Escaping the Drift with John Gafford - Zero to 100 Million with Cody Sperber | The Power Move Podcast EP 63

Episode Date: September 2, 2022

Cody Sperber ( The Clever Investor), one of the GIANTS in real estate investment game, lays out his climb from Navy navigator to the pinnacle of success in our space. As I type this three days later, my head is still spinning from some of the things he said. Welcome to the official Youtube Channel of The Power Move Podcast - Hosted by serial entrepreneur and businessman John Gafford 📈On his podcast, he discusses all sorts of topics, including what made him successful and some of his core tenants for living life and managing successful businesses.➡️ He is often joined by Chris Connel and Colt Amidan who are dear friends and successful business people in their own right.The Power Move podcast stands to be one of the top sources of knowledge and insights, specifically into real estate and entrepreneurship out there! Not to mention tons of coverage of topical events and insights into our non-commercial lives as well…➡️ Learn and burn Entrepreneurship from serial entrepreneur John Gafford and his band of mayhem makers. From stripper poles to the oval office, business lessons are everywhere. If that sounds interesting to you, make sure to subscribe to my channel and don't forget to hit the bell icon to never miss a Podcast! 🔔💯 About John Gafford:After appearing on NBC's "The Apprentice", John relocated to the Las Vegas Valley and founded several successful companies in the real estate space. ➡️ The Gafford Group at Simply Vegas, top 1% of all REALTORS nationwide in terms of production.Simply Vegas, a 500 agent brokerage with billions in annual salesClear Title, a 7 figure full service title and escrow company.➡️ Streamline Home Loans - An independent mortgage bank with more than 100 loan officers.The Simply Group, A national expansion vehicle partnering with large brokers across the country to vertically integrate their real estate brokerages.✅ Follow The Power Move with John Gafford on social media:Instagram ▶️ https://www.instagram.com/thejohnmgaffordFacebook ▶️ https://www.facebook.com/gafford2/☑️ Featuring:Cody Sperber - The Clever Investor -https://cleverinvestor.comColt Amidan - Director of Commercial Real Estate at Simply Vegas - https://www.amidangroup.com

from the art of the deal to keeping it real live from the simply vegas studios it's the power move with john gafford back again back again back again back again i mean not all of us some of us are here today connell had court lawyer stuff he's not to do i don't know he doesn't make any sense he had court lawyer stuff to do. I don't know. He doesn't make any sense. He had lawyer and stuff to do, I guess, today. So, you know, man, he missed out.

I got to tell you. You know what, dude? I had an idea, and it sucks that he's not here to hear it. Right? Good idea. Yeah, because we call you the Bulgarian mongoose. You're not Bulgarian. You're not a mongoose. I don't know what came to me. It came

to me thinking about, I was watching the Saints game on Sunday and it came up a better nickname for you. You ready? The money badger. Instead of the honey badger, the money badger. I like that. Bulgarian though is a strong national anthem. It is.

But folks, if you're listening to this, don't feel sad. He's like, what the hell? you're listening to this don't be like what the hell i know he's like what are you guys talking about don't go bad i don't know i know because today in the hot seat we have man i'm telling you i mean i legend soup stud star phenom phenom is the word i would use great we are great yeah we are blessed to have c Sperber in the studio today. Cody is somebody that I admire, that he calls me, the phone rings, and, man, I show up for him whenever he needs anything from me. And I'm blessed to have him here in the studio today.

So, man, I'm telling you right now, if you're one of those people that, of course, you know, if you're feeling stuck, if you're feeling like you want to get to the next level, if you're feeling like you just want a little more juice out of your life, this is the guy, man. This is the dude because Cody is a guy that I look at and says, this cat's got it all together. Just leveling up in every aspect of his life.

And it never accepts mediocrity of anywhere. I think it's just one of those deals where he just says, I don't accept mediocrity. He has helped, I mean, what would you say? Code hundreds of thousands of people, trillions, trillions of people. You've got over a million. You've got over a million, million subscribers to your YouTube channel, correct? Instagram, Instagram, over a million on the 1.1, 1.2.

Yeah. Helping people learn the game of real estate, man, learning how to play the game. And he plays it. He knows what he's talking about, right? Like I can, that's my biggest pet peeve. There's certain people you can sit there and listen, but you truly, you know what you're doing. Well, there's a lot of people out there that are charlatans in our space. Unfortunately, that you hear these people like, Hey, click on this and learn my course. And I'll show you how I made seven figures.

Push the button. Magic money machine. Yeah. When they've never made anything. And you're a dude that I, you know, you actually do this stuff. You're, you are, you are on site, you are knee deep in it and you know, you were, you're getting it done. So welcome coach. Glad to have you, man. Thank you guys for having me. I also am from the land of milk and money. I love that. There you go. I love that.

I love it. We're already becoming best friends. We're connected. You're already connected. There you go. Well, let me ask you this, man, because you didn't just start out being a real estate mogul. You didn't start out with all the stuff you have. So why would you go back?

Because it's real great for people to listen and see people that are super successful. But if you don't see a road for you to get there as well, what's the point? I mean, now you're just window shopping. We don't want to window shop. We want to put some success on layaway. That's what we want to do. We want to get there and talk about it. So where did you grow up, man?

Tell us the story. Where'd you start out? Yeah, Mesa, Arizona. You know, didn't know we didn't have a lot of money as a kid. I wasn't really even aware of money. What did mom and dad do? My mom worked at the phone company. She worked at a bunch of different companies.

She was a respiratory therapist for a little while when I was really young, but then she worked at the phone company in, like, customer service or something. And my dad worked in the schooling business. He, uh, like construction colleges, beauty colleges, um, like, uh, like ITT technical Institute type stuff. Was he a teacher? Well, no, he was more on the executive side of things, but like helping the owners build their business, you know, so he would be like a operations guy or, you know just helping them build the business but the challenge with my dad is he always wanted to be an entrepreneur but he and he acted like an entrepreneur but he never was an entrepreneur until later in my life so my dad would get fired

every two or three years because the he'd eventually pissed the boss off because he was trying to be the boss you know that kind of energy and uh but he would make the guy a lot of money or the girl who owned the business, um, a lot of money, but eventually they get sick of them and be like, you cross the line, you're out. Uh, so every two years I would move. So I've lived a lot of places by the time I was 11, I probably moved 20 times or something like that. Yeah. Different States, Colorado, Texas, but we always kept going back to Arizona, uh, for, for other family and stuff was there. So, so when you were a kid, when you were a kid, did you know that like, this was a struggle or was it, or were your parents open with you on that? Or did you just

think this is just how it is? No, I didn't, I didn't have any awareness of money. We never really talked about money. In fact, my parents were very much in the mindset of like, save, save every penny, save everything. If I ever asked my parents for anything, they would say, uh, what are we made of money? You're right. Or what do you think money grows on trees? You're right. Um, it was, my dad did do one of the best power moves with, for me as a kid though, I wanted a scooter. This was when I was a little bit older. I wanted this electric scooter, you know, like they're everywhere now, but back then they were brand new. Sure. And, uh, it was six or $700. And I said, can I get this electric scooter? And my dad said, what are you nuts? Like, I'm not going to give you $700. He said, but here's what I'll do for you. Um, I'll help you start a business because I've

always regretted not doing this on my own. Cause I keep getting fired and I'm out of control all the time and I don't want you to have that same experience. So he taught me the best lesson. He said, get out a piece of paper and a pencil and he created a note and he had me sign this loan note that he wrote up where he lent me $40, okay? And he said, with this $40, you're going to start a business. What kind of business

do you want to start? And I said, I don't know. And he said, well, what would your friends want that if you did something? And I said, I don't know, maybe candy. And he goes, we're going to start a candy business. I'm going to lend you 40 bucks. We're going to go to like Sam's club or something, whatever it was around that. And we're going to buy $40 worth of candy. And you're going to go to school and you're going to hustle and you're going to sell this candy and we're going to buy $40 worth of candy. And you're going to go to school and you're going to hustle and you're going to sell this candy. And you're going to pay me back my 40 bucks. And then hopefully you have more money left over and we'll start your business, but I'll give you your initial loan. And I bought Laffy Taffy's. I bought all the stuff and I went to school and I unloaded it all quarter here, 50 cents here, a dollar there. And I can, in the first day I made

like 60 bucks. I sold all the candy in one day. And I came back to him and I said, dad, I made 60 bucks at school. And he said, okay, give me my 40 bucks back. And he goes, now we're going to sign a new note, 20 bucks. He's going to, you're going to take your 20 that you made and the 20 that I'm going to lend you, we're going to get another 40. We're going to go reload. Boom. And before you knew it, I was out of the loan and I had my candy operation rolling and I made my own $700. Best lesson my dad ever taught me. That's amazing. And the only other thing he ever did that like is so memorable is my mom put me on ADHD medicine, these little banana pills, Ritalin or something. And my dad would pocket it and give me a vitamin instead. He said, listen, dude, your superpower is your ADHD.

Your mom thinks it's your like hindrance, right? It's your fricking superpower. So take this vitamin. Don't tell mom. Oh, wow. And that he did that for me. And I remember that because even though I was bouncing off the fricking walls at school, I always thought to myself, this is my superpower. I love that story about your dad. And the thing that I found most interesting about when you talk about him was the fact that he would get fired every couple of years for, for not, for, for trying to take over, be the boss. And I think it was that entrepreneurial spirit. And I think there's probably, cause that was me, dude. There was, there was a lot of stuff in my life where I would bounce jobs early in life for the same reason. I just wanted to be in charge. Wanted to do this, blah, blah, blah. And I think some of it became almost

like almost self-sabotaging because I wasn't doing what I was made to do. I wasn't doing what I was built to do. And I think that a lot of people that struggle out there are probably in that situation. So I love that your dad was like, you know what? I'm not happy here. I'm not going to replicate this cycle. And I'm going to instill this in to, I'm going to instill this in, in an early age. How old were you? How old were you when that happened? I was probably 11, 11, 11 ish. So hustling can't. So that was the first hustle. Yeah. I mean, I definitely graduated to drugs pretty quickly. I mean, it was a good transit. It was a very smooth transition to weed. Oh, sorry. Do you think that your dad in a different era, like in this era,

would have been just full-blown, super, super successful? Well, and you know, later in life, he did start a business, a VCR repair company. And then eventually when that VCRs went out, he transitioned to computer repair and that was pretty successful. And then he sold out of that business, retired, or he was selling out of that business. And eventually I hired him and then I retired my parents. But that took me, once I became successful in real estate, I was able to put them on payroll and that was that for him working. But I think his hindrance was that his dad passed away when he was like 11 or 12. So when all of a sudden you grow up and you're like, you have to be the man of the house.

You have to go get a job. You have to, that entrepreneur thing. And he did tell me a story. He tried to start a business and it failed. And he never went back for the rest of his working career until later. Until later. Things like that. You know, it's like, I think I'm an entrepreneur

because of those little fun lessons and watching him get fired. I said to myself, there's no possible way I'm built for that. I'm never going to be under somebody else's control. Well, I think too, I think it's, I think it's the time too. I think it was just the timing of it. You know, one of the best compliments I ever got from my dad wasn't even from him to me. He told my sister, he said, you know, your brother is going to be way more successful than I ever was because he's willing to take more risks than I was. And I thought, man, what a great

comment. That was a good compliment. If I was an attorney, he wasn't, you know, he was he was a well off guy. But but I just thought that was a great compliment. But I think just the timing, I think risk has gotten to be acceptable, more acceptable, and people are willing to kind of sling it out there a little bit and see what happens. And I love that for this generation. I think a lot of that a lot of that is is well let's ask a question knowledge like do you think it's people see this now and it's 50 50 i think

i think it's like how much of it is you can get better information from youtube or podcast or whatever else and how much of it is well this dude's 22 and he's got a lambo on instagram model i have a lambo too how much do you think is, which came first, the chicken or the egg, Cody? I think it was social media. I think social media gave everybody direct access to mentors in your pocket on demand, the technology and all that. I mean, like for me, the reason I blew up on Instagram is I was putting out all this entrepreneurial content daily through my posts, through my stories, eventually through lives. And I was so consistent with it that all these entrepreneurs started gravitating. And I would just tell them play

by place, right? Like, this is what to do. This is how to think here's how to operate. Here's how to act. And God, I wish I had that when I was trying to figure it out. And now that's why so many more kids are like, you know what? College is BS that it's like your political science degree is goofy. It's not going to get you into the money game and winning in life. And so people finally, I think, just woke up and said, there's a better, different path. I don't have to follow the status quo. Do you want your son to go to college?

I don't care. You don't care if he doesn't? No, I don't care. I went to college, and I got straight A's. In high school, I got C's and D's, mainly D's. In college, after high school, I went to the mainly d's um in college after high school i went to the navy after the navy i went to college okay let's talk about that for a second because i don't want to skip that because you're here you're our high school weed dealer yeah and then it's like season

d's because obviously i'm guessing the weed deal and has something to do with that maybe a little bit to do with it so at what point you're like, you're 18, you're like, I got to do something. How did the Navy come up? Well, what happened is, uh, I got, I was actually got a job. I went to Mesa community college for half a day. I tried to go to half a day. I made it, I made it to like walking through the campus to like towards the class. And then I, I beelined back to the car and I'm like, this isn't for me. I'm out. Um, but I went and got a job selling used cars and I was the number one used car salesman, uh, my first month. And I made six grand in one month and I couldn't believe it. I, I was like, this is a ton of money. It was easy. I had no clue what I was doing. I was a horrible salesman,

but I was, it was like the beginner, like where everybody just knew, like this guy's not a shark yet. So I'll buy a car from this poor kid. But then the second month I tried to get slick and my sales went, you know. How many times have we said that? You know, you memorize every detail of the car and next thing you know, you're overselling. Well, no, no, no, no.

What we always say here, because I did the same thing. When I first got the restaurant business and I learned somebody's, you know, a buddy of mine was a vice president at WorldCom and I was like, give me a job. He's like, I can't give a job, no sales experience. He goes, you can either go sell Kirby vacuum cleaners or sell cars. You'll get a PhD in sales either way. So I was like, I'm not selling vacuum cleaners.

So I went and sold cars. And the first month selling cars, I like salesman of the month, crushed everything. Like I sold 30 new cars in a month month which is like balling a perfect game and uh everything and then you get educated and you never make as much money in the car business to do your first month because yeah when when the sales off when the sales manager goes hey man that's that's the best we can do when you're brand new you believe it yeah but when you push when you've been there for a minute you're like nah i know he's gonna do better let's just hurry this up and you get slick like you just said and you try to to go from A to Q. You know, it's like, it's like my, my, my used car. I was

doing used and new, but my used car mentors, one was a guy named Julian. He was from Thailand. And then the other guy was named Max and he had like four missing teeth and halitosis, you know, like these are my mentors in the car business, like teaching me what to do. So that lasted a second month. I bombed by the third month. I quit, but I took that six grand and I went and bought a pound of weed. And then I moved in with my buddy Leon and we were playing video games, smoking weed every single day.

By the way, I'm going to pre-frame this story with, I currently don't do drugs. Okay. Here we go. I'm clean. I'm healthy and I'm focused and nothing wrong with that. I would smoke some weed, but like, I don't do drugs. Okay. Here we go. I'm clean. I'm healthy and I'm focused and nothing wrong with that. I would smoke some weed, but like I don't. And, uh, but back then I was a early adopter and it's on the cutting edge by seventh grade, you know?

So anyways, I'm, we're smoking weed every single day and we would walk and we're, by the way, I was like maybe five, six, super short, had not grown yet. I'm like a super late bloomer. And then I was overweight. So I just was unhealthy. I was always a hustler, but very unambitious. I didn't have a path. I didn't have a plan. I didn't have like energy to put it anywhere. You were drifting, my friend. I was drifting. You were drifting. Yep. And so, but we would walk every single day to the 7-Eleven to buy munchies and we would pass the Army, Navy, Marine Corps, Coast Guard recruiting station, right? And so one of the days we were walking and I said, wouldn't it be funny if we joined the military?

My dad was in the military. And I said, wouldn't it be funny if we joined the military? And Leon said, dude, you'll never get in. You can't even do a pushup, a pull up or run to the circle K. And I said, I could beat you to the circle K. And he said, let's race. We didn't even make it halfway through the parking lot before both of us stopped. We're so out of shape, but it was like a running joke. So anyway, I eventually ran out of money and I went back to my dad and I said, dad, I'm living in this apartment. My stuff's about to get turned off. I need to pay some bills. Can I borrow some money? And my dad said, why would I ever give you money? Like you're, you don't have a job. You're not going to college. Like, what are you doing with your life? And I said, funny thing. I'm thinking about joining the military.

And he goes, that's the best thing I ever heard. Here's some money. Okay. Okay. Right. All right. Week or two later, out of money again, have to pay more stuff, show back up. Hey dad, I just need a little bit more money. He said, Hey, no problem. How's the military thing going? I said, great. We're talking, we're processing. Like I've walked by them twice on the way to get Cheetos. We're doing stuff, you know? And he said, okay, here's a little bit more money. I'm not giving you more money though. Two, three weeks later, I'm out of money. My lights are getting shut off. I come back.

I said, dad, last time I promised I need some more money. He said, okay, but this literally last time, tell me details. I want to know everything about the, which branch are you picking? I said, probably the Navy, just like you. You know, I want to be like you. And I had never been in to the recruiting station up until this point, you know? And he goes, I love all of this. I'd like to meet your recruiter.

And I said, you know, I could set that up. And he said, he said, how about right now get in the car? And I'm like, I'm like, Oh my God, I haven't actually talked to anyone. Yeah. This is, he's really getting me in the car right now. So we go get in the car. We drive to the Navy place. I get out of the car. I run, the Navy place. I get out of the car. I run. I beeline to the door ahead of my dad. I open it up. I say, my name is Cody Sperber. For the last two months, I've been lying to my dad about joining.

This Mexican recruiter. You see him just kind of cock his head, get this shit-eating grin on his face, and he's just like, Welcome to the Navy, son. Mr. Sperber, I was just at the final stages with your son. We're going to sign him up today. We're going to take the ASVAB, and we're going to pick a career. Oh, boy. And I look at him.

I'm behind my dad now. I'm like, you mother. I cannot believe this. He closed so hard that day. So, of course, I'm like, how bad can this be? What else do I have going on? Yeah, how bad can this be? First off, they're not going to let me in.

I can't do a push-up. I can't do a pull-up. I can't run a mile. I can't do anything. None of it. So he goes, all you got to do is take this test and then we'll tell you what jobs are available. I said, sure. No problem. Purposely try to bomb this test. ABAB up, down, select, start left, right. I'm doing the contract code. You know, I'm like, no matter what I'm bombing this test, there's no way I'm getting in and uh we come back like a week later he called my dad he stopped talking to me he just called my dad hey bring cody in so my dad calls me up we go in he said hey congratulations there are three jobs here at

the navy that you qualify for oh boy i'm like how is that possible he said he said i said all right hit me with him he said the first job is very important very important you are taking care of the ship you you make sure the anchor and the chains and like the ship and the side and the inside and everything is painted and clean and perfect and and i'm like like a janitor and he goes exactly like a janitor and I'm like, like, like a janitor. And he goes exactly like a janitor. And I'm like, okay, what's the second job? And he goes, great job. You stand on the side of the ship. When another ship is passing, you hold these flags and you wave these flags around. It's called a signalman. You wave these flags around. And I'm like, okay, he's going to be so excited about the flag waving.'s gonna be crazy can i retake this test by now yeah i know i'm like oh my god this is not applicable to real life so i said okay what's the third job he said the third job's actually my favorite um

it's navigation you tell the ship where to go ah okay and i said am i up with the captain and he said yeah you are and i, is there air conditioning? He said, yes, there is. I'm like, I'll do that job. And I chose quartermaster. And that's how I ended up joining the Navy. And I looked at my dad and I, you know, this is the hustler in me. I said, listen, dad, I asked the recruiter, how long, if I sign up today before I ship out, he said, you can go up to one year later. I said, dad, you pay my bills for one year and then I'll go. And he said, I'll give you three months. I said, I'll take it. Let's go. Boom. And the recruiter said, listen, I got to be honest with you. I've never seen a kid that can't do a single pull up or push up, right? You got during this three months, you got to be able

to do X, like X amount of this and X amount of this. Uh, so that's how I got in the Navy. I, I, and by the way, to this day, do not tell my dad this story because he does not know. Keep it quiet. This is between us, right? So how long, obviously the military wound up being good for you. Best thing I ever did. So how long, so you go to basic, I guess. Four years. Best thing I ever did. Did you actually get in shape before you went? No. You procrastinated. I mean, I kind of like, I was able to do some stuff, but like, no, during bootcamp, my life changed. I instantly realized I was unprepared for life. Like they shave your head. They, they take your identity. I mean, for God's sakes,

there was probably two or three times. And this is the middle of great lakes, Illinois in the middle of winter. I'm marching while sleeping. Like that's how fatigued you are. Like you're just conditioned and brainwashed. Like everything is these like really great routines and you're doing these chants and you're working out all the time. You're working as a team and, and they put even like, even the recruits, like there's a hierarchy you like, they would look at, like there's a hierarchy. Like they would look at you and go, you get a sword and you're in charge of all these knuckleheads. And you're like, cool, give me a sword. You know, and as I'm looking at you going, why do you get a sword?

I want a sword. Like, you know, how do I get to your position? And you learn very quickly that there's a bunch of idiots, like in real life, in the military, that the only reason they have their position is time. They spent time to get to the rank and it makes you really mad inside. Like I'm smarter than them. I'm better than them. I'm faster than them.

I'm more talented than them. Whatever your thought process is, but they're in charge of you. So it's the same process that your dad had when he was getting those jobs. Yes. The same thoughts he had. Yeah. Same thing.

So you, you start working really hard to like build rank real fast and is try, you try to move up. A lot of people that were in like E-5s, which is like a second-class petty officer, when I got in, you're a semen recruit, which is the lowest level ever. Semen sperber.

Yeah. Semen recruit sperber. But eventually I made it for a couple years. Colt's got low semen too, so it's fine. It's fine. But eventually I made it for a couple years. Colt's got low semen too, so it's fine. But eventually I made it to where the people that was originally in charge of me, I was now equal to them within four years. Something happened in me where I got the drive and ambition. So you spent four years in the Navy?

Yeah, and I traveled the world by myself. Been to like 30 different countries. All this great stuff happened. You grow up. I got taller. I got in shape. I started caring about things, my shoes, my making my bed, caring about what I look like, carrying myself a little bit different. I started having more self-confidence and discipline and stuff like that. Even though I was still a rule breaker, even though I pushed back, even though I fought the system and I couldn't wait to get out.

Looking back now, greatest thing that ever happened to me because almost all of my friends, juvie or prison. Yeah. Do you think it was the consistency of what you were now forced to live that was, it was, it was showing up and making more responsible or building that confidence in you? Because I would like to think that you were going from a place of no consistency to absolute consistency. Yes. And I think it was the expectation that we demand more out of you. And then just through a long period of time, you start to operate at a higher level. And I couldn't wait to get out. It getting out of the military is like getting out of prison.

They punch a hole in your car and they're like, get out. And all that structure, all that, that system is in the wind. It's gone. And all of a sudden you find yourself in this really weird place, which is why I liked to say, that's why when I started my business,

I liked it because I built a system around to create that rigid, that, that structure. That structure. Yeah. So you can't, you came out of the Navy. So what'd

you do right when you first got out? Well, I went and talked to, um, I wanted to be a marine biologist before going in the military. Like if you would ask me as a little kid, what do you want to be? I would say, yeah, marine biologist. Um, the problem is I got violently seasick every time I was on a ship, which is tough luck in the Navy. You don't realize that coming from Arizona, like haven't ever really been on a boat before, but hey, let's join the Navy. But I didn't want to do that. So my backup plan was a ninth grade history professor or teacher. And I went and talked to the professors at San Diego State University.

And I said, hey, I'm thinking about being a history teacher or professor. I don't know. How much do you guys make and do you like your jobs? And one of the guys said, I love my job. And the other guy started laughing and he said, I have two jobs because they pay the pay is crap. You got to really love this profession because you're not going to get paid that much money. And I'm like, what are you doing your second job? And he's like, I drive taxis or something. I'm like, I'm out. I don't know if this is for me. Like, that's not my gig. And while I was in, but the MGI bill pays for your college. So while I was in college, I went back to my only counselor that I knew, AKA my dad. And I said, what should

I do with my life? And he said, no matter what you do, as long as you know how to read financial statements and understand basic finance and accounting you could do anything so i'm like dad i'm horrible at math like i'm great at money i'm horrible at math and he's like just go get a degree in finance and you'll be all right yeah so i went and got enrolled at um arizona state wp carey school of business for a degree in finance that that's so funny because we were talking about college earlier and literally i told somebody this the other day, in my opinion, the only degree, unless you're a specialized doctor, attorney, whatever, the only thing worth getting is a degree in finance. It's the same thing because I deal with so many people that you go in and through partnerships or whatever else

we do and you realize very quickly, these people are very good at a skill that they have that has enabled them to build a business, but they have no idea how to look at a balance sheet. They just don't know. And it just, it's shocking to me how many people are out there like that. Yeah. And it was, it was tough. And, and something turned on where I wanted to get straight A's for the first time in my life for no other reason than a personal challenge. Yeah. And I did, I, I, I didn't get a single, I got all A's all throughout college. Is that summa cum laude? Magna cum laude? One of them. And so anyway, I got straight A's, got my degree in finance, emphasized in accounting. But while I was going

to college, something fateful happened. I went to lunch with a friend named Jeremy, pulls up in a brand new Mercedes. I said, how'd you get the car? He said, flipped a house, made 80 Gs. What year is this? 2003. Okay. I said, you're full of crap. I said, Jeremy, I know you. You don't have any money.

How'd you flip a house? And where did you even get a house? Like, how'd you buy a house? And he said, oh, it's this process called wholesaling. A mortgage broker friend of mine showed me how to do it. And I flipped this house. I made 80,000. He said, 8,000, not normal, by the way, that's like really a big number. He goes, normally it's like 10 grand, five grand, 20 grand, but this one happened to be 80. And I said, show me what you mean. And he literally pulled it. We were at lunch. He pulled out a napkin and penciled on the napkin, this process of wholesaling. And I took the napkin home with

me afterwards. And I was processing. And back then you got to understand no YouTube, no podcast, no information, nowhere to get this. Yeah. No online. There was books, tape CDs. There was info gurus like from infomercials. And you would read in the back of newspapers, believe it or not, when the guru would come into town or where he was going to teach these classes, very limited information online. And so I started looking into it and I realized there's this world of creative real estate that's out there that nobody talks about. And the more I went down the rabbit hole, the more pissed I was getting at myself because I'm like, how come I never heard of this? And by the time I really started diving in, Jeremy had done a second house.

And he made like another $25,000 or $30,000. And I'm like, dude, this guy is printing cash and he's not that smart. Like, no offense, Jeremy. Not that smart. Jeremy, if you're one of our listeners, I'd like to apologize. The thoughts and feelings of Cody Sperber do not reflect that in the power move. No, I mean, smart, but like you, like not nothing that you would not be able to do. A finance degree. Yeah.

And so I'm like, I got to be able to figure this out. So I dove all in trying to figure this out for nine months. I bought, I went to 15, 20 seminars, put it all on my credit card, laced up 30K in credit card debt, flying all over the country, going to seminars. The gurus loved me. Everybody who did a good stage presentation, I was throwing my credit card. I'm like, yeah. And I would buy binders and D and books and all this stuff. And, uh, I would walk out with all these bags of crap and I go home and I lay them out on the table and I'd be like, all right, this is good.

This, now I'm going to get rich. This is how I'm going to do real estate. And all it was was information overload. Well, that's a great, great point. So you did a lot of ready aim, ready aim, ready aim, but never fire. And I think a lot of people do that. And I think a lot of that, you know, whenever people come to work for me, I give them the disc test, right? Because I want to see what I'm working with personality trait. And I find

people, if you've never taken one, please look up this test. Please take this and understand what you're dealing with in yourself. Because if you don't understand your limitations of your personality, you cannot overcome them. However, people that I find that have a high C, if they have that high C in the disc tests of conscientious, those are the people that like, well, I need to understand everything that could humanly possibly happen in a real estate transaction before I start because what if this comes up? Yeah, and what I'm looking for is people that high D high I in sales that are like fucking figure it out Let's go. I gotta go can't sit here Yeah and

in so many people get trapped by that and I found That just because you have that high C, if you take a test and you see this, don't be like, oh, I'm screwed for life. Just understanding it, that that's part of your personality and being like, you know what, maybe I don't need to know every single thing that's going to possibly happen. And if something happens, I can say, I'll be right back. Let me go figure it out and I'll come back. So you had nine months worth of books and DVDs and tapes and binders and folders and everything else. And what finally, I tried, I mean, don't get me wrong. I was taking action. The thing is with,

with a lot of this, and this goes back to your very first statement of like how many BS informational gurus are out there that don't actually do the business. It's old, outdated information. They're just peddling this crap just to make a buck and they don't do the business i would go pay i was too literal that was my challenge is i would go to page one it would say do this this this and this and then page two do this but by page three i it's the disconnect started like it wasn't real worth real world applicable and so now i'm like stuck a little bit overthinking like why doesn't this happen next? And then I would have to skip to page 25 to realize that was actually what I should be doing. Not, you know, it got all jumbled. And also something about real estate. I was too nice. I was too nice in the beginning.

I thought everybody, as a new entrepreneur, I thought everybody wanted to collaborate and everybody was telling the truth and everybody was your friend. And the, like there's realtors, there's title agents, there's, there's other wholesalers, other investors, there's money lenders, there's all these people involved. And when there's big money in a transaction, there's a, they're there, they have an agenda. They're trying to get something done that they want done. And the dance that I had to learn is the persuasion, the influence, the understanding people and their whys and what makes people move, the influence. And at first I didn't have that skill. So I was just like, take everybody for face value. And then they would screw me out of

the deal or they'd push me around. And next thing you know, they would take the deal and go do it themselves or something. So I was just too naive. Well, I think, I think that's interesting. Talk about that more, which is so when you, obviously the best way to get deals done is appeal to people's self-interest. We literally talked about that for five minutes last week. So how do you determine when you meet people and you start talking to them, how do you determine what their self-interest might be? Well, I mean, I, I think it depends on who the person is, you know, it's like, if you're dealing with like, for me, if I'm dealing with a cash buyer or another wholesaler or something like, you know, their, their job description kind of tells me what their

objective is, but reading their personality type, you know, there are different personality types, understanding how to be a great active listener and a great question asker. I used to come in like over talk and almost try to oversell myself because I was so new. I didn't have real confidence yet. I was over selling too much about you and not enough about that. Yeah. And then what you really realize when you really are good at this game, there's just become really, I'm two things right out of the gate. I'm enthusiastic and I'm very intentional. So like I have a lot of enthusiasm and I know exactly where we're going and I'm really great at asking questions. So I instantly

am opening you up and trying to understand your hopes, your fears, your dreams, and almost kind of like that. If you had a magic wand, what would you want this to look like? And pulling that out of them. So that way they tell me how to do business with them. And then once I started to understand that, I started to see, and as I made these mistakes where I was so close to getting a deal, but then it fell through. And you're in that moment where you're processing and you're pissed off and you're like, dude, I was so close. I was like, I was finally going to make 10 grand or 20 grand. When I first got in the business, I wrote on a sticky note, $4,000 a month. That was my big dream. That was the goal.

I'm not trying to get really rich. I'm trying to make $4,000 a month. That's your shoe bill now. Yeah. So it's like, you know, I, I wasn't, I was just trying to get some deals done. And, but through that processing, you start to develop this internal compass, this, this, this thing that kind of says, this person's with you, this person's not with you. This person has an agenda. This person

cares about these things. And I just got better at it. And, but by nine months, here's what happens. Your first month in the business, you have all this youthful energy. You're going to dominate. You're excited. Second month, that little self-limiting voice, it just starts talking to you. Why is this taking so long? What are you doing wrong? By the third month, now it's your friends and family and other voices starting to get a little noisier. By the fourth month, you're starting to run out of that immediate energy. And now you're doing the pep talks and you're trying to like re-energize yourself by the fifth month you're starting to like really panic because you're running out of money and you're running out of energy and you've already told everybody all the

the things right that that try to keep them on board with you but now they're starting to like fade out yeah they're like okay cody like maybe a history professor is a good kid. And so I made it by my ninth month. My inner voice was screaming at me. This isn't for you. It's just not in your cards. Go do something else. You have $30,000 in credit card debt.

Your bill is due right now. Your parent, my parents sat me down at the seventh month and said, Cody, we love you. We'll support you in anything that you do. Except for this, because you need to stay focused on college. Rich people do real estate. This is what they said. And this is my dad, my hero. Rich people do real estate. If your friend did it, he got lucky or it's a scam and he's going to get in trouble for it later. Wait until after you get a really good job, you work your way, you save money. Then eventually you can buy some real estate and retire wealthy. If that's in your heart, how, how conscious are you not to pivot away from what you're saying, but how conscious are you based on that? Based on that one statement from your, from your dad, your hero, right?

The consigliere of you, if you will saying that, how conscious are you now of not putting limiting beliefs on your kids? I literally, my entire parenting systematic approach is to empower him to believe. To believe whatever he wants. All of it. All of it. And my son is a beast. Oh, yeah. Like, he is going to dominate everything. And I took a lot of what my dad taught me, and I implemented it.

He got the contract. He got the loan. He got the start of business and he's done it now five, six, seven times where he's been able to create thousands of dollars, a little kid in all these different little ventures that he gets into. Um, and he he's it's working. So we never say, never say, uh, what am I made of money? Like we don't talk. Our money is all our relationship with money is always positive. Yeah. How can we create it? That's a brilliant idea. You're going to love that scooter. What are we going to do together to create that? Create the money. Yep. That's it. How I'm, um, for those of you who don't know what wholesaling is, I mean, I'm sure everybody does, but wholesaling is essentially where you put a property under contract with an

and or a signee, and then you assign the contract to somebody else for a fee. It's simply just take, take a little finder's fee for the deal is essentially what you do. Now, the problem with wholesaling is this from a realtor standpoint. Actually, this is going to be an issue. It's great if you're a wholesaler in Nevada. It's bad if you're a realtor that's a wholesaler in Nevada. Because the Nevada Real Estate Commission allegedly is going to make it illegal for you to wholesale if you are a licensee. They're going to make that illegal in Nevada. And if you are a licensee. They're going to

make that illegal in Nevada. And the reason being- Surprising. You would think it'd be the flip. No. Here's the thought. The thought is that a licensee is supposed to do what's in the best interest of the client. And they feel that if you're a licensee, taking a fee when that could have gone to the client ahead of time is not it. Now, I'm not talking about wholesalers. That's not the point. The point is, you know, I've always said, I said from the stage at Inman, I said, look, man, you want to be a wholesaler. Great. But a realtor that walks into list the house and winds up taking it into a signee and scraping an assignment fee that could have gone to a distressed seller. That to me is wrong. Got it. You know, but, but again, when now what I do think is, is that's where you started doing that, right?

Wholesaling was it. But you are a whiz at all creative financing now. All of it. So without skipping too far ahead in the story, I just want to hear your thoughts on this one thing because I just want to make sure we get to it because I think this is so important. I think, this is my opinion,

I want to know what says Cody Sperber, the clever investor. I want to know what he says. I think the best opportunity we've seen to acquire property in the last 15 years is probably right now buying sub two distressed mortgages. I want as many 3% mortgages as I can get. Why distressed? I think there's going to be a ton of it. Why not just 3% mortgages? Why does it have to be distressed?

Well, I just think that there's going to be a lot of people through the recession that are going to get hurt and maybe bought towards the top of the market as prices recede a little bit and are going to need a way out. I buy a lot of houses, sub two wraparound mortgages, contract for deed, any of the real creative stuff. And if you don't know those terms, look them up because it's really a rabbit hole, which is really interesting because most people think you got to go to a bank to borrow money. And if the challenge with that, especially if you're an entrepreneur, is the bank crawls up your butt. They want all these docs, all this history, all these things to fall perfectly in line because their plan is to package it up and resell it at some point in the future to somewhere else. And they can't do that

unless they have all this checklist handled. And most entrepreneurs can't qualify for loans. And they can't do that unless they have all this checklist handled. And most entrepreneurs can't qualify for loans. And it's hard to get a lot of them. So you're limited. And it's just a really tough game and a very slow way to build wealth. Now, imagine if you were able to bypass the bank and get the seller to participate in the financing for you. And when we talk about creative real estate, there's a whole bunch of things under that umbrella. Wholesaling is one of them. That's a no money down transactional house flipping strategy. But that's not owning real estate. A subject to transaction is, there's only three scenarios that always happen when you roll up to a seller. They either own the house free and clear, which means that there are

certain strategies that work now that there's no mortgage on the property. So they can be your bank. They can seller finance you the deal. Real simple transaction. If you ever want to get into creative finance, just go find free and clear houses and call the sellers and say, do you want to sell? Because if you think about in any real estate transaction, we're negotiating price or terms. And most people focus on price and they don't understand terms. And terms is just creative finance. That's all creative finance is. I'll give you the price. You give me the terms. And so imagine being able to create any type of deal under the sun. When you go to a bank, they want to give you a 30-year mortgage. Well, what if I could get a 40-year mortgage or a 50-year mortgage or a 60-year mortgage

from the seller? What if instead of paying 5% interest, I tier it where I say, hey, I'll pay 5% interest, but 1% on year one, 2% on year two, three on year three, four. By year five, then it caps off at five. And then forevermore, it's 5%. Why can't I do that? If you say it's okay, and I say it's okay, and you're the seller, we're in the game. Well, that's why you asked me why they have to be distressed. Because honestly, as a realtor that's supposed to be doing the best thing for their clients, I love the sub two on distress because not only are you getting them out of

the problem, not only are you getting them out of the problem, not only are you potentially putting some money in their pocket for whatever, if there's a small equity scrape, but you're also fixing their credit by catching their lates up. I love that. And getting it done.

So you're doing a service for them by fixing their credit as you're doing this and everybody else. Yeah, but you gotta understand, if I'm giving you the price that you want, I'm doing you a service. Yeah, that's what I'm doing. If I'm getting you out of a foreclosure, a pre-foreclosure, I'm doing you a service. There's a lot of ways to do right by the seller. That's judgmental.

That's perception of who's looking at what's right. For me, it's either free and clear, or it's got a mortgage on it with a lot of equity, or it's got a mortgage on it with little to no equity. What you're talking about is what if you have a mortgage and you're behind on payments and yo, 300,000 on the property and the house is only worth 300,000. They don't have a lot of choices. They can't list it with the real estate agent because they can't even afford the real estate agent commissions and closing costs. That's a great solution for an empowered agent to know how to do creative finance to say, Hey, listen, I'll catch up your arrearages. I'll put up 15 or 20 grand. We'll stop this foreclosure process. We'll get you back on track. We'll move you out to another place that you can

afford. I'll step in. I'll take over your mortgage. I'll make the payments, which is going to eventually rebuild your credit. And it's a win-win for both of us. I get a great rental. I bypass a bank, built-in financing, and then you could turn it into an Airbnb and 4X your cashflow. Brilliant for an agent, brilliant for the seller. The challenge with that is two, three years down the road, when the seller goes to buy another property, this is where the problems come up. The seller has a normal job and they go to qualify for a new home and their mortgage lender goes, well, you already own a home. And he goes, no, I don't. I sold it to John. And he's like, well, John, it's still, the mortgage is still in your name. Who's John? Who's John? And why, why does he have your house? And, and, but your mortgages is still on your

credit. And then they go the acceleration. You never know what'll happen then. Right? So instead of a subject to, I like to do what's called a wraparound mortgage, which is a brand new mortgage. So the mortgage is in place. Now there's a new mortgage over top of it. And the seller's actually giving you a new mortgage, a new loan, which does not mess with the original owner's debt to income ratio. So it's just the same kind of procedure. So wait, you can't use it because I was told the way that I, the way I was told on the sub two stuff, you can use the payments.

Like you can use the payment 75% as, as rental income towards our DTI after 12 months. But again, you have to have history of it. It can't be like three months later, something like that. But look, it's just a cleaner transaction with the wraparound wrap. Okay. Nothing wrong with sub twos. I've done a gazillion of them. Love them. There's just a little bit, I don't want to call it more risk. It's just, because you have to refinance them out. The question that agents, especially licensed agents and their brokers care about is if I'm separating the mortgage from the note, the deed from the note, is that illegal in any way?

Okay. Is there a legal, is there anything illegal that I'm doing here by getting a seller to deed me their house, but leaving their mortgage in place? And the answer is no, there's nothing illegal. Next question. Is it ethical? It says in the mortgage docs that they have the right to do that. If they choose, it doesn't say they're going, the acceleration clause are most often written that way. What's that? Well, it says Cody, we have you on every mortgage doc. There's something called a due on sale clause. And it says, if you separate the mortgage from the deed, then they can, if they catch you,

have the right to accelerate the loan and call it due. So the question of ethical comes back to who signed what paperwork? As me, the investor or investor agent, stepping in to help a seller out and doing this real creative transaction, did I sign anything with the bank saying I would not? No.

So from my standpoint, perfectly ethical. I'm helping people solve problems in real estate. Now, the original seller, is it ethical for them to do this? Is it ethical for them not to make their payments? No. Is it? So that's the question that like, once they, once that clicks in people's mind, they're like, oh, okay, I'm not doing anything illegal. I'm not doing anything really unethical. But what I do tell every seller, do not lie to your bank. If your bank calls you and point blank says, did you transfer the mortgage? Say, yes, I did.

And you immediately call me and you get me involved the mortgage? Say, yes, I did. And you immediately call me and you get me involved because I know how to talk to the bank and I'm perfectly okay as an investor to deal with the due on sale clause because I will have options. I could deed it back to you. We can cash it out. There's other options to figure this out. Sometimes I can work it out directly with the bank. So it's legal. It's ethical, it's creative. And it's one of the fastest ways to own real estate,

build a massive portfolio, create a ton of cashflow at warp speed as an entrepreneur. Well, cause if you go like, for example, let's say you take a million bucks. All right. And you go put it in the market, the traditional way you're going to put 20% down. So really you're buying power on traditional mortgages is a maximum 800,000. But if you were to do this, I mean, you could probably lever your buying power to 4 million. If they do a due on, you know, if they do a due on sale and they call you, do you ever assume their loans or are you just say, when you say deed it back, are you taking a percentage now of that equity? Like what if, what if there's so many ways to do it. We have it in our paperwork that

we have the right to choose to just deed the property back if we want. That may or may not fix the due on sale part. The lender might say, okay, you moved it back. Cool. They might say, we don't want, we don't want, like it's already too late. We want it. Think about why a lender would do, call the due on sale clause. If they lent out at 3% and now mortgage rates are at 10%, they want to pull the money back and relend it at 10%.

So like, you got to be aware of the environment that we're operating in. But normally what happens is that seller goes to buy another property four years later. They have amnesia. They don't really communicate with you anymore. You're not good at this creative finance thing. I keep in touch with every one of my creative finance deals, the original owners. I also have a power of attorney that allows me to do anything I need to do with that. It's a limited power of attorney that allows me to do anything I do for this house. But let's say I wasn't good and I didn't keep in touch with them. And now they're going through a divorce four years later, five years later.

The divorce attorneys are going to say, where's the assets? Where's the da-da-da? And they're going to figure out, oh, this house had all this equity or whatever, magically moved out of this thing. What is it? Now they're sandbagging the deal. They're calling the lender on themselves. You see what I'm saying? Or they die and their heirs inherit something. And they're trying to figure out what that something is. And they're like, what happened to the house? And you know what, you know, what burns most people

uses the insurance, the homeowner's insurance. When they put it back in their name, all of a sudden the bank wants to know that's what I found triggers or what I've heard triggers most of those people. Yeah. So we have an investor insurance company that's very familiar with sub twos that knows how to, because whenever you take over another person's mortgage, it has insurance built into it. You're just not the insured or the additionally insured. And what can trigger the due on sale clause is that update of like the original seller coming off the insured or the additionally insured. And what can trigger the due on sale clause is that update of like the original seller coming off the insured and you going on. And so you could do one of two things. You can either add a second policy, leave the original policy on, but now you're paying for

two policies. That's not the best choice. Or you can figure out a way to get a new policy on there and eventually get the old policy off, but then make the original seller an additional insured. Yeah. So they're still on there. It's just a new policy where you're the main person. Well, I think, you know, we're getting technical. And I want to go back to when, I want to go back to your wholesaling.

Because, dude, you went from just figuring out how I'm going to wholesale with all of your books to building a fucking empire, man. Yeah. And I think that's what, how do we get, so how do I go from a couple, let's leave the minutia of people, if you're like not interested in real estate at this point, you're probably talking about,

let's get, yeah, let's get back to this. So you go from the pile of books to doing a couple wholesale deals. You're, you're finally, your parents sit you down to say, absolutely not. And, but you push through anyway, and you get something done. I made it two more months. Made it two more months. Before I quit. You quit? I quit. Yeah, I quit. My girlfriend, who's now my wife, she was not having it anymore.

My friends were making fun of me. My parents were, my boy, I had a deal that was right there on the finish line. And actually a real estate agent pushed me out of the deal at the last minute and I lost the money. And that was kind of the final straw for me. And that day I happened to look at a bulletin board at ASU that was like a job bulletin board. And there was a bookkeeper wanted ad. And I was taking accounting classes and finance classes. I'm like, how hard can bookkeeping be? Said 34 grand a year, uh, needed ASAP. I called the guy, he said, come on down. I need somebody right away. This was on a Friday. I showed up, look like I'm 15 years old, show up in my dad's suit. You know, I'm like, he's like,

you know how to do books. I'm like, of course I know how to do books. He's like, great. You're hired 34 grand a year. You start Monday. I said, that's the interview. He goes, yeah, you need to leave and come back on Monday. I said, oh, okay. I did that. How fast it happened. I left. I went to the bookstore. I bought bookkeeping for dummies. I said, Oh, okay. I did that. How fast it happened. I left. I went to the bookstore. I bought bookkeeping for dummies. I read it all weekend long, showed up on Monday and I'm a bookkeeper. That was it. My real estate business was done. I worked for him for four months. Now he was a house flipper. He was a house. It's like the hero's journey here. Come there. This is it. There it was. And so he was doing historic renovations in downtown Phoenix in the historic districts. That's a hard thing to do. And he was doing these deals and he had about 30 projects going at one

time and he was raising all this money from friends and family and stuff. So I'm doing his books and I'm seeing the millions coming in, the millions going out, seeing his Mercedes. And this guy was a doofus, like a doofus. He was such a dick. He was, you know, the typical, like nice suit, nice shoes. Everybody's below me. I'm the man strutting around town, just the man. And he treated all of us employees like crap. And I remember looking at the money. I'm like, dude, this guy is killing it. And he's an asshole. And he, there's no way I could not do this business. Like I'm just getting pissed. I made it about three months before I was like fed up and magic happens. You know, sometimes in your life, there are pivot moments in your life. You got to really pay attention and follow your intuition. Cause one of my best friends at the time got with my girlfriend and

said, Hey, Cody's miserable. Have you noticed how miserable he is? And she's like, yeah, he's a dick. Like he's horrible to be around. He's always complaining. He doesn't, he's just nasty. Cause I was so unhappy with myself at that time. And he said, I'm going to take him to San Francisco to go to this real estate seminar. You think he'll go with me? And she's like, I doubt it. He's been to 50 seminars. He hates, he hates everything about this. So they started working on me, like to go to the seminar, go to the seminar. And I was pushing back. And eventually he said, just come on a vacation with me. Like the seminar is not really the thing. Come on vacation. I said, okay, I'll go. I walked into a Jack Miller seminar. There was about 350 people in the room. I can't explain it other than you ever been in an

environment where all your arm hairs stand up and you just feel like this is different. I'm meant to be here. That's cold. Every time he walks in a room with me. Yeah. He just knows, he just knows he gets a little real estate job. Um, but I just knew. And it was funny because I was looking in the audience and Jack was up at the podium and Jack was old at the time. One of the best creative real estate investors ever to live. And in the audience was all the guys that I bought freaking books and tapes from. And I'm like, I bought from him. I bought from him.

Al Lowry, I bought from him. Like all the gurus were there. And they're frantically taking notes from him. I bought from him. I bought Al Lowry. I bought from him. Like all the gurus were there and there's frantically taking notes from Jack. And I'm like, Jack is like the guru guru. Like this is cool. And at lunch I'm at the bar and I'm sitting there and there's this old guy sitting at the bar and he's got Adidas sweat pads, pants pulled up to his nipples.

This old wrinkly like polo shirt tucked into his Adidas sweatpants and giant clunky old man Velcro shoes. And he's got this wily hair. He looks like Yoda and he's sitting at the bar and I'm talking to him and I ordered my food and they're like, it'll be here in 35 minutes. So I'm just chopping it up with this guy. His name is Lyle. And Lyle happened to have a house in Arizona and lived in Colorado part-time in Arizona in the winter months. And we're talking and he was the most magnetic, amazing storyteller I've ever heard next to Jack Miller. And he would tell me these war stories of 30 years of creative finance and real estate. And he'd called it transactional engineering. And he would say, then I do this and I cut this income stream and I sell this off and I do it myself, direct to Roth in a tax-free environment. And I started with $50,000 and now I have 19

million in there and I did this and this and this. And I'm like, just enamored with this old guy. And I'm like, I don't know what is happening here. I fought coming to this thing. You have to be my mentor. Like you have to be like, I've wasted 30,000. I wasted nine months. I hate my job. I'm probably going to lose my girlfriend. Like everything is falling apart. Like you have to be like, I've wasted 30,000. I wasted nine months. I hate my job. I'm probably going to lose my girlfriend. Like everything is falling apart. Like I, this is destiny. Like I have to have you as my mentor. And he said, absolutely freaking not. I am not mentoring you. And I said, why not? And he said, you'll quit. And I said, I will not quit. He said, no, I can already tell you quit once already. You'll quit. I said, Lyle, it's destiny.

You live in Arizona part of the year. Like, I'm meant to be with you. And he said, you like baseball? And I said, not really. Okay, yeah, I guess, whatever. And he said, I'll make you a deal. Three rules, like baseball, and I'll mentor you. You, and by the way, and like baseball, three strikes.

You talk back at any point in time, I'm out and you're done. He said, first rule is you got to show up tomorrow morning with $10,000 and $5 bills. I said, Lyle, I'm broke. And he said, this is not my fucking problem. I said, okay, what's rule number two? And he said, rule number two is, um, there's three rules, three strikes. Rule number two is there's three strikes like baseball. And if you fail, I keep her 10 grand and we don't ever talk again. I said, okay. I said, what's rule number three? So rule number

three is on your first deal, you get to keep 100% of the money, your first big deal. After that, I get to pick and choose out of every deal. If I even say one sentence to you, I get to pick and choose what I keep out of the deal and what you keep out of the deal. So not only are you going to pay me on the front end, you're gonna pay me on the back end for all your hard work. And I said, geez, man, you're a great mentor. Like, this just sounds like a pleasure working with you. But I was challenged, and I was just, for some reason, I was drawn to him. So I figured out how to get the 10 grand. How'd you get the 10 grand?

My dad. I said, dad, you need to wire me money immediately. And I, well, no, I need to go to the bank and get these $5 stupid bills. And I said, I'm going to hire this guy. I said, this is better than starting a business. And I said, he said, I'm gonna hire this guy. I said, this is better than starting a business. This is all. And I said, he said, I'm not giving you the money, of course. And I said, I'll pay you back $30,000 on your 10. He said, I'm in. Okay. I'm like thinking, what's the worst thing happened? I either told my dad, sorry, I can't give you, yeah, I'm done. Or I make so

much money in real estate. This thing works and it doesn't even matter. Uh, and, but I, I showed up and I started working with Lyle that day. Wow. It was, it was, he, he, we would sit there for hours and I'm talking about like seven, eight hour stretches at this rickety whiteboard in his stinky house that smelled like old people. And he would just whiteboard out like different scenarios. Like if the, like how I said, if the seller has not, you sell her finance and then you structure it like this. And here's the seven levers that you pull. And if they say this, this is kind of how you start thinking. And then what happens next is you get this contract, hold this paperwork, Cody, and he would just like, I didn't understand any of it, nothing, none of it, but he just kept

repeating it over and over and over in different ways over a few month period. And finally, around the second month, I ran to him and I said, Lyle, I got a lead. It's the trifecta. It's a bankruptcy, a divorce, and it's a bankruptcy, a divorce, and a foreclosure. What do I do? And he said, what do you want me to tell you? And I said, how do I get this deal? And he said, I'm going to give you the best advice. And if you follow this advice, you'll get this deal. And I'm thinking he's going to tell me some wise Yoda shit. I'm like, okay. And he's like, lean in. I got you. Come and lean in. And I said, what's the advice? Like, I'm thinking he's going to do the whiteboard thing. You're going to do this. He said, you just got to do these two things and you'll get this deal.

And I said, okay, what's that? And he said, you just got to be, you got to be enthusiastic and you got to be yourself. And I said, okay, and what, how do I do the deal, and what, what, how do I do the deal? What's that? And I said, and how do I do the deal? And he said, no, that's my advice. That's it. That's it. And I'm like, but technically, how do I do the deal? And he said, technically we're not there yet. Just be yourself and be super enthusiastic. So I went to this guy's house and the neighbor was mowing his grass outside. And I pull up in my piece of shit Nissan pickup truck. I had never done a deal yet.

I looked like I'm 15 years old. I don't know anything about foreclosure, bankruptcy, or divorce. I have two contracts and one pen. I go and talk to the neighbor. I parked by the neighbor because I was embarrassed because my truck was a piece of shit. I parked by the neighbor because I was embarrassed because my truck was a piece of shit. I parked by the neighbor and I get out and I start talking to him. I said, I'm going to walk over to this guy's house and thinking about buying it. How do you like the neighborhood? And he said, ha, you're like the hundredth person to come here. This is great.

He said, just so you know, so-and-so is a cranky old man. There is zero chance you're getting that deal. It's the first words out of the neighbor's mouth. I'm like, awesome. And it's showtime. Here we go. Yeah, this is great. It's starting off well. Uh, and I, and I, I said, why is he, is he just mean all the time? He said, well, he's going through a divorce and yeah, he's pretty pissed off. So I walk over to the neighbor's house, knock on the door or to the guy's house. I knock on the door. He comes to the door and he like steps out front. Doesn't let me in. Doesn't open the door. Doesn't do anything. Just steps out front, shuts the door behind him. And I'm just, I'm just looping, like be enthusiastic, be yourself, be enthusiastic. Hey, is that bitch that used to live here? So I just, I just started talking to

the guy and I was sweating. I was nervous. And I never really talked about the deal. I never talked about the house. I never talked. I just asked the guy a bunch of questions. You know, how are you doing? How are you feeling? Do you like, did you like this neighborhood? You know, what's it like going through a divorce? You know, I'm a young guy. What advice would you give somebody like me? Just talking, just real. And I said, after about 10, 15 minutes, he started to loosen up a little bit. He went, he went from very rigid, very short with me to like starting to open up. And I'm thinking I made it 10, 15 minutes. This is not horrible. And the guy started loosening up, started talking more. And then he started volunteering information about the house and all that stuff. And after

about 15, 20 minutes, he said, do you want to come inside? And I said, okay, sure. I had never been in the seller's house before and actually gotten this far. And so we went inside his house and he goes, let me give you a little tour. And he walks me around, shows me the things. I said, show me everything you love about your house. Show me anything you don't like. Shows me everything.

The whole time he's bitching about his ex-wife and all this stuff, you know, and doing that thing. And I'm just listening and asking. Every time he fed me some information, I just asked him more questions about it and kept him talking. Tell me more about that. Tell me more about that. About an hour in, he's like, you hungry? And I said, yeah, I'm really hungry. And he said, I'm making spaghetti. I said, I love spaghetti. Next thing you know, we're sitting at his kitchen table eating spaghetti. He's crying. He's crying.

He went into this whole story about how he got into this divorce situation and how his kids hate everything that's going on, and one of his kids hates him, and da-da-da. And I'm almost in tears. And so far, nothing, no negotiation. No, no, no. And I actually said the guy's name, and I said, listen, I've got gotta be honest with you.

I am not qualified to help you. I have absolutely no idea how to do this deal. I've never done a real estate transaction. My mentor Lyle gave me advice just to be authentic and enthusiastic. Like I I'd have to go figure this out, but I maybe could point you in the right direction. And he said, Cody, you're the only person that listened to me. Everybody else came here and told me how they were going to buy my house and how much they were going to give me. You're the only one that actually talked to me. And I'm like, okay. And he goes, give me your pen. Give me your contract. I want to do a deal with you. Don't worry about all that stuff. We'll figure it out. And that was it. The first deal

slid the contract over. I ended up, uh, you know, afterwards you figured all out. You call the attorneys. What do I need to do? You call the title company. What paperwork am I missing? You call Lyle. Okay. What's the next step? Okay. Now I'll tell you, I'm not going to waste my time telling you shit that that's, it's not that part of the process yet. He understood the too much information. He understood if I would get in my own head and get technical and not really connect as a human and build that rapport. And so I figured it all out and I made $40,000 off that first deal. And that was the day I quit my bookkeeping job. Nice. How long did you stay with Lyle? How long did that relationship last?

Three, three years, three years, three years. And he took after I got all 40 K of that first deal, I probably paid Lyle two, $2 million after that for his part of my transactions over the next three years. And the, the end part of that story is I got pissed one day cause he overreached three years in. Okay. I did a hundred percent of the work. So a lot of times I was okay with it because he put up money and he would buy the deals from me or he would connect me with somebody. So he was like really beneficial. But many times I did 90% of the work and he just took, you know, he would take 10 grand of a 30 K thing or 10, 15 grand or half or whatever. At the end though, he took almost all of it and he would give me like little pieces and he did it twice in a row. And on the second time I finally got pissed off. And I looked at him, I said, well, you know,

you're just a dick. I don't know what happened to our relationship. I don't know why you think you can just take all this money. I've made you millions of dollars. Who the fuck do you think you are? Like I am your best student that you've ever had. I've lit up. I've done hundreds of transactions with you. And because of us doing this, we have this good thing going and you're just fucking it up, man. You're just an old cranky bitch. He just starts clapping and I'm staring at him and he just starts laughing and he goes, took you fucking long enough. And I said, what do you mean? He said, what do you mean? He said, you've been using me as a crutch for two years too long he said I'm sick and tired of taking money from you you should have pushed me out of the out of your business you have

everything it takes to do this business successfully from here on out don't fucking call me do the damn deals send me a Christmas card I was like this guy is like the Yoda of creative real estate. I don't know who Yoda is. Oh, that's Colt's never seen Star Wars. Mr. Miyagi, does that help? Miyagi, Karate Kid, can we go there? I didn't want that. So I always tell people. That's a gangster ass story.

The way I got into commercial real estate and doing stuff I should not have been at 18, 20 years old is because my mentor paid me shit. He goes, how much do you need to pay for your college? And that's all it was. But that was the best money ever spent, right? And I think everybody's looking for just a free mentorship or stuff like that. And it's like you're not going to get a great mentor for free. Well, see, that brings up an interesting point because Cody puts out so much stuff, man, for free, educational stuff for free. So when you decided to start doing that, so obviously business is going well and you're like, okay, was it a need to give back?

Were you trying to build a vertical through the coaching space? Where did that start? I mean, where did that idea start? Yeah, well, I mean, you got to understand, I started off wholesaling. I did hundreds of transactions, sold a lot of properties to rehabbers. Eventually you get pissed off because you make 10 and they make 100.

And you're like, dude, you just made 100,000 and I could have done that. And Lyle kept telling me, Cody, you're wasting your talent. You're wasting your time. You need to own the real estate. Stop being transactional. Start being an owner.

Cashflow, tax benefits, tax-free environments. That's all that matters. You, he, he, he, one of the best lessons he taught me is you cannot win the money game, saving your way there. It's impossible. So all this earned income, it's BS. It's like kind of the rich dad, poor dad, like you got to get over to investment income. You got to get over to cashflow. You got to get over to tax benefits and people that are very successful play the money game different. And so I was transactionally, my first year after Lyle got involved, I made $1.3 million on my tax returns. The problem is I didn't pay taxes along the way. I just paid myself and I bought a lot of cool shit. And the problem with that is I spent all the money, but I owed 600K

in taxes. And then when that tax bill, that's a lovely, that's a lovely, I was terrified. Cause nobody taught me. Yeah. This is the, what happens to every person that comes in a big money real quick. And I'm like, crap. So now the next year I just got to make more money.

That's my only plan. I either call the government and be like, yeah, sink or swim, baby. What do I do? Or I pay this. And the problem went to when you're behind on taxes,

the penalties are almost as much as you're making. Like it's like 20K a month, 30K a month. You're like, dude, this is brutal. It took me three years to unwind from that 600K. It took me, not only did I pay taxes now in real time, but then I was paying the back taxes with the penalties. It was awful. So set your business up financially smart the right way and don't take draws. Figure out how to pay your taxes in real time. I had to finally eventually set up two accounts, my tax account, my business account, and then I had my personal account over here.

So then I was like moving money properly. Yeah, I think that that's a huge mistake that a lot of people make when they start making money is they keep it in an account that they can see. Yeah. You have access to. I tell people all the time, man, the majority of your money should be something you have no access to and don't see every day. Take it one step further. My wife, my girlfriend, with that 40 K I did a few things. I gave my parents some money. That was my give back. I bought a ring for my wife proposed. Right. And then I quit my job as a

bookkeeper. And then I bought a temp-Pedic bed that with my leftover change because I was so tired of being broke and not sleeping well. That was my gift to me. And so, you know, it's like now my wife sees the money. She's like, let's go on vacation. Let's do this. Like, so it's bad enough when you see it, but here's some, you're just screwed. Yeah. You gotta hide it. So, um, but anyway, I got good. And then I finally got fed up. I started rehabbing. My first four or five rehabs were a disaster. Hired the wrong people. Things got stolen, all the mistakes.

But then eventually I found some good team members and that got going. And then I started making bigger chunks. And then every once in a while I would cherry pick out and do a seller finance or a sub two or wrap sporadically until I built like a little portfolio, some cashflow and all that stuff. And then eventually I was now a full-fledged investing operation where I had my wholesale division, my rehab division, my cashflow division,

and I'm cranking, right? And I needed systems to do this because I came out of the Navy. I love systems. I love structure. And that's probably why people gravitate towards me. I'm a great marketer, great at branding and marketing. And I'm, I really nerd out on systems. Like every Saturday for five years straight, I did system Saturdays.

I would come into my office and I would, I would create an SOP around a process and I would document every single thing. I'd create videos. I'd create step-by-step tutorials and all that stuff. Eventually I had VAs doing it for me, but I had this playbook at the end of the year of 500 processes, whether it's sending out an email blast or, um, you know, cleaning out a property or whatever it was, all everything documented. It's the playbook. It's what everybody wants. And then I built a software. I was the first investor in the country to build a software. This is 2008, 2009. Okay. That did mass email marketing, mass text message marketing,

and mass ringless voicemail marketing. It was called the mobile marketing machine. And I built the software. I thought it was going to cost me 50 grand, cost me 500 grand. Welcome to the software business. Yeah, software development, no joke. It's awful. Don't build a software. Just, you know, white label one or

hope somebody else builds it. Uh, but I had this software and people were coming to me and they're like, how the heck are you kicking everybody's ass in town? I was out marketing everybody. And it was because of this software and my SOPs and my sister, I just had this flow. And so people would come up and be like, I'll give you $10,000 if you sell that to me, or you help me with that. If you come into my business as a consultant and turn things around. And I'm like thinking to myself, 10 G's for a couple hours of work, like you're fricking stupid. I'll do it. That sounds great. I love to teach. I wanted to be a history teacher. So I'm like, okay, give me 10 grand. And the first guy gave me 10 grand. And then a bunch of people were like, I'll give you 10 grand. And then somebody else was like,

I'll give you 20 grand. I'm like, you're a bigger idiot than the last guy. Great. Give me 10, 20 grand, you know? And nobody flinched because it made them money. They understood like, dude, if I get speed, I'm going to, I'm going to, I'm going to make more money. And they were making their money back in one month, two months. And I, then I would over-deliver and over-consult them and stuff, and they loved it, and so word got around town. And so in 2009, I started Clever Investor as the education software brand as a little side hustle.

I didn't have a big plan. I wasn't like, I'm going to be the biggest information guru. Facebook was just starting. LinkedIn was just happening. Instagram wasn't even around. iPhone may have just came you know, LinkedIn was just happening. Instagram wasn't even around. iPhone may have just came out like a year or two earlier. Like things were just starting and I was at the beginning of it. But what I decided to do very early on is make video a core competency of mine. And I was scared to death to talk on video. So anybody who's

hesitant or you feel like man i'm not good on video or my my my i smile a little crooked you know it's like you know you just kind of like overthink and like oh man i hate the sound of my own voice yeah i got that little girl voicemail voice you know it's like dang man i hate the way i sound i just said one day i'm not going to overthink any of this i'm just going to hold my phone. At the time it was a flip cam. It wasn't even a phone. And I'm just going to talk to it. I'm going to stand in front of a property. I'm going to pitch the property, or I'm going to talk about building my buyers. I'm going to talk, I'm going to give an investor tip. And I would over repetition start to get these bits. It's almost like a comedian. They would get their little two minute

bits or three minute bits. When people see me talk right now, it's nothing like 2008, seven, eight, nine. That was me learning the bits, learning the pitch, learning the, the, the, for each scenario, I had a couple of bits. And so now it's like, I'm downloading from God. I'm able to just turn on and tell a story or, or teach. But it took me many, many years of just forcing myself. And I can't tell you how many times I would record a video and immediately, I didn't even watch it. I deleted it because I was so anxious about what you just did. Yeah. But you get through it. And it's the best thing I ever

did from a marketing standpoint, because I started putting out content when content really wasn't a thing yet. I was one of the first in the country to really put out content and in the creative real estate space. And what happened is a small tribe became a little bit bigger and a little bit bigger. And I started throwing little mini events. And my first event had 15, 20 people show up. My next event had maybe 30 or 40 people. And then the next event had a hundred people. And then 500 people and a thousand people and 2000 people, and 2,000 people, then 3,000. Like, it just started growing. And it blew up.

I had no clue what it was going to turn into. It was like a rocket ship ride. Each year, we were doubling and tripling in volume, top-end sales volume. And all of a sudden, I look around, and I'm like, dude, we're doing $25 million a year in online education and software. It was amazing. The problem is I didn't know how to be a person, an entrepreneur that had a hundred team members. I didn't know how to build culture. I didn't know how to keep that original high-performing team in alignment with the goals now at a $1 million

business or a zero to one is much different than a five to 10, much different than 10 to 15, much different than 15 to 25. Each stage I didn't understand because I had never done it before. And I didn't know how to hire and train and scale high competing, uh, competent teams. So I made every mistake to the point where I woke up one day and I literally felt like I was in a luxury prison. I stopped liking my business. I stopped liking my team members. The original group, they were now going sideways on me because they wanted more money and they wanted more control and they wanted more power and they wanted equity.

And I'm only sharing this with you guys because for every new level, there's a new devil. And it's good that it's happening for you as you're going through it. Because if you can weather that storm and learn those lessons for those different stages, you can become a really great entrepreneur that I've now owned seven different companies. They're all, you know, doing 10 million or more per year. I was able to scale these really great, very competent teams. You notice probably even in my language patterns, I don't say employees.

Right. Team members. I'm very aware of like, I have entrepreneurs and I'm an entrepreneur and we have a common goal and alignment equals velocity. And I really started caring about culture. I started caring about alignment. I started caring about going deeper with my team members to really truly understand what I didn't know was when Matt's mom has cancer and what's going on in his personal life. Because I had this belief system that I had to wall myself off in my office and not have a personal relationship with my team members. And that mistake caused them to not want to work at 1130 at night to fix the problem.

But the second I crossed the barrier, the second I got out of the work environment, I always started breaking down in front of them. Meaning like we would work out, we would do charitable events, we would do team building exercises, we would go play together, we would do ball games,

we would do golf tournaments, we would work out. And for the first time ever, now I'm not the man. They're whipping my ass at the sports game. They're whipping my ass at the thing. And it flips, it creates this environment where the script starts to get flipped. And now they're teaching me things. And it's, it's this bond that starts to form. And now my companies, I don't even know that they're fixing things at midnight. It just kind of happens. And I wake up the next day and I'm like, oh, wow, that's amazing.

But for a long time, I had lost. We scaled to $25 million. Clever went from $25 to $5. I made every mistake in the book and the company went downhill. And I lost 60 team members. And I have now built it back up. But I had to pull it all the way back to pull it forward. Yeah, you got to tear it down and i have now built it back up but i had to pull it all the way back to put pull it forward yeah you gotta tear it down it's mean i the biggest mistake i made is i

i cared about top line revenue it was cool for me to walk up and be like dude i did 25 million last year i'm in the inc 500 i'm this i'm that I'm four years in the row. Yeah. Oh no, nothing. A million dollars. Like it was the worst profit margin ever. High-end, back-end coaching. Like you think it's, no, it's like the magazine subscription business. You take 50K from somebody, they expect the world from you. And now you have a year of delivering. And guess what you're going to do with that 50K the second it comes in the door? Reinvest it. You're going to put in more marketing, more team members. You're going to scale the business. And next thing you're going to do with that 50K the second it comes in the door? Reinvest it. You're going to put in more marketing, more team members. You're going to scale the business.

And next thing you know, you wake up. And outside things break and things happen. Facebook broke in 2016. I was the largest Facebook advertiser in the country in my space. Four to five million a year just on Facebook. Cody Sperber ads everywhere. Like I chased everybody around. It just stopped working one day.

I would swipe my Amex card for 500K and I would make a million every time for four years. That's such an interesting point because I talk about that all the time. And if you look at the way that so many entrepreneurs make money through Instagram, Facebook, instagram facebook whatever dude they can pull the rug out from under you in a heartbeat in a fucking heartbeat which is why like honestly man

like people ask me about the metaverse like buying property in the metaverse and shit i'm like bro can't you see elon musk just buying that shit and unplugging it just because he thought it was funny i can totally i can totally see him doing it it's's like, dude, that's why I love dirt. I love real estate. I can touch it. I can feel it. I can put my fingers in it. I can put my toes in it.

And, dude, that must have really screwed you up. And all of a sudden, this just wheel that's been rolling downhill forever all of a sudden becomes a square. They don't roll. Yeah, and it all started with Donald Trump, the Analytica scandal. The second they found out Facebook's selling data behind the scenes, they pulled all of the advertisers. The data started just deleting.

But you're still spending money. They're not telling you that they're effing you. They're just effing you. And then what happens is you spend $500,000 on an Amex. You always made $800,000 to $1 million back in the same 30-day period. All of a sudden, you make $600,000 on an Amex. You always made 800 to a million back in the same 30-day period. All of a sudden, you make 600 back. The next month, you make 500 back.

The next month, you only make 400. Now you're negative 100. Then all of a sudden, one day you wake up and you make 80 out of 500 back. And you're like, we just left 400 grand. And you're looking at your team and you're screaming at them in a board meeting.

You're like, why can't you close? What's the matter with you guys? How, how are you allowing? And they're like, I don't know what to do. And they're going, Cody, what do we do? And I'm like, I don't know, I'm paying you $150,000 a year to figure this shit out. Like you wrote the SOP dude. It's right here. It says Cody Sperber right at the bottom. But there is, you don't know what to do. And, and that's when, when you start to get out of control as the leader of the company, everybody feels it. And it's a weird, when you're on the rocket ship

up, everybody's happy. Dude, we hadn't, it was like a Wolf of wall street. Yeah. We're throwing midgets at dartboards. You know, like it's like, it's like a fun party environment. Everybody's having a good time. Money's being made. And then all of a sudden it starts flattening out and then it goes down. Now people, now there's clicks and there's conversations and there's, there's problems and, and you have to fire your number one sales guy. And then all of a sudden your operations guy is looking for another job and you hear about it. And then all of a sudden you get sued from over here and dah, dah, dah. And the problems just start hammering you in the environment becomes toxic and then you lose control you how do you weather that um brutal honesty aggressive offense you stop playing

defense i went on the offense um i read uh oh god what's the book? It's, oh, my God. I'm going to think of this, but I'll think of it here in a minute. Rockefeller Habits, it turned into something. Rockefeller Habits turned into something. What is that something? You want to Google it for us? I'll Google it. I'll look it up.

Yeah, Rockefeller Habits. Yeah, this book turned into something. I don't have internet here. But anyway, I hired a consultant to come in and kind of like one audit my company. I stopped caring about top line revenue and it used to be top line revenue, profit, cashflow. I flipped the model. Cashflow was the only thing that mattered. Profit was next and revenue was

last. Was it scaling up? Yes. Scaling up. Scaling up. Check that book out. If you're an entrepreneur and you're scaling a business, scaling up, very hard to read, very technical. It's like a manual. Yeah, it's like a manual. But they have these consultants that you can hire. And it's one of those things where I understood enough to know that I'm out of control. I need some outside help. I had to put some barriers in. That initial group that you grow with is not necessarily the group you end with. And so I had to make some very key decisions to let some people go, to bring some people in, to slim down the operation. I had to stop some culture building things, which was really difficult. I had a private chef that cooked for us every single day of the week. That was the first thing to go. That hurts culture, but it gets,

you have to like, just start like, yeah, start hammering all this cash. this cash yeah um you also have to get real aggressive with your sales and marketing the only thing that moves the needle is sales marketing it's not better operations it's not better fulfillment it's not better it's go on the offensive on sales money solves all problems and so i had to start figuring out youtube figuring out word of mouth figuring out referral programs getting back into the affiliate game, going back out, speaking aggressively. Like I just went on all out offensive. It took three years, 2016, 17 and 18. I rode the whole thing down, slimming it down over time, cutting deals with people to stay

around whatever I had to do to just keep the ship afloat. I eventually came out the other end of it in 2018. I hit kind of like a rock bottom, but I knew it was exactly where I needed to be. And then we just started scaling back up. But this time, continuity, strong continuity, reoccurring revenue. I redesigned all of my funnels. I write all my own copy. If people say, hey, what's one of the best skills you can ever have as a marketer? Copywriting. I write my own emails. I write my own sales copy, my website copy, my conversion, my sales scripts. Everything you see from me is written from me. That's why I sell it so well. It's my processing. It's your voice. It's my voice. And people, and if you have an online business or an education business,

write your own emails. It changes the game. Dean Graciosi forced me. He said, Cody, you have other people writing your emails. That's not why you didn't double your income last year. And I said, what are you talking about, dude? I don't have time for that. And he said, you should make time for that.

That's the number one thing you need to do. Because the second it's your voice and it's you, you're going to sell so much better and it's going to change the game for you. He said, you're going to be authentic and enthusiastic. And I'm like, okay, got it back to the drawing board coach. And so, and, and by the way, my email list, I have a 30 to 32% open rate on every single one of my emails. Wow. I dominate on that because I write my own copy, but it took a long time, a lot of pain. I lost my number one biggest regret is I lost a guy named Matt lights. He started the business with me. He wanted equity. I told him, no, I told him I'll pay you more money. I told, I told him I would do all these other things, but I was out of alignment with him. He, that he cared about that pride of, I started this business

with you. I was team member number one. I don't care about 500 grand a year. I care about pride of ownership. I want to say this is something I built and I own. And I refused to give it to him too long. And by the time he was gone and off on his own thing, and I finally was like, okay, I'll give it to you. Like every dumb ass guy in every relationship. It's like when it's too late, they're like, Oh, okay. I'm ready. Uh, it was too late and I lost him and I never forgot that. And I tell him every time I see him, he he's losing him. He was one of the best marketers I've ever been around. And I know, you know, it's unfortunately, and he's gone on to great things. I'm sure he's gone on to really

great things. He actually works on, he has his own thing, but he's, he's gone on to great things, I'm sure. He's gone on to really great things. He actually works, he has his own thing, but he's one of the reasons that Grant Cardone scaled. Oh, he did. He did. Do you think that during that time of such a big scaling, do you think you just put people in positions they weren't, right? Like I see in a lot of corporations that scale quick, they take their sales guy and they're like,

well, you're number one with me forever. I'm going to put you as management role now. And they just keep putting people up. And I see that being a huge, huge mistake of just because they're with you, putting them at the top of the, instead of keeping them where they should be. You know, I did get really good at this and there's a lot of wisdom in that of knowing what seat of the bus to put people in right and and being comfortable moving around seats you know and now i when i when i first off when they anybody walks into my building they know that we're there to freaking win there is a winning energy in the building if anybody's negative if anybody comes with problems with not solutions if anybody tells

me anything that is like even remotely like rubs me the wrong way, I'm like, get the fuck out of here. Like, don't come here with your problems. I'm not your friend. Get get out of here. We're here to win. We're here to dominate. You better come here prepared and ready to whip ass. And I'm also I also kind of took on like the Elon Musk, like we don't have meetings just for the sake of having meetings. Like, it's OK to get and leave. If you're done with what you have to say, and there's no other value for in this meeting, just get up and leave. You don't have to tell me if you actually, you just leave. I'm just going to keep the meeting going because there was another reason we got to do this, but I hate meetings for the purpose of meetings.

And I got really good at moving people around in on the bus and getting that winning energy back into the building to where if you have a problem, and I, because I do love everybody that works for me. After work, I'll go bro out with you. We could go to dinner. We can have a cocktail. We'll cry together. We'll solve problems together, not time while we're in this building time and place so you better check that shit at the door you know and once i got that energy going people started showing up different and they removed themselves from the the party i never i stopped having regrettable turnover i had like good turnover yeah it was like hey dude i don't i'm not playing full out i know i'm not playing full out. I know I'm not playing full out.

It's better for me to bow out. And they would actually always do the right thing. And I mean, that's why I teach the next Amazon or whatever to offer you like a hundred grand to quit or whatever. Yeah. Yeah. It's important.

Yeah. I love that. So what's, I mean, dude, obviously you threatened to retire from clever summit. You've threatened to not do that again. I am done.

Come on. Yeah, and Motley Crue is on their eighth final tour right now, so let's leave that up. So what's next, man? What's next for Cody? What's next? Look, I'm at this point now where God, family, country. What else is important?

I figured out the money game one of my biggest regrets as an entrepreneur is not putting my family and god first i've been working really hard lately to create a better relationship with god i'm i i i've been praying every day for months now in developing that muscle. I think it's the glue that's missing in America. I think we've lost touch with our morality. Everybody is operating from a what's in it for me mindset, an instant gratification mindset, because we lost the basic fundamentals of being great human beings and having a rule book of what that means. I'm not a Bible thumper. I'm not going to go around and preach to people. I

don't, I don't, I don't, none of that, but I've been going back to church and just being around the noise and just trying to take it all in. Family, nothing is more important than family. My mom is dying of two types of cancer right now. She's on hospice. Every time somebody close to you passes away, it reminds you of just how fragile this thing is and that you can't take it with you. I've had many challenges with my wife, who is probably one of the most amazing women on planet earth she's not only

at fucking 20 she's not even at 10 she's a 20 um the last year and a half i watched her start to grow she's been a stay-at-home mom supporting me like a rock for 18 years the last year and a half she's been growing her breath work she She's a somatic release breath work facilitator. She's a doctor of physical therapy. She's heart math certified. She's one of the most empath, empath, empathetic. I don't know what the right word is, but she's so in touch with the connection between people and what people need to really overcome their subconscious traumas. And she's a magician, man. She's a freaking magician.

And I'm watching her start to blow up. I'm watching her name get around. I've been connecting her to all these different masterminds and stuff. People's sales are going through the roof if they do a somatic release breathwork session with the members before they do the pitch. So a lot of people that run these run these high level masterminds of entrepreneurs are like, Shannon, can you come in? I'll pay you seven grand, eight grand, 10 grand. You come in, you do 50 of my members one

day, 50 of my members the next day. And then, you know, I'll ask for re-enrollment later. And all of a sudden my enrollment goes through the roof because people have this experience of like, I not only learned how to make a ton of money, I made all these great connections, but I feel great. I released something and I'm connected at a deeper level and I have more clarity, more power, more energy. And I'm watching her work and grow this thing. And her words getting around what she's doing. And I'm like, it's my turn to be her rock. It's my turn to support her. It's my turn to lift her up. I have a feeling she's gonna be one of the biggest in the country because she's smoking hot. She's very talented

and what she does works. So that's kind of the next thing. And I'm very concerned with what's going on in the country. So I've been just behind the scenes maneuvering as much as I can helping from on, you know, the policies and politics that I think are important especially in Arizona local politics and and people like I'm I'm really working with Blake Masters I want to get him elected um Carrie Lake I want to get her elected so just different things that I believe in from from a political standpoint and then on the business side of things I'm just in flow state, man. My real estate business is doing really good. I got 24 rehabs and new builds going. I have 14

new builds, all two to $3 million houses. I'm raising money. I just started my first fund. We're going to raise $5 million. It's a debt fund. So it's sexy for some people, not sexy for other people. Like if you're a hardcore investor, you're not going to think it's sexy, but a debt fund is it's a double digit return guaranteed. So it's a 10, 11 or 12% return, depending on if you lend me money for one years, two years or three years, and you've got to be an accredited investor. So, uh, we launched clever capital fund and, uh, I'm just starting to raise money for that. And then, um, I'm really nerding out on the Airbnb thing. Yeah. I love Airbnbs dude yeah i want i want and

i own i'm here i'm staying at my vegas airbnb um and uh you know that's a three million dollar house 50 yard line in the vegas strip we're just turning it into an airbnb and uh i love i love that lifestyle of like imagine if i have a $3 million house or $5 million house, $2 million house in 50 of the best locations in the world. And you just travel around. They're all your property. You're getting tax benefits. You're getting four times the amount of cash flow you would normally get from a normal rental.

And you get to travel the world and live the investor lifestyle. So we're building the luxury Airbnb portfolio. I got about 30 properties right now. We're scaling hard, which is part of the reasons we're building the luxury Airbnb portfolio. I got about 30 properties right now. We're scaling hard, which is part of the reasons we're raising money. And wholesaling, still wholesaling. Believe it or not, old guys wholesaling. We're probably wholesaling.

We do about $250,000 a month in wholesale fees. Not bad. It pays for the operation, puts a little cheddar in our pocket. Somebody know, somebody's listening to this fucking guy. Yeah. A little 250 cheddar. I got two business partners, which by the way, the only way I run seven businesses is phenomenal partnerships. When, when, when I lost Matt and I didn't turn them into a partner, the lesson I learned is when you find very talented, high caliber,

caliber people, and you create alignment with them and they're willing to build with you and they compliment you. They're not the same as you. They compliment you. I've had bad partnerships where it's like two sales guys go off to try to build something. It's like,

that's not going to work. You need an operations. You need an operations and a sales. You need a marketing and operations. Okay. So I've been able to scale my companies because of that. That way. Well, I can tell you, I mean, you know,

I think Pace Morby said it the best on our texts that we're all on from the summit, all the speakers that were on there. When Pace is like, I think I've already made 2 million bucks just from being in this text game. And I think that is 100% a credit to you and your ability to connect other people

in a way that's selfless. There's no, there's no what's in it for Cody. There's, there's, I know I got a guy for that. You should talk to him. Here you go. Have at it. See you later. And I think that there's something to that, right? Here's the cool thing about that. It's the power of reciprocity. I learned it very early on in my real estate career. If I invite you to my birthday party, now you feeling obligated to invite me to yours. And I don't have to ask. I'm in a position now, I'm 18 years deep in the game. I get to meet amazing people like you guys, do business with you guys, hang out with you guys, learn from you guys. And I run four high-level masterminds, four for, and I lose money on all of them on the front end. I make tens of millions of dollars on the backend through

those relationships. I don't have to ask for anything. I just am a super connector and just try to listen and learn and then connect you with them. And next thing you know, you're inviting me in a big Airbnb deal. And you're like, dude, I got, I got this house here and let's go in. And I'm like, hell yeah. That's, I was just waiting for the invite. So, so I'm hoping that, uh, you know, we can break a little bit more bread together, dude. We did clever summit. You smash, you smash this stage. You said you were, you're like, man, I I'm telling you, dude, I watched that back and and literally that's a dude that's never happened to me on stage because i was so fucking worried about what he was gonna do because i'm like when i agreed to do it i'm like you want to do this he's like yeah no problem

we'll do it we'll do it and then i was like okay so cool i'm like you've done this before he's like no i'm like holy shit so i spent a solid like like month like bro you're gonna be great you're gonna be great you're gonna be great you're gonna be great i wrote the pitch how to be great. You're going to be great. You're going to be great. I wrote the pitch, how I thought it should go. Everything's good. I'm just going to ask you questions. You've got to answer these questions. Just follow my lead.

You'll be fine. And he's like, yeah, no problem. I'm like, this dude's going to crash. Back of my head. I'm like, he's going to crash. I'm going to have to fill the whole thing. I'm going to have to explain why. He's standing there looking like a deer in headlights.

And man, the lights came on. And I just was, it was, and i struggled with that bro for like a solid two months every day dude every day i mean i turned down i think i turned down three speaking gigs no in that two months because i was just like i was so in my own head about it finally i was like you know what this is why i'm not in plays nobody's asking me to be in a play. Don't worry about it. Oh, come on. You got the whole looks, the great hair. You got the pitch. I know, man.

If you ever need somebody for five minutes of ranting about something, I'm your guy. Yeah, Colt's your guy to rant, for sure. I'll rant about something. I'll do something next. We'll do another event. It just won't be Clever Summit. I love the events. I mean, we had a wild party. That was fun. You rented out the entire hawkish song dude who does that i did yeah that's you that's right and why did i do it because you fucking called me and asked me to do it i said

hey what's the first thing i told you i don't say no to you i say i love that but did it work it did work it was good it was fun um ti rocked the house yes He did great DJ. And people talked about that event for months. They still, I still get DMS saying best party ever. And I see pictures and I see your logos everywhere. And I'm like, I love that, man.

It was a good party. It was a good party. Well, do we got to wrap this up, man? This is how long is hour and 36 today. These, this is normally,

I could talk to you for like three hours about this. Cause this is just, it's just, it's a nugget after gem after nugget of nugget. We have to have you back and talk about some other stuff, but dude, Cody, if they want to find you, how do they find you, bro? Where do they find you? Sexy investor, 69. Hotmail.com. That's H-O-T-M-A-L-E.

No, I'm a clever investor on pretty much everything. I, I, I, I, I'm really focused. I do Instagram and I do YouTube and I actually have a podcast coming out, John. So I would love to have you on my podcast. Yeah, I would love that. The Clever Investor Show, it's going to launch here soon. But yeah, just reach out. YouTube and Instagram, Clever Investor are my two things that I actually am interacting with people. Like I love to comment. I love to DM back. I like to engage. Um, I actually shut off all other social media. Like it's still out there, but I'm not personally on it. No. And there will come a day and I can't wait for that day. We're going to celebrate that. It's all gone. And you just shut it all down. I'm just done.

You just shut it down. I'll say I'll, I'll do my last sayonara post and that'll be it. Right. Yeah. Sail off into the sunset. Well, folks, I hope you guys got as much out of today as I did. And remember, if you're watching us on YouTube, give us that little like and subscribe. If you're listening to us on whatever podcast service you are, give us a five star review or four stars or however many max stars they can get out of this random star system, whatever it is. And remember, guys, if you're going to move, you might as well move forward. See you next time. Hey, it's John Gafford. If you want to catch up more and see what we're doing,

you can always go to thejohngafford.com where we'll share any links that we have things we talked about on the show, as well as links to the YouTube where you can watch us live. And if you want to catch up with me on Instagram, you can always follow me at the John Gafford i'm here give me a shout