Heroes in Business - Eric and Deven Wohlwend, family of Real estate investors, Authors, Speakers

Episode Date: June 20, 2023

Eric and Deven Wohlwend, Real estate investors, Authors, Speakers of books Family Success Triangle, and The Garage is interviewed by David Cogan of Eliances entrepreneur community and host of the Heroes Show. Mark Victor Hansen Library Nomination  

Welcome back to Alliances Heroes, where heroes in business align. To be part of our super community and find out more about Alliances, visit www.alliances.com. And we're back and I'm so excited to see and hear all of you. Make sure you continue to watch. Make sure you continue to check out Alliancer.com for past interviews. When I recently interviewed and we continue to get feedback on from Dee Wallace, who is she? She's the actress in E.T., The Howling, and over 290 film and TV credits. And make sure you stay tuned because we do have coming up is Robert Kiyosaki, who will be scheduled. So make sure you continue to stay

tuned to the Eat Alliance's Hero Show. Well, I'm super excited about what we've got going on today. You're going to be blown away. You know, we hear so much going on in the real estate field, right? Well, make sure you listen to this entire interview because we've got two very special guests with us, Eric and Devin Wolwind, real estate investors, authors, speakers, two books, one, Family Success Triangle, and the other, The Garage. Now, you can reach them by going to clearskytrainer.com, or of course, you can go to alliances.com, E-L-I-A-N-C-S.com. Click on radio and it'll take you right there. So welcome to the show, both of you. I got to really, I got to jump right in is, oh my gosh, I don't even know where to

start because there's so much information I want to cover. But Eric, let's start with you first. This is a family business and tell us what's been going on. You've been raising two amazing kids. Yes, we have. And David, thank you so much for having us here and acknowledging that. But I've seen so many other people build a business and then their family didn't want anything to do with it because they didn't really own a business. They owned a job and they brought it home with all the problems and there were the ups and downs. And we have raised our children to learn how to run their own business. And both of them, Devin, 16, and his younger brother, who's 13, own their own real

estate, started buying, both bought their first property when they were seven years old without ever using any of our money or having us sign for a bank loan. How in the world is that possible? for a bank loan. How in the world is that possible? We never really set out for that. I really just didn't want them to sell off everything I owned before I died. And I thought if we taught them a little bit about real estate, then perhaps they'd hire a CEO to run the company and they could at least get the benefits. And there are a lot of benefits to owning real estate. And as it turned out, Devin walked up to me when he was five years old and said, Dad, I think it's time I should start investing. Excellent. So Devin, what do you think is if you can pinpoint it to maybe one or two of the biggest lessons that you learned from your father, what would that be?

One of the biggest lessons, the biggest thing that he has helped teach and encourage for me, and what I frequently talk to people about, is being creative and taking action. Because you have to be creative if you want to succeed, and you have to take action. Because if you don't take action, you're not going to go anywhere. if you don't take action, you're not going to go anywhere. Eric, how do you, you know, how do you motivate the, you know, your children who, again, are very successful at such a young age within the whole, in the real estate and that, but how do you, how do you get them interested in it? How do you, you know, with the motivation versus, oh, I'm just going to play video games all day and, and eat Doritos.

Let them know they're in control of their life. The most important thing you can do is just show them that if they take responsibility, that gives them control. If they blame other people for what happens to them, then they're going to spend the rest of their life under the control of other people. their life under the control of other people. Whereas if you step up and say, you know what, even though this person or this happened to me, I'm going to take responsibility because then I can prevent it from happening in the future. They start to look at things differently. So they also watch us. Kids are always learning what they see and they're emulating. It's what we talk about in our book is they're going to learn. Why not show them the good traits? When you're running a business, you have to take

responsibility. So we taught them to take responsibility. You have to stand up. You can't lay there and hope something good happens for you. There are far too many people that just want to win the lottery. And they're always saying, oh, well, next month life will be wildly different, but they don't do anything to make their lives different the next month. So we've taught our children to make things happen. And what Devin took from that is you got to take action. And it's not necessarily always the right action. Just take action, record what you did so you can go back and do it better the next time. And it doesn't matter if you make a mistake. We don't teach them to you have to memorize everything and do it right the first time.

We tell them, do the best you can with the information you have. You're not always going to be right. And when you make a mistake, make a different decision next time. Excellent. And we're going to learn soon, too, Devin, about your book, The Garage, because you're listening and watching to me, David Kogan, host of the Alliances Hero Show. Make sure that you go to alliances.com. That's E-L-I-A-N-C-E-S.com, the only place where entrepreneurs align, because we've got with us again today, Eric and Devin Wolwind, real estate investors,

author speakers, family success triangle, and the garage are both of their books. You can reach them at clearskytrainer.com. And again, we'll have it on our website. So Devin, talk to us about what's the garage all about. The garage is a book I wrote about a group of kids turning what they love into a business. It starts out with the main character, Atlas Gold, building this delivery drone in his garage. And how he's just really good at coding. That's what he loves. And so he uses that to create this cool thing. And it actually gets noticed by a bigger company. And I'm not going to spoil too much of the book, but it goes into some of these different things.

And it's not you always have to do this one thing, but take what you have and be creative with it. Take action and use that to make yourself successful. Excellent. Eric, you must just be like just in so much joy just to see your children, you know, develop at such a young age and get involved and have such an interest in business and that. I mean, how does that feel? Tell us more. It's like when you have your first baby boy or baby girl and you look at them and at first, all you think is they have five fingers and five toes

on every place they're supposed to be and nothing else. And then you watch them grow. And people always tell you they grow so fast and you're staying up with them all night long because they won't sleep. And And I get to call them up and say, Devin, can you write this purchase agreement note and mortgage for me? I'm closed on another building next week and I don't have time to do it. But the same pride you feel and the thankfulness that they came out just the way they were supposed to.

It's just that to the 10th level when they learn stuff about business and when they actually show interest in the stuff that you're doing. So we get to go out, we get to buy properties. And later today, this is our second radio interview of the day. And then we're going to go mow the yard just like normal kids do. I love it. I love it. Tell us about Family Success Triangle book. We go to seminars everywhere. And Devin, both kids have been coming from the time they turned seven. Actually, the meetings that I ran, they've been there since they were infants. But when we go to these big speaking events, we've been taking them since they were about seven years old or more than half of Devin's life. And everywhere we go, people ask, how did you make your kids do that?

Well, first off, you never make your kids do anything. And anyone that has teenagers can attest to that. You show them these are the benefits. And you don't hide the drawbacks. Because they're going to see that you're not telling them the whole story. But show them the whole picture. Focus more on the good than the bad. And when they start asking questions, get excited.

Have some high energy. And teach them what they want to know. And that is what the book is all about. I can't sit down with you in five minutes and say, how did I help my kids to learn this? But I can write a couple hundred page book and say, yep, it's all right here. So that's my question. Excellent. Excellent. All right. Either one of you or both of you share a couple of secrets about in regards to real estate. Some people say we can't find any deals. The others say there's a million deals out there. What's the

secret to finding the right property? Networking and knowing the numbers. Devin, what do you think? I have to go on the talking to more people and being able to solve more people's problems. Oh, excellent. Excellent. Excellent. All right. And then we've got time for one more question here. I think this is part two. So when we go to clear sky trainer.com, what, what, what are you looking for people to do there? What, what, what, what do we see? Well, if you want a less intrusive way, and you just want to see if you like our stuff, our social media accounts are at real power Family, and we're on virtually every social

media outlet. If you'd like to learn more about us, we have a free newsletter. Go to clearskytrainer.com, and they're right at the top. Click here. We also announce all the public speaking engagements we have set up. I know we're down in Chattanooga at the beginning of June, and we do at least one live engagement a month. We're on podcast every week, radio shows. We've spoken on every continent, pretty much, except for Antarctica in the last six months. So we put links to some of our favorite ones, and I'm sure yours will be on there. And you can just learn more. And we really just want to help you spend more time with your family.

We have found that growing a family and growing a business take the same traits. And anybody that says, I don't have time to spend with my kids because I'm growing my business is doing it wrong. Find a way and you can have both. Excellent, excellent, excellent. Well, a big shout out to also to Mark Victor Hanson for nominating both of you to be on the Alliance's Hero Show. Eric and Devin, you inspire families to include their children in the business and inspire them to grow and build wealth together.

That's a hero. Eric and Devin Woland, real estate investors, authors, speakers, family success triangle is one book and the other, the garage. Make sure you go to clearskytrainer.com. This has been David Kogan with the alliances hero show.