KGCI: Real Estate on Air - Embracing Failure Unleashing Success through Resilience and Growth

Episode Date: October 6, 2025

Morning Primer is your weekday boost from Mindset & Motivation Monday—quick, focused, and made for agents by KGCI Real Estate On Air. Give yourself a daily mindset reset for the daily direction you need to show up sharp and ready to win.Start your morning ahead of the market and ahead of your competition every day with KGCI Real Estate On Air. Summary:In a world that often shies away from setbacks, this episode reveals why embracing failure is your ultimate superpower for unleashing extraordinary success. Dive into the transformative mindset shift that turns mistakes into invaluable learning opportunities, cultivating unshakeable resilience and accelerating personal and professional growth. Learn actionable strategies to confront setbacks with courage, extract vital lessons, and pave your unique path to enduring achievement.Bullet Point TakeawaysRedefine Failure as a Learning Opportunity: Understand that failure is not the opposite of success, but an integral and essential part of the journey. Each setback provides valuable insights and lessons that cannot be gained from success alone.Cultivate a Growth Mindset: Embrace the belief that your abilities and intelligence can be developed through effort and perseverance. This mindset fuels a willingness to take risks, experiment, and persist even when things don't go as planned.Build Unshakeable Resilience: Learn to bounce back stronger from adversity. Experiencing and overcoming failures strengthens your capacity to handle disappointment, adapt to new circumstances, and stay focused on your goals in the face of future challenges.Actionable Steps for Growth: Develop habits of self-reflection, actively seek constructive feedback, experiment with new approaches, and take decisive action based on lessons learned. Don't dwell on mistakes; process them and move forward.Foster a Culture of Learning: For leaders, create an environment where failure is not stigmatized but celebrated as a catalyst for innovation. Encourage calculated risk-taking, transparency about mistakes, and mutual support within teams.Topics:Embracing FailureResilience and GrowthSuccess Through SetbacksGrowth MindsetLearning from MistakesCall-to-Action:Ready to transform your setbacks into stepping stones for success? Listen to the full episode on your favorite podcast platform and begin embracing failure for unprecedented growth! Ready for more? Subscribe now and tap into our Always Free Real Estate On Air Mobile App for iPhone and Android, where you’ll find our complete archive and 24/7 stream of proven real estate business-building strategies and tactics. 

Morning Primer, your daily boost for the mindset and motivation Monday. Quick, focused, and made for agents by KGCI, Real Estate on Air. You're listening to the Investor Agent Nation podcast, empowering agents and investors to collaborate effectively and grow their businesses symbiotically. Your host, Randy Zemnock and Eric Gross, share real-life case studies, trending tactics, and expert strategies that have helped them to accomplish over $1 billion in sales volume. Whether you're a seasoned agent looking to expand your business or an investor seeking to optimize your returns, you're in the right place.

This is the Investor Agent Nation podcast. Today's topic, we want to introduce to you. And it's something that, you know, honestly, it really got my career started. Like, I can really, if I were to pinpoint back to what really, like, was the catalyst to get my career to a whole other level when I got started in real estate was really this topic. So I really, I'm excited to talk about it. And I know Eric himself, he's been involved in several kind of like what I would like to call not necessarily masterminds, but like more of like networking groups, right?

You can call them referral groups, right, whatever title you want to give it. So it's a really great topic, especially if you're in real estate. It's something you have to do. You have to network with people, right? However, you could get smarter over time on how you do it, right? Where you hopefully, you know, by the time we're done today, you're going to kind of understand that, you know, you can network with 101, and that's great when you're starting.

But can we get you to network in a way where you're in front of the room of 20, 30, 40, 50, 60, 100 people, and you're the one speaking? Right. You're the leader. Like how do we get you there? Because I'm telling you that's where things start shifting in your direction fast. And the wind gets behind your back. And then it's fun because people come to you. You're no longer chasing people, right?

And clients. So that's kind of the topic in a nutshell. So before we get into it, the details of it, make sure the YouTube channel I posted in the chat. If you can click on that and if you can just subscribe, we'll be awesome. We're trying to grow that as well. But that's where we put all the recordings. So all the recordings from this go in that YouTube channel. And then we also have a specific Facebook group for this community.

So if you're already part of it, awesome. If you're not, I'm going to put the link also in the chat. So there you go. So that's it. That's really the short housekeeping items. We do these sessions, trainings every first and third Thursday of the month. And did I miss anything, Eric?

I think that's it. No? Yeah. I think you hit it all. All right. Cool. All right. So let's get into it.

So go ahead, Eric. Awesome. Maybe you can start maybe from, from like, B&I group concept. Let's start there because I think that's very easy and achievable for everybody like right now. Yeah. Yeah. So right now I'm actually, and this is just a prelude before we go into this. So right now I'm actually reading like thinking Grow Rich and he talks about having a mastermind and like the importance of it. So and he kind of talks about the book how Henry Ford was

often questioned for his actual like intelligence. And he made a statement in the courtroom of why do I have to know everything. I can push a button and have literally one of my assistants tell me any bit of knowledge I need to know. And it just got stuck with me because we're doing this this week. So I was reading that book and I was like, that's perfect. So what we're talking about, one of the ways to become a go-to amongst people in the business is to start a mastermind. And it can start off small or it can start off on a larger scale.

So one of the things I was talking to Randy about was I actually have a, the B&I group kind of thought process is you only have one person that fits a field and you have as many fields in there as you can and you refer off your business. And they only allow one person because if you have 15 realtors at some point, it's going to be a really awkward situation where, you know, two people get all the referrals and nobody else does. So they try to limit to one person. And we actually do this in Cincinnati. I have a really good hard money lender that I love. We've grown in the business together. So we kind of came up with this idea of like, hey, look, we're in the investment sector. He's like, you're an agent. I'm doing the loans. Why don't we start this and we'll get together

a flipper, a wholesaler, buy and hold, a commercial guy, I'll be the hard money lender, and then you can be just the residential realtor. So we started it. We meet every two weeks on a Monday. It typically only lasts about an hour long, so it doesn't take a lot of our time. But it kind of came from just going to a bunch of masterminds where we felt like maybe the value wasn't completely there. So our thought was, why don't we start this? We're all kind of in the same field. We can all refer off stuff. But the positives are our hour long meetings are just full of amazing information. Like it's what's going on in the commercial space. And we have, you know, 10, 15 minutes of him discussing what he's seeing, the offers he's putting in, what cap rates he's

looking at, what interest rates he's looking at, what he's seeing on the field, what he's not seeing in the field. Same with the wholesaler, same with the flipper, same with the residential side. And because of that, we keep it really small. It's kind of weird word to use for it, but we keep it really intimate. And that means that hour long is really dedicated to just us being able to discuss what we see going on. Now, I picked people in the business that I knew were getting work done. I didn't just pick a random flipper who does one deal a year and then I bring them on. I'm bringing on people. We brought on people that we brought on people that we knew our go-getters in our area. And it's been awesome. It's been great. It's been a great way

for us to kind of solidify who we are amongst each other, be able to refer stuff off. But also, you know, we get to talk about our businesses and see the blind sides that maybe you don't see when you're actively in the business. So when I'm discussing things, there's, why don't you tweak this or why don't you try this? Or that's great. You're talking about that. I'm actually using this software. That's something that you might be able to use. It's been amazing. It's been a really a good turn out. Eric, explain what B&I is because a lot of people might not know, right? So maybe just kind of hit on that concept because it is a national kind of brand, let's call it. Yeah. So B&I is like a, there's chapters of them and there's multiple chapters per city.

Typically somebody has to register it or start it. And what it is is it's somebody, there's one person, like I said, for a multitude of fields and everybody kind of goes to that person. So, you might have one roofer, one contractor. And it's not even just real estate related. You might have a cleaning company. You might have a marketing company. You might have, but they only allow one person in there. So the whole point is you meet up and that's who you give your referrals for that company for.

So if you know somebody that really needs a window company, then you, and there's a window guy in there, then the whole point is you're supposed to refer him off to people. And it just almost becomes this like pass along of referrals. Ironically enough, I've tried to join like 10 different B&Is, and apparently there's a lot of realtors in the U.S. who would have thunk. So literally every single one I try to go into, I mean every single one, like, dude, we already have a realtor. I'm like, okay, I'm sorry. But you can start your own, and that's kind of where ours came out of necessity was we were like, okay, this isn't working. Why don't we go ahead and start our own and see what happens if we almost a small B&I, if we start a small B&I.

So this, I just Googled this. So this is the B&I Sandy. Diego chapter website. And yeah, so you can apply. And there's a fee, you know, because they obviously create the infrastructure for it. But I agree with Eric. Like you don't, you can start your own, right? That's how Eric did it.

And it will work just as well, if not better, right? Because you can handpick the people yourself where I think in B&I, you know, they'll put you in a group and you, you know, you might end up with people that maybe you're not really excited to refer either right that could happen yeah um so on just to kind of share that cool so that's that's amazing um i love that idea and uh people are telling me that it's asking for a passport i have no idea why it's doing it for some but uh so then from there uh i think you know a way to think about it maybe like you can almost like move up the ladder or scale to actually having a meetup, right? And I want to kind of share a story with you.

So when I got started, I got started as an investor in New Jersey. I got my real estate license right away. And I ended up basically doing both at the same time, but really flipping was my primary focus. And the reason I kind of stumbled into doing both is because we were in a crash. that's when I got into the business, 2008, 2009, 2007, right? So I started doing short sales. When I would market for distressed homes, a lot of these people are underwater, so I had to do a short sale. To do it a short sale, you have to be a realtor.

So it kind of helped me. So then I had listings all of a sudden as a realtor, and I'm negotiating with banks and all that stuff. So bottom line, that's kind of how my career started. But my business partner, Dan John Steingrayber and I were like, we would do the same thing, right, go to all these RIA meetings and we're like, these suck. Like, honestly, like, what the heck is going on here? Like, we would sit in classroom, not even classroom style, just, you know, rows, right?

Chairs, like, no desk in it, right? Just chairs, right? And then you would have these owners of these groups run these groups and they've owned these groups forever. Right? And they would just pitch products from the front of the stage. And there was like no time to network. And we're like, this is this is not good. Like we're not getting any value from those, right?

Like I actually want to learn something, not just be sold, right? So we started our own. I was like, so we're like, okay, what would we want this to look like? We're like, if we did it on our own, like, or if we wanted this one to exist that we want, what would that look like? We're like, well, round tables, feed people. We would want to be fed because these, these rear meetings are. usually in the evening, right, like 6 p.m. or so. So I'm like, I would like to get food. Like,

I'm hungry when I come through these things, man. My brain is not really working because I'm thinking about food, right? And then, you know, let's make it affordable for everybody. Well, guess what? So we launched our first meetup, if you want to call it, but we went all out. And I don't necessarily say you should do this. And I'll tell you kind of the steps of how I would do it now, in essence, if I were to kind of start again, right, potentially, and for you to kind of make it more manageable, but we went all out, right? We were young. We were just naive. We had no, we were risk takers. Like, whatever. Like, if it doesn't work, it doesn't work, right? So by then, we already had a good network of real estate professionals that we knew, right? So we worked hard.

We hit the phones. We sold everybody on the vision of what we're building. And back then, we were calling it Network 2.0. We were calling it. That was our title. And we got some of our main vendors enrolled, like our hard money lender, our mortgage guy, contractor, like you name it. Anybody that we would do business with when we're doing a closing or transaction, we would enroll them into this vision and let them know, like, look, we'll help you and promote you and this and that. Let's help each other grow this, right? And see where this evolves. So the first meeting, we were like, we rented a banquet hall. We had round tables.

We had a full buffet. And we charged people $0 to come to this. And we filled the room with 80 people for our first meeting. And everybody right from the beginning was like, wow, like this is amazing. Like, why is this free? What's the catch? Everyone was waiting for the catch, right? Well, the catch never came.

Like we literally were, we allowed an hour to network. We had food towards the end of that hour. So people were able to then get food and sit down at the table and start networking. Then we did speed networking game every one of these meetings. So everybody at the table really got to know each other quick. Right. Then the second hour, we went into an education session. That's it.

No sales. It was all education to add value, value, value. And in the last hour, it was more networking. which is exactly what we wanted when we were going to these rehab meetings that absolutely sucked, right? So we just created what we were missing, but we didn't charge people and we're like, you know what, this is going to be a marketing expense. That's it.

Like, it's a marketing expense. Like, that's how we're going to have to put this on the books, right? And it was the best freaking investment to this day. Like, I can tell you, that thing grew. We were getting 200 people every single month. We were doing every second Wednesday of the month. And weekdays is really the best day to do this. So we did it every Wednesday, second Wednesday of the month.

And then a year into it, we started charging membership fees. So that kind of weeded out, the people that were kind of jokers that were just coming for the free food and coffee. Right. But by then, we had momentum. And we literally would have the owners of the other RIA meetings coming to our meetings thinking, like, what are these guys doing? like because we were like the buzz of the the new jersey like everybody started talking about our meetings because we did it so different and it was free right so that these these owners of these rias would come and they would like spy on what we're doing because they were like what are these guys

where's the hook here what they're trying to what's this they couldn't figure it out because we had no no no no no hook there's nothing we're just like no no we want to give back man we want to make this awesome and by doing that, I can't tell you how much money we laid, millions. We raised millions of dollars for our investing business. It was so easy to raise money because we were in front of the room. We built the authority, right? We gave, we gave, we didn't ask, right? It was just organic relationships that we built and people wanted to gravitate to us because we were in front of the room. And they were probably smarter than us. I mean, we were like, you know, my partner back then was in his like, he was like 23 years old or 22 years old. So he looked like a kid.

right i was four seven years older so i was in like my late 20s so we're we're young kids in front of this room talking to 200 people that makes an impact i'm telling you right so and i'll show you what this looks like literally like right now it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it amazes me because like i'm proud of it and and let me share my screen this is what this this is the The name of it now, it's New Jersey Real Estate Social Network. We changed the name of it a couple years into it. This is the website. Look how many attendees, my buddy, who still runs it in New Jersey.

15,000 plus have come through those doors. We have 30 plus speakers, 130 live events. But the way we started promoting it is not through our own website, but through meetup. This is where we had everybody go and register for our first event. And meetup was really the database or the software or the platform that we leveraged so we don't have to spend any money for anything. And look how many members it has. 4,269 members. It's the largest meetup in New Jersey for real estate to this day.

So my buddy, John Steingraber, this is him, my first business partner. He continues to run these meetups. And then eventually what we ended up doing is. we started getting sponsors so we didn't have to increase the membership rates. And I just checked in with John today. He goes, right now I actually don't charge anything, no membership fees anymore. And he has all these sponsors that pay him money every single month to be part of this amazing community. And the funny part is this sponsor is a friend of mine who started with us from day one back in 2008.

he still is a sponsor, John Palumbo. I'm looking at this guy, an attorney, I got him to become our sponsor back in 2008. He is still our sponsor. Well, their sponsor. I'm not involved anymore in it. But it's kind of cool to see that these people believed in us, a handful of these people of sponsors, believed in us to the point where, look, they're still with us. And that speaks volume of what we've created, right?

but it started with that first meaning. Now, I wouldn't necessarily tell you, you know, go and do this the way we did it, maybe, right? That was a little, we did take a big risk, but I'm telling you it was worth it. And we turned it into an actual profitable business later as well. So by itself, it was actually making money from the membership fees. But here's how I would do it now, potentially, if you were asking me, like, you know, how do I do is maybe a little slower. Maybe, you know, maybe I don't have access to a hundred people to call and get and fill a room. But think about this, though. If you, if you have four or five good people

like Eric does, I can guarantee you. If Eric talk to those people that he's got in his referral network and he said, hey, guys, I have a vision. I want to do an awesome networking event. Here's the, here's the vision. Here's how I want to lay it out. Are you guys in? They probably all know 20 or 30, 40 people in the industry that that and then Eric knows another probably 20 30 between the five of them I bet they could literally recreate what I just did if they wanted right back in 2008 so it's better if you enroll others so it's not this overwhelming project right so the best way I would do is first is really identify the niche like what do you really want to achieve right are you want to achieve If you're an agent and you want to work with investors, do you want to work with flippers?

Do you want to work with multifamily apartment building buyers type investors? Do you want to work with short-term rental people? What is it? It could be, it would be good potentially. It doesn't have to be. If you have some type of a niche, maybe stick to it and leverage that niche to attract. Because then it's easier to deliver the message through your marketing about what you're doing. You don't have to because we did it as a general.

It was a New Jersey real estate social network, period. So it was open to all real estate professionals, contractors, realtors, investors. We didn't care. Anybody in the industry, right? But if you have a niche, then it could be a little easier. But before you even should start one, you need to go and network and meet some people and start collecting some contact information, some business cards, start building that database of people and start building those relationships because those are the people that you're going to

invite to your first get together, right? And ideally, you would do that with two or three other people like Eric, where you would tell them the same thing. Hey, think about 20 or 30 people you might be able to invite if we will to throw this networking event together once a month on a weekday, on like a Tuesday or a Wednesday where most people don't have much to do. Okay. Right. So you've got to do some prep work. You can't just go tomorrow and be like, all right, I'm going to do it first event tomorrow. and I'm going to call my 20 people and think that they're all going to show up. Wrong, right? Show up rate is usually about 30%.

Like, that's what you have to expect, right, when you do these type of events. So I would start thinking about your database, thinking about the key people like Eric that you are networking with already. And maybe even you can start a small little BNI group, right, for lack of other words. and then from there take the next step and maybe start doing a once a month or once a quarter even, whatever, this type of a meetup. And one thing you can do is approach a restaurant or a bar and most of them will have a back room that it's not utilized during the week because people just don't book those things

during the week in most cases, especially on the Tuesday or Wednesday. And ask them, hey, would I be able to use this back room? I might have, let's say, 20 people to start. We're going to grow it, right? What's the capacity? Is the room to grow here with you? If so, up to what amount of people, right? So you kind of know where you're going, right?

And what's the possibility in this venue? And then ask them, hey, if we were to offer maybe five different appetizers, any specials you can offer, and I'll pay for that. And are there any drink specials you can offer to my group? like a happy hour special type, right? So I wouldn't necessarily cover all of the costs. All I would do is have a few appetizers that I would pay for with my key three, four column board members, right? But the rest is on everybody else. If they want to, you know, buy drinks, if they want to buy more food, it's on them, right? And you don't necessarily even in that environment on the beginning

when you're starting, there doesn't have to be any training delivered, to be honest. What I would do is I would just get in front of the room for maybe 10 minutes. That's it. Keep it nice and light. So you do it for a total of maybe two hours, right? And somewhere in the middle, you get on a mic an hour in and say, hey, or even no mic. You just yell, right? Because you're probably going to have only 20 people.

But like, hey, you know, here's the people that put this together. that I want to recognize everybody. This is what he does. This is what I do. This is what he does. But bottom line, we just want to grow this. We want to create this amazing network and paint the vision and throw the vision for the people that came because those will be the best promoters for you.

And if they like what they experience, they will invite others. So you start enrolling them into your vision and there is no pitch. You're not asking them for any money. You're not pitching them any sales products. Right. You're strictly there to create a network of people that can do business together, right? It's a B&I on steroids, but you're letting more than one person of each category in, right? That's how I would start it. And that's very achievable for every one of you here to literally get that going very soon if you strategically and with intention approach this, right? eventually you can then graduate to a banquet hall of that kind of like we did but i think what i would

do at that point is before i would do that i would get sponsors to cover that right so it's no longer the board members that have to put up the money you know in the beginning you put up a hundred bucks between the four of you for appetizers that's nothing right you spend 25 dollars each and it's and it's a great way to get out, get your name out there. But eventually, if you want to go bigger, kind of the way we did, then I would get sponsors, but now you have traction, right? Now you have something to talk about. You have some credibility.

You have photos to show of your events already, right? Then you can approach a lender, a hard money lender and others, and say, hey, here's what we're doing, here's what we're going. And would you be interested in being our exclusive, use the word, exclusive on the beginning, especially, exclusive sponsor for our group, our community. And then you work at the pricing, right? And usually you're going to get anywhere between $100 to $300 per event, right, depending on what kind of sponsor it is.

A stager, I would usually ask them for less. If it's a hard money lender, I would ask them for more because I know they make more, right? Their margins are bigger per sale compared to a stager as an example, right? So you can have different levels maybe for different service providers. But that's really the way I would start and graduate to kind of what I showed you what we did right from the beginning, which I don't know if you need to do it that way. But you could. It's possible.

We did it. It worked and it was amazing. So I'm going to stop for now. Eric, anything you want to add for now and maybe any questions for me because, you know, I was the one doing it. So sometimes I can skip over stuff. Yeah, no, you're good. I think one of the most important things you need to understand when you're setting something up like this is you're trying to add value.

So if you're creating another meeting that's going to be similar to the other meetings that are taking place in your local community, there's going to be no reason to go. So, yeah, and one of the reasons we started our small one is because I kept going to meetings, and it's not to be mean by any means, because I used to go to them in the same position where I was a newer agent and a newer investor. myself and try to meet people at network. But once I kind of got up there and I had been networking and everything like that, what ended up happening was after COVID, there was like, the meetings used to be like 20 to 30 people big, the one that used to go to in Cincinnati.

After COVID, it was like 160 people. And I think like 140 of them guaranteed we're never going to invest in real estate. So what it was was the two hours was me answering questions for people who were like, I want to flip, but I need to make like 250 a deal. And I'm like, yeah, buddy, you're in Cincinnati. You're going to make like 20 and like it or like you're out of it.

So what we ended up doing was creating that because we just, we didn't see the value anymore. I love the idea of just a couple of apps. People love food. They're more likely to come out. So anytime you have kind of an incentive, if somebody's a little bit on the fence, you can market it easily. One of the best ways to find investors locally, get on Facebook and look up investor groups in San Diego or investor groups in Tampa. or investor groups in Tampa.

Once you find one, you'll find like 60. And I just did it recently when I came down to Tampa. I joined literally every investor group I could. Again, it's going to be kind of similar. Most of the people in that group aren't going to do anything, but I've set up meetings down here with people and have talked about starting up a meetup because most of the meetups down here don't sound like they're of any use.

I'm going to kind of sound like a RIA meetup where it's going to be local people trying to sell something. When it comes to contacts, one of the best people in our business is an agent or as a wholesaler or a flipper. One of the most well-connected person in the business is actually your title agent. Your title agent works with tons of investors. They work with tons of agents. They work with tons of lenders. So lenders are also really good.

But make those calls. Call a title company and say, hey, I really want to do this. It's going to help you get more business. You can put your name on it. Who do you know that you can invite? Who do you know that's doing a lot of cash? deals, bring them along. And then the other thing that I would add, it's different for everybody.

I personally think it's quality over quantity every single time. Like, I would prefer to be in a room of 10 people that do 100 deals combined than to be in a room of 100 people that do 10 deals combined. It's just one of those things where I try and get around people that it's the 80, 20 rule, 80% of everything is done by 20% of the population. It's the same with investing. It's the same with agents. You're not surrounding yourself with people like that.

It's not a bad thing. And it's important to be able to help people that might one day get to that point. But when you're trying to grow your business, you want to be in your rock stars. Rock stars, you're going to be what helps you grow. If you're working with one investor who does 20 flips, that's a lot easier than working with 20 investors that each do one flip. It's a lot less to keep track of better relationship to build. So that's kind of what I would add on it. Yeah, that's good.

That's good feedback. And yeah, so there's, I guess, you know, like with everything, there's several ways of approaching it. We did take that approach of like casting a big net, right? Yeah. And we did get a lot of tire kickers, right? However, I think the way we looked at it from that standpoint is that, well, number one, you never know who people, who they will become, right? And we all agree. That's always my conversation with new realtors, new investors.

I believe in them. And I'm going to make the best assumption and be as optimistic as I can, but I'm also going to be real with them what it takes to build a business. I think people appreciate that. And by doing so, I think, too, you could also remember that some people might never become what they envision themselves to be, like even like, let's say someone wants to be a flipper and they never actually get to do that, but they want to be in your community

because they just feed off their positive energy and maybe they have a retirement account of a half a million sitting there in a 401k and they learn something and then all of a sudden they want to invest with you. Just because you're doing it at a high level and they see you as an authority because you're in front of the room

and now almost the one that the person that's been going there for a year didn't do one flip is now lending you half a million dollars. So you just never know what it could, could turn into. And that's actually, as I'm saying this, I will never forget this guy, Jim. This guy's name just popped into my mind. Jim. Jim is that guy. Jim was coming to all of our meetings when we started that club, that community. He never did or flip. And then eventually he reached out to John and I. And he was like, can I, I have a million dollars in my retirement account. I did very well for myself. And he's like, but I want to learn. And can we can we do something

together. And we offer like, yeah, sure, like if you invest your money with us on the next flip, then we can also kind of take you on the journey with, with us and invite you to see, you know, when we're meeting with our contractor, you can come and when we're doing this. And he loved it, right? So that's how he was able to, he wanted to lend money to us. Guess what happened to Jim? The moment we started reaching out to Jim to invite him to stuff, he never showed up to those things. Or like, well, that's fine. Well, it's easier for us, but we'll take your money. Right.

So you never know, like, what it could lead to. So that's just another side of the coin, right, to look at, right? If you could withstand the bigger size, right, and casting a bigger net, right? Because it could lead to something really good, even with people that never do a deal. Right. Yeah. And I think the people that eventually don't do anything. and they don't benefit from the community, they'll stop coming, right?

They'll weed themselves out, especially if you go and scale it to a bigger model like we did with a membership fee down the road, right? And it was only like, we were charging like 20 bucks for entry to cover their dinner plate, basically. And if they wanted to buy a year's membership, then we gave a discount, right? of like 20% or something, right? So it's still very cheap and affordable that, right, that any business owner would do that.

But the ones that like Eric is pointing out, the tire kickers, right? They would weed those people out pretty quick, right? So yeah, so that's one thing I would say on that. And then another thing to kind of think about, because I want to show you also what I'm doing now, because I have no desire to run these big meetings anymore because they do require work.

You've got to be marketing it every month. And it's not, it doesn't just happen by itself, right? Where you just start one and all of a sudden, like every month, it's just like it gets filled, right? It's work. So we. So what I do now, I created over the years strategic partnerships with other education companies as an example. So for example, Fortune Miller's is one education company that I've been very strategically well partnered with. Right.

They teach people how to flip homes, how to hold. wholesale and all those things. Well, I got to know all of the San Diego local Fortune Builders students over the years over the last decade, and I decided to build a community for them. But I made it exclusive only for them. So I wouldn't invite anyone else unless you were a student or a Fortune Builders coaching company, right? Just recently, I partnered with Kingdom 320, which is another real estate education company, right? That does national events. but they also do things in San Diego. So I went and I helped the owners of that company

and one of their local educational events, or we call them fulfillment events, and I went and I helped and I provided value and I brought my hard money lender and I brought my escrow person, I brought my title. I overdelivered them value. And then guess what?

The members that were there, when I invited them to my exclusive mastermind that I do once a month for them in Southern California, a lot of them raised their hand and said, yeah, I want to continue this relationship. So I want to show you what this looks like right now and how I'm managing it, pretty much all of it right now virtually, because I'm a little bit less inclined to do a lot of life stuff because I have two little kids. I have a two-year-old and now a seven-week-old baby girl. So let me go, this one. So this is investor age and nation. I just re-branded it,

but this is the Southern California chapter. This used to be called just like a San Diego mastermind or something, but it was only for the Fortune Builders students or investors. Now I opened it up to the Kingdom 320 investors, but it's exclusive. It's invite only. And we, basically talk about investing, right? And I'm one of the realtors and investors, so I understand both sides. So I bring a lot of value from that standpoint. I usually talk about case studies that actually involve them, like the actual students, because what I tell them is, look, you're a new investor. Here's what you're going to need help with. And here's how you approach, right? What I teach them is like, go through the listing agent. If your state allows dual agency,

go through the listing agent to get the deal, see if they would represent both sides. The seller and you, we talked about this on different trainings, right? There's the commission incentive. If they do, great, then try to get me in to be your listing agent on the back end once. It's rehabbed, and I have a listing program for them at 1%, which I promote right in this group, right here, 1% listing program, right? It's featured. And I've been doing this for five plus years now with this listing.

program here. And I said, if you could get me in to be your listing agent on the back end, amazing. If not, don't worry, I understand it. But what I do want you to do is send me the deal that you are working on. Send me your ARV that have to repair value, but also send me the comps of how you came up with your ARV. And I don't care if you send me a link to a realtor.com listing or Redfin listings. If you don't have access to the MLS, send me something. Right. And help me understand how you came up with your number. And then send me, send me the deal analyzer, which is something that basically all of the educators have that they are now using. I said, send me the deal analyzer so I can see how you analyze this deal numbers wise. How much is it for rehab?

How are you paying for money for financing costs, right? And then a lot of times I'll find errors in the deal analyzer. A lot of times I'll find errors in their analysis of the ARV. But my go for them is to serve them and say, hey, I'm here to help you so you don't lose money on your first deal. Because if you do, you're out of business, most likely. Right. So I want them to think in that way that I'm here to help them. And then if there is an opportunity for us to work together, amazing, let's go. I'll help you. And what ends up happening over time and this new group of Kingdom 320 students that came in,

I invite it into this mastermind that I do over Zoom once a month on the last Thursday of the month from 6 to 8 p.m. We've grown this group now by another probably 60 investors in the last three months or two months since I partnered with this group. And then what I know already from experience, what ends up happening, a lot of them have also personal needs. Like they also have a primary home maybe that they're trying to figure out what to do with or maybe they want to buy their own first primary home and they need a good realtor and so I end up doing a lot of business with them for their personal goals as well or their friends they know they have friends that I don't know right so then they start referring me and my team to their friends right so now not only am I

helping them on their investment you know deals and things they're analyzing and they're exciting about, but then I ended up helping them with their personal real estate goals, right? Very common. Like literally this week, we just, we're about to list one of those investors' homes, like on the market because they're going to move to Texas. And then another person reached out because they want to buy a home for a son in Los Angeles. I have a partner agent there. We're going to work together. So, and that's not a flip. They're buying a personal home for the son, right? So that's how I'm doing it. now. I'm making it more exclusive invite only. So it's almost like the opposite of what I did

10 years ago, right? But it works only because I created a strategic partnership with an education company who has the influence and the audience. And then I'm the realtor that brings the value that they're looking for for their investment group because I understand investing as well. And that's how I was able to kind of create this over time. Right. So I put all the recordings in here from my Southern California masterminds. And on these, I basically talk about market stats, like what's happening in Southern California, real estate stats. I talk about mortgages and different programs that are coming out.

And guess what? I have a sponsor. My lender comes on and they speak about the mortgage industry, not me. I have an escrow company. I have a title company and they come and they speak, right? So it's the same concept, right, of getting sponsors and help and support, except I'm just not doing it live in person. I do it all over Zoom. Before COVID, I was doing these in person.

But after that, I decided to keep it on Zoom because I wanted to have a larger reach than just San Diego. So now I'm actually able to help a lot of our investors beyond San Diego. So now we're helping our investors in L.A. in Riverside County and Orange County. I mean, I literally have all of Southern California covered. And Joe, who's one of our actual realtors slash investors, he's on here. Joe Thomas, he's one of my agent partners in San Bernardino County in Southern California. So if I have an investor student that wants to get in the business and they're in Joe's neck of the woods, guess who I'm going to partner with? Joe, he's on here.

Good to have you here, Joe. So that allowed me, again, I had a bigger vision. And if I did the live events in person, it would actually limit my vision. So I decided to go and stay with Zoom. And honestly, COVID was the catalyst to that for me. And it worked down in my favors. So that's kind of how, you know, I've evolved over the years. Neither one is right or wrong.

But we want to give you guys almost like three different ideas, right? So we have the small group like the BNI type, right? We have the live events one starting from, you know, the back room of a bar or a restaurant to then scaling maybe to a banquet hall like I did with my buddy John or maybe doing something more exclusive like I'm doing and just over Zoom. For more insights and to join the Investor Agent Nation community, visit Investoragentnation.com. If you like this episode, please subscribe to the podcast and leave a five-star rating to help Randy and Eric continue delivering valuable content that resonates with you. Thanks for listening to the Investor Agent Nation podcast.