction. You got to be way more direct with them and you have to encourage them to
be direct with you. Brandon, from your experience, because you're not an agent, what do you think?
I think there's like three types of people in the world. There's people who will never invest in
real estate. There's three people who are going to work with you, Wale. Like, there's people who say
they want to invest in real estate, but just will not no matter what. Then on the other side,
there are people who say they want to and then they actually will. I guarantee they're going to crush it.
They're going to be like, I feel like David here was going to invest in real estate no matter what.
Once he got into it, he was just going to do it. He has that personality. And then there's a third type.
it's in the middle. It's they say they want to, but without the right handholding and encouragement
and pushing them, they're, they're not going to. They're not going to just naturally do it.
But they can be, they can be walked through that journey if they're their help. So three times
people again, people who will never do it despite saying they will, people who will do it because they
want to and then the people that need to be journeyed. So to go into what David said is you need
to qualify them. Which are the three groups are they in? Are they the time? And sometimes it's
impossible to know. Are they the type on the far, on the far side who are just going to waste your time
they will never take the action needed or the type that are just going to do it no matter what.
So yeah, grab those people all day long.
And then the middle people is what I want to talk about here for a second.
Those people who without your guidance, they will not do it.
Just life is too busy.
They got too many obligations.
Invest in real estate's hard.
You're trying to help them, but they're not going to get there.
And I have such a heart for those people because they really want it that is aren't ready.
So how do you get them there?
I love your 90 day thing.
I love, I love sprints.
I love challenges.
I love things like that, right?
Because they get people down the path.
So the mistakes that I see a lot of investors make is they don't take daily consistent action.
So the more you can get your clients just, you know, I talk a lot about min's most important next step.
Identify what your most important next step is.
It's usually a five minute or less task.
So if you as an agent can help them identify what is that next task that you need to do and it's usually a five minute phone call or less, get them to do that thing.
And then the next day, get them to do another little action.
And then another little action.
It's people, they'll get overwhelmed, then they won't do it.
They'll get busy.
They won't do it.
But if you're like, hey, man, I just need you to have a five-minute conversation with this lender that I love.
He's amazing.
He just needs to take a little bit of information from you.
Can you do that today at four?
Oh, yeah, yeah, I can do that at four.
Okay, great.
I'm going to put it on your calendar.
I'm going to send you a calendar right now.
And I'm going to be on that call with you as well.
Just make sure that your hands held.
I don't know if you can legally do that.
But like, be on a call with a lender.
But the idea being, right, you now took a overwhelming thing and you gave them a one-minute little
task, a five-minute little task to do. It's like the whole, how do you eat an elephant one bite at a
time? Buying an investment property is an elephant, so just don't show them the elephant. Just show
them one bite at a time. So that would need my thought. All right. Thank you. And the last question
is, what is that? I know you guys have, you know, business or performance coach. Which one
would you recommend? You know, I think I've Jason Duros or Jason Drills. Jason Dries. Yeah. Jason's mine.
So as an agent, because my mindset is like divided, right?
I want to be very good, you know, performing as an individual.
And I want to, you know, even 10x, my real estate, you know, eventually have a team and all those things.
So those mindset shifts and things bigger and, you know, those kind of thing.
And also it has to be affordable.
You know, I think that's it.
It has to be affordable, you know.
I know some coaches are like way up there.
So.
Yeah, let's talk about coaches for a quick second.
there are different types of coaches out there that can help you there's the real estate guru coach
right like they have agents and agents and investors there's gurus that you pay them 50,000
they're going to coach you right that's not what we're talking about when what David and I are big
into is what is like performance coaches I'm just making sure everyone's on the same page and what
we're talking about like my guy's name's jason dreath I hire him it costs me I don't know
it's like you know thousands of dollars a year and I meet with them every couple weeks and
we just have a conversation about what I'm dealing with now that he has a
is a mindset coach. And I like that. I treat it like therapy. I'm like, oh, and this is going
wrong and this is going wrong. And he'll be like, hey, what's another way of thinking about that
problem? Or why do you feel that way, Brandon? And I'm like, well, because of this. And he's like, well,
why do you feel that way? I'm like, because of this. So that's a performance coach. Then there
are business coaches, which like, uh, who is, what's the who not how guy? Um, Dan Sullivan.
So Stan Sullivan and, uh, Benjamin Hardy. Yeah. So they, Benjamin Hardy is part of strategic coach,
which Dan Sullivan started.
That's more of like a business coaching thing,
which I would love to have a business coach at some point as well.
I don't have any good recommendations there.
So that's what I guess the question is,
do you need somebody that helps with the mindset?
And like I use Jason for,
which helps me a lot,
then look for somebody that does that,
the mindset,
the performance coaching side.
If you need like the other side,
the business coach is like,
you need a setup LLC.
What are you going to do?
Write down your three goals that we're going to do this week
and I'm going to check back next week with you.
That's more of the business side.
So I guess which coach you go with is what you need.
And then secondly, you got to find a coach who gets you, like, who understands,
like you guys vibe together.
Like, but at the same time we'll hold you accountable to stuff.
There's a lot of people who call themselves coaches and aren't.
And then the third point is every, no matter how much a performance coach is, if they're good,
they're worth it.
And I obviously, you're not going to pay so many millions of dollars.
But like, at this level, like, while I, while you're making good,
a career, you're struggling with the family, how to balance that stuff. You've got, you're closing
two deals a month real estate wise, let's say, if you were meeting with somebody every other week
and they were helping you get your mind in the right place, they're helping you set your goals,
they're helping you get more time with your wife, your family, that kind of stuff. And it costs
you $20,000 a year. It costs you $50,000 a year. But it freed up more time with your family
and it helped you close four deals a month instead of two deals a month.
It helps you buy one more burr every year.
Isn't that worth the investment?
And you're never going to pay $50,000.
So yes, it needs to be affordable.
I agree with that.
But just I would shift the thinking from how much the cost to like what am I going to get out
of it, what investment, what return.
I mean, me paying thousands of dollars to Jason has made me millions of dollars.
I would not be where I am today physically or business-wise without having a performance
coach.
Yeah.
Before David respond, is there any way to marry both together like business and performance, both as one person?
I definitely think there is.
And in fact, like, I mean, a lot of what we talk about is business.
Like when I talk with my coach and a lot of what, you know, business coaches talk about its life.
So they're very, they're very, they're very married already.
But it's more like what's their, what's their focus?
Like when they approach a problem, let's say the problem is I need more time with my family.
One coach is going to be like, let's go through time management processes to make sure you're maximizing your time.
The other one's going to ask you the question, why do you, like, what's most important in your life?
Why do you feel like you need more time with your family?
And like, it's not, it's like not saying you shouldn't, but he's going to, they're going to ask the questions that make you think deeper versus like let's just fix the problem.
So it's just different approaches.
Different people have different approaches.
And sometimes you need one, sometimes the other.
And it's, I'm sure it's possible to find both.
I like, again, I feel like Jason's both.
But he definitely leans towards the mindset.
side of things. Well, I thank you so much for coming on today. You've been awesome, man. And you're
crushing it. Can't we just see where you're headed. And yeah, keep doing it, man. All right. Thank you.
Thank you so much. What's up, Mike Webb? Welcome to the podcast, man. How are you doing?
Oh, it's fantastic. It's a good day. You guys have been going at it. We do this for a little while.
We like no break or anything. Yeah, we like that. We like answering questions. It's fun. So what can we
answer for you? Well, I would try and be succinct because you guys have been answering a lot of good
stuff today. So not going real estate, maybe, but just is there ever a question with all the
great minds you talk to that you're just surprised or for general folks like us that you're
surprised people don't ask you or you wish that they would ask you to maybe kind of get inside
those minds you guys have. That's a really good question. David, you want to start that one?
Oh, man. That's so good, Mike. You might have asked the best question we've had for the whole day.
You can see both Brandon and I.
That's what a good coach does, right, is they ask the right questions.
I think I wish more people would ask me how I developed the ability to adapt, faster and better than everyone else.
And Mike, you're a fire captain, I believe.
Is that right?
Yes, sir.
So you get it, right?
You go to a call of somebody with abdominal pain and you quickly realize this is a stab wound.
Okay.
How fast can you say, I thought I was going to say, are you pregnant?
into how do I start? And there's someone inside and you got to run in and get them or make the
call is them. And then you leave that call and it's a structure fire and there's someone inside and
you got to run in and get them or make the call. Is it too late to run in and get them? A terrible
situation like that. How quickly can you adapt to that environment? And it was the same thing for me
as a police officer. I just, I did not know when I went from call to call what I was going to get.
And when my partners had a hard time adapting to the new thing that we were in, they were way
less effective, okay? The suspect runs and gets away because they were too slow recognizing what they
were getting thrown at them. I think the reason I'm doing well as a real estate agent is because I had to
learn how to be a salesman when I didn't like sales. And then I'm doing well as a team leader because
I've had to learn how to be a leader to salespeople when I got good at sales. Learned how to be a CEO
that can converge all the strengths of each of those businesses together while limiting their weaknesses.
I never knew when I was a kid running around playing basketball that I would ever do this stuff.
But I have had to adapt to be in that scenario.
And it's honestly becoming something that I love doing, like becoming a podcast host.
I had to learn how to be a podcast host.
I started listening to certain people like Hennar Gracie and Ben Shapiro and Shail Sunnan just because they talk good.
I don't even care what they say, need to speak.
And if more people had that desire, like that passion to be good at what they're doing,
they would find success comes really easy.
What I look at when I see people struggling in the world is they're all subconsciously trying to make the world bend to them.
They're bouncing from job to job finding the job that doesn't require them to grow or change.
With who I am right now, how can I just already be good or have it be easy?
And real estate investing is one thing they come to because they think that they're going to find easy cash flow and they're going to be able to retire in two years and the ability to adapt.
What mindset do you need?
What skills do you have to develop?
How do you stay motivated to do it?
Because it's to me as a secret sauce.
If you can do that, you can do anything.
That's so good.
Wow.
I would say this.
It's not a question that I actually expect anybody to ask me because it would be a weird
question to ask, but it's more of a question that I, or more of a question I would pose to
everybody to think about, like internally, is why do we lie to ourselves so much?
I think that lying to ourselves is probably the number one biggest reason.
People don't succeed in life.
And what I mean by that is things like, I'm going to wake up tomorrow morning at 7 a.m.
And then they sleep until 8.
or I'm going to go to the gym tomorrow and then they get there and they decide they'd rather go and watch TV or they're going to go and buy that real estate deal or they're going to go start that business or they're going to go take their wife on a date or they're going to ask that girl out at the bar and then they don't do it.
And so that question of why don't we do the things we say we're going to do, I think if you can if you can become somebody with the integrity to be a man or woman of your word, you can accomplish anything in life, like anything in life.
but most people spend their entire lives promising things and then breaking those promises to themselves.
And if you can overcome that, you can overcome anything.
So yeah, I wish more people looked at themselves and said, how can I start keeping the promises to myself?
And to answer your question directly, what I wish they'd ask is, Brandon, how have you been successful and how have you failed that keeping promises in line to yourself?
And so I'm going to fire that one back at you, actually.
Mike, how have you been successful at keeping promises to yourself and failing to keep promises to yourself?
So that's why you're the master.
I'm a podcaster.
I ask the questions here.
That was like verbal jihitza.
There we go.
Took the back.
So when I started in real estate, like I told myself, I'm going to stick this out for five years, no matter what.
because I knew if I only said I'm going to try it for a year, you know, something's going to go wrong, right?
It's just when, and you're going to have to figure that out.
And like what David said, be resourceful and persevere through it.
So I've kept that promise to myself, and it's not always been easy.
And I'm sure David can relate from the police world whenever you start making moves that are maybe a little bit different than what some of that tight-knit group is maybe used to.
you can take on some extra criticism, we'll call it.
But I've stuck to the course and I've kept that promise with myself.
And it's been, you know, almost 10 years at this point.
That's awesome.
I would say how I've failed to keep that promise with myself is,
and this kind of, again, goes back to the police officer thing, I think.
You know, I still maintain, I think, sometimes the idea.
identity as firefighter and sometimes not maintaining the identity as millionaire real estate investor.
And even though I make small changes or big changes to, you know, be the real estate investor that I want to be,
at times sometimes mentally I don't uphold that thought process in my head.
Sometimes I refer back to I'm just a fireman.
You know, I can't, I can't go buy 2,000 mobile homes because I'm just a fireman, you know, where I know, if I really stuck to the course and set the goal, I could probably get there and I'm going to have problems along the way.
But sometimes I revert back to that.
I can't do that.
That's for those guys.
So I think that's something.
And no matter what sphere you are in, I think as you get a little bit bigger,
your problems just change.
Like in, you know, I think you constantly have to sharpen that axe to get outside your own head and keep those promises with yourself.
Whether you have 10 units, 25 units, 2,000 units, you develop new problems and you have to kind of go back to that believing in yourself.
And it's easier said than done at times.
And at times I feel like I could probably keep that promise to uphold that thought or identity with myself a little bit better.
The thing I want to pull out of that that's super important is what you mentioned about your identity
as a firefighter versus an investor.
I don't know why it works that way, but that's just how the brain works.
I honestly think God had me get out of being a police officer because I was not going to
learn to see myself as a businessman as long as I could put on that uniform.
That identity meant too much.
It was powerful.
I saw myself as a police officer who invest in real estate.
I would never would have been the leader that they would need to come work in if it wasn't that was my identity.
And so that's what I focused on.
I was still focused on being the best cop that I could be.
And so there's another component to this that isn't just about time.
When should I leave my job?
And I like that you're bringing that up.
When is your identity holding you back from what matters to you?
Is there something getting in the way of you being a family man?
Like real estate investing could be the thing that needs to shift in your identity.
It could be consuming certain people and they're not becoming the husband or.
or the wife that they should be.
And you got to look at where is your identity working for you
and where is it working against you?
Because it's such a powerful tool.
And I don't know that that's ever come up before.
So Mike, you're over here like Yoda dropping these nuggets of wisdom.
All right, that was the end of our two-part series.
I think we're calling a series.
I think we decided we are two-part series of Q&A questions for David and I.
I hope you guys enjoyed this episode.
If you did, let us know, leave a rating review in iTunes,
I mean, not Amazon, iTunes.
I don't know, wherever people listen to it.
Do people listen to podcast anywhere else?
Spotify, Stitcher, Stitcher, all that stuff, yeah.
I'm an Apple guy, so I just listen to my podcast app.
But leave a rating the reviews and also on the show notes page of today's show is biggerpockets.
com slash show 469.
You can ask questions of the guest that we had on.
They'll be checking that.
And give us your answers to the questions.
I would love to hear what you guys think.
So in the YouTube comments below the video or whether it's, or on that page itself on
Bigger Pockets, leave your answers to these questions.
We'd love to know what you guys think.
that's all I got. David Green.
Had a great time. Thank you to all of our guests today. I appreciate your guys
questions. Thank you, everyone. Brandon, you did a great job answering them in the hot seat.
You're not too shabby. You're not. It's like you've done this before.
Well, this is where you tell who actually knows their stuff and who doesn't. That's why I like
these shows, because anyone can sit and do a pre-recorded interview where they let the guest talk
the whole time and they pretend they know a lot about real estate. But when someone's throwing
questions at you that you don't know what's coming. That's what I like to look at when I'm looking
for a mentor. So thank you for that.
Good man.
David Green for Brandon behind the beard Turner, signing off.
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