KGCI: Real Estate on Air - From Addiction to Achievement with Ben Lang

Episode Date: June 19, 2024

Welcome to Real Estate Real World, where we talk to the mover, shakers, and leaders that are getting it done right now in the real estate industry and beyond. Your host, Marguerite Chris Bello, started this podcast simply dedicated to call people about what's really happening in this crazy roller coaster ride of real estate. Be sure to subscribe on iTunes and stay up today on the newest stuff by adding yourself to the list at W. www. real estate real world.com. Now your host, Marguerite Chris Bellow. Hello, everybody. Guess what time it is. Real Estate Real World. I'm Marguerite Chris Fellow and I'm thrilled to be here today with my newest guest who I'm really excited to hear his story. What an interesting man he is. Ben Lang is a highly successful and tech savvy real estate expert known for his exceptional customer service and expertise in listing homes. He made a

significant impact on the real estate industry during the short sale boom of 2009 to 2012, selling over 60 listings per year. With decades of experience, Ben is passionate about professional development and shares his knowledge through coaching, speaking engagements and podcasts like ours. He stays ahead of trends, helping others achieve their goals, and remains a leader in the industry. Ben's resilience, drive, and commitment to excellence have propelled him to success even in the face of setbacks. He serves as an inspiring example of turning adversity into opportunity through hard work and dedication. And I am thrilled to have him here today and hear his story. So welcome, welcome, Ben. Thank you. Thank you so much for having me, first of all. I really appreciate the opportunity

to be here. Absolutely. You're part of the EXP organization that I have and part of that. And I've been following you, stalking you a little bit on social media. And I've been excited to, to talk to you and hear your story. I've heard parts of it and you're quite an inspiring man. You know, what's interesting is I was doing REO during the time that you were doing short sales. I went into that REO arena, which I mean, that's a whole other, that's a long conversation and of the craziness that happened during that time.

And for you to deal with the short sales, to me, the short sales were way harder than the REOs, but it was definitely a lot of work. And so kudos to you for going through that. So tell us a little bit about yourself. a little bit about your background. I'm excited to hear. Yeah, a little bit about myself. First and foremost, definitely am a man of faith, of strong faith. I am one of the biggest dog lovers that you'll probably ever meet. What kind of dogs do you have? I have three rescue dogs. They're all over 60 pounds. Each one is over 60 pounds. My household is a little hectic. I have two dogs and I have Rascal who's a rescue and

then I have Daisy Rose who's a wild, many Australian shepherd. Okay. So one of our rescues is Part, all seas. High energy. Yes, we love the allsies. We love the bully breed rescues. I always have. I've always been drawn to the bully breed rescues because they get such a bad rap in publicity and in real life, for the most part, they're the sweetest dogs.

So I can identify it with that breed. So that's a little bit about me personally. I just got remarried last year. Congratulations. My daughter is going to be 12 years old on July 4th. And so that that's a bit about me personally. What birthday, huh? Fourth of July?

It's the fireworks are for her every year. That's her present. My youngest son, his birthday is July 9th. Nice. Nice. Yeah. And I'm really into fitness, a bit of a gym rat. And so that's a little bit about me personally as far as professionally.

And today, my team is strong. I'm listing a ton, selling a ton. In fact, I just got invited to go speak at a national. conference in August about listing domination. So I'm super pumped about that. Where is that conference you're speaking at? It's the National Association of Real State Brokers in Austin, Texas. Okay. I'm speaking at the Florida Association in August 2. So I was wondering if you're going to be at the same place. That would have been cool. No, I'm going to be in Houston. National Association of Real Estate Brokers. It's actually my first

paid speaking engagement. I've done several free. I've done several free. I've done several free speaking engagements along the years. This first one I'm ever getting paid for, so I'm pretty excited. That is very exciting. So tell us a little bit about you talk about zero to success. Do you want to talk a little bit about what took you to zero? I do. I love sharing this story. Every time I speak, share the story because I believe that it can empower other people. And I believe that me not sharing it is almost a disservice to people that are listening right now, people that listen to me speak. So I've actually fallen flat on my face twice in life is where it all went wrong. My sister actually committed suicide at 29 years old.

Yeah, it was very difficult and something that I wasn't prepared to deal with emotionally. Yeah, I can't even imagine. Yeah. I turned to alcohol and drugs. I spent the better half of 2016 and 17 really destroying my life through alcohol and drugs and neglecting my business. I was also a gym owner at that time. So my brokerage, my team, my gym, divorce, which was a pretty tumultuous divorce and wound up. costing me financially emotionally my car i mean after the divorce after everything got depleted

and i lost everything my car was repossessed just like things that yeah they took it all when you're at the peak in 2013 14 15 and you just think you know that going that far back down is not even a possibility yeah i always had this thought in my mind Once you reach a level of success, you've reached it and you're there. And there's a quote that I love and I believe it's success is not owned. It's rented. Absolutely. Yeah.

I could I got stories too. Yeah. It's crazy. And so just because you reach that level doesn't mean that it's that you're entitled to it and it's yours to keep. It's a constant. So life was pretty terrible in 2018. Yeah, it sounds like it was really rough. I'm really sorry about your sister.

It's interesting because when tragedy happens, one of my favorite quotes is people either bury their head in the sand or they rise up, right? Yeah. And the interesting thing is that grief comes in so many different forms and ways. There's no right or wrong in how people deal with it. But what's interesting is the ones I've found that bury their head in the sand. when they come out even bigger and stronger than they were before. It's a challenge. And I could not agree with you anymore.

Who I am today, I would never take away the 2007 disaster. I would never take away or take back, even if I could go back in time. I would not redo it. And I have an almost 12-year-old. And there's a lot of bad things that came out of that. but geez, my outlook on life, my perception of life is so much different. And five years of sobriety, five plus years of sobriety now, the things that I've learned in the ways that I've grown as a human being, you can't buy that.

You'd have to really fall to really change that perception, I think. Can I ask what made, there must have been a moment or an hour or a day. when you made that decision to go into rehab. And what was that? Like, I'm always curious, like, what is the turning point that what thought goes through your head or what happens that says, all right, this is clearly not working.

I need to make some changes or I need to change my life. Like, I'm curious if you're willing to share. Like, what happened? Yeah, I'm an open book. Everyone that knows me, like, I wear my heart on my sleeve, I share everything about myself. So for me, I felt, first of all, I was waking up at 7 a.m. and cracking open a beer. And at one point, it was a case of beer every single day.

And then it was drugs at night to sober up from the all-day drinking. That eventually grows tiresome. It's actually physically, mentally exhausting. So I had tried, I'd said, I'm pretty strong. Like I've done some pretty cool things. I can figure it out myself. I've done some pretty big things in life. So how hard can it be?

And I went to the doctor and they prescribe a pill that if you drink on it, it makes you sick, physically ill. And so I said, all I'll do is I'll just wake up every morning and pop the pill. and that will make me not want to drink. And then I started drinking on the pill. Oh, my goodness. Yeah, and I'm like, this is ridiculous. I was like, I can't beat this on my own. There comes a point in time where I think we all think that we can handle pretty much anything that's thrown at us.

But there's these certain times in life, when you fully come to the full realization that without a support, support system without help, without someone in your corner. It's just not doable at certain points in your life. It's interesting to me because I've learned that and what I've seen throughout my lifetime and the people I've experienced is the most successful people I know ask for help. And they've learned to ask for help, right? It's the ego that gets in the way many times and keeps us from asking for help because we don't want to look stupid or we don't want to look like we don't know what we're talking about or we've created this persona somehow that if we ask for help, we'll think that bubble will be burst somehow. But the people that I know who've

really powered through it like you did and figured things out, there's always somebody that was there to help them. It's so true. Funny story if we have time. Yeah, absolutely. While I'm in rehab, I fought for four hours to get out. And if you know anything about rehabs, like, it's really hard to get out. Their whole goal to keep you in. And but I'm so headstrong. I'm such a headstrong person to definitely type A personality. It became more about the battle of winning.

I did get out and I got a cab. And about a half hour into that cab ride, I said, well, I got to turn around two weeks. I need to be there. And I, like, I'm still friends with some of the leadership at the rehab I was at. I'm still friends with them to this day. And they're like, that was like a Rocky Balboa fight. It was intense. But it came down to me.

It was just about the win. And once I won, I came to my senses and came to the realization, like, okay, I really need to be there. And that story is still. I go back. What in your mind you thought you won? The fight to get out. The fight to get out where they said, okay, you can go. That fight because it was four, five, or six of the leadership people of the rehab against me.

And once I won, though, once they said, okay, you can go, it just clicked in my mind like, oh, did I really do the right thing? What did you really win? Like you won to not help yourself is what you won. Exactly. So I did go right back and finished out my full time there. And it's really a phenomenal experience. I look forward to it every month.

It's interesting because I have a couple of relatives. And one of them has struggled with alcohol for many years. And finally recently made the decision to make that change. And the first time, he says he went to go to the AA meeting and he circled the building. for an hour. And he says, he goes, I couldn't do the walk of shame. I couldn't walk in. And then I said, you realize that everybody in there is in the same boat, right? And so then he ended up going back, like a week later and actually walked in. And he goes, it wasn't as bad as I thought it would be. And he said people were great. And now he's 18 or 19 days sober. So he's still pretty new at it.

But it's the first time he's taking it that far. And I'm super proud of him. But it's, I've personally don't struggle. I've not had that struggle. So it's the one thing I can relate. My only addiction is probably sugar and working. I'm a workaholic. So that's the only thing I can relate to. But I've seen so many people in my life and especially in this particular industry even who it's been a major people who are high achievers, right? They find ways to be high achievers when it comes to like drinking and drugs as well. I'm reading a book called driven and it talks about D2 and D4 gene that people are born with and driven people are born with this gene. And oftentimes they can't they're multi thinkers and they're very subject to addiction.

And it's yeah, I would think so. It's making a lot of sense in my head. Yeah, because when you see highly driven people, they probably start by being addicted to work somehow, right? And then they just find other ways. And addiction is addiction, whether it's work, whether it's alcohol, drug, sugar. You have it. And a lot of times I see people just transfer that addiction to something else, right? Yeah. And if you don't resolve the issues that got you there to begin with, then you'll just go back.

100%. 100%. How has that helped you in your? business and rebuilding. Let's shift gears a little bit and talk about what you've done to for your comeback. What did you start doing when you got out of rehab to rebuild and regrow? Yeah, this is really the best part. Talking about the addiction is cool, but because I was managing a team, managing a brokerage, managing a gym, and also an alcoholic, so my SOI was gone pretty much. Most people that were still in my SOI that were still around had no faith in me

whatsoever. So in 18, I went back to the basics, pick up the phone. That's so hard stuff, right? But that's a great thing for people who right now are feeling like they're starting over. Anything that I could do. I was driving around, knocking on doors, going to neighborhoods with just listed, just sold, knocking on doors and just dial. and it took a second to get going, but it worked. The basics always work. The fundamentals always work. There's really no arguing with that.

You talked to 50 people about buying and selling or selling real estate a week. You're going to close deals. If you talk to you talk to three people about buying or selling real estate, you're probably not going to do very well. And so you started going out and hustling yourself and then when did you decide to, and you were, I'm assuming you were at a, a brokerage at that point. You didn't still have your brokerage, did you?

Correct. I folded your brokerage. And how many agents did you have at your brokerage at that time when you did that? We had 16, but they were all team members. So they were team members. Yeah, I owned a brokerage with my husband with 120 agents. Yeah, I was the biggest producer out of 120 agents. So it didn't make a lot of sense.

I did a bit of top grading at the end of the year and we're at two, two in-house ISAs, a full-time listing coordinator, a full-time TC, and then myself. So four agents, two in-house ISAs, listing coordinator, and TC. Fantastic. The five of us are all producing agents. Versus 15 people that, you know, three are doing deals and the rest aren't. Right. Yeah. Yeah. I've done coaching. I just left a national coaching company.

and then I just started a position with a new national coaching company that I believe in tremendously. I did just sign a deal to be the face of a new technology, real estate technology company. Very exciting. I've committed 25 hours a week to coaching and training. My life, I'm transitioning. I lost my passion. My passion for selling has been gone for a little while now. Yeah.

It serves a purpose. My real passion is coaching, speaking, mentoring. I don't feel like I'm working when I coach and mentor and speak. It's where I belong. I believe it's my purpose in life. And I'm fully committed to pursuing that purpose. So everything that I've done in this last couple years is for exit strategy, stock options, rev share, short-term rental properties, long-term rental

properties. I'm just trying to build five really good passive income streams. And EXP gave me an avenue to do that. And I love the brokerage where they charge me $450 a deal for 10, 10 deals and I was done. It only cost me $4,500 a year to be there. And that's what I left. But I'm very much big picture thinking here. I'm going to be 46 pretty soon. And I don't know, I want to do bigger things in life. And I need those multiple income streams in order to be able to do those things. When I started to look at what my exit plan was even owning a brokerage, it no longer made sense. And so getting out of that brokerage, for me, and this isn't all about EXP, but the best decision ever for me was to join EXP. And people

are like, you owned your own company. You got 100%. Why would you do that? And when you get diagnosed with breast cancer, you start to think, what's going to happen to my family? And the huge blessing was the revenue share and the stock that came in every month, whether I was out selling a house or not. And so it's been a game changer and life changing for me. And it's allowed me the same thing, that freedom to be able to impact way more people. Like life for you at this point, as it is for me, is really more about impact and how many people you can help and impact. Your story is, something that is very inspiring and to be able to get past that and be able to grow and build another business and be able to support and encourage other people is I feel like that's where

life is at right that's where the good stuff happens it totally is time is the most valuable commodity I mean I could keep running like this 80 hours a week I work 80 hours a week right now there's a lot of days where I feel burnout right now at this point in my life but I'm very much in a transitional stage where I'm doing it this year because I know what's to come and it's for an end goal. But I don't want to be fully relying on commission. I can't do that. There's no retirement parties for realtors. We never really... So true. I don't know. Who's your ideal coaching client? Are you doing one-on-one coaching or are you doing group coaching? So I just left Club Wealth coaching. I'm now with Growth CEO coaching.

Awesome. The club wealth was more one-on-one. The growth CEO is more group coaching. And growth CEO, I'm in the likes of Brian Curtis, Barry Jenkins, Tristan Amuda, like very good company there. I'm still super pumped. But my ideal coaching client, people that are open-minded, open-mindedness, leave the ego at the door.

There's really no room for ego when it comes to coaching. Just people that are driven, open-minded, you know, humble. I would say those are the top three qualities. So my favorite question is where do you see yourself in 10 years? Oceanfront condo in Florida. Coaching from the oceanfront condo, maybe the balcony. There you go. Simple life, nothing.

I'm a simple guy. Like if you saw me, I'm tatted everywhere. I like riding four wheeling. I like rescue big pit bull rescue dogs. I'm not into, I drive a Dodge Ram. I'm not into the Lamborghinis or I'm just a simple guy. I want to spend as much time with my wife and my family, be able to wake up and see the ocean every day.

And then be able to enrich people's lives and have time and enrich people's lives. That's it for me. I don't, I don't know. That's what it's all about, right? Yeah. Yeah, there's no, there's no like millionaire status or I don't really care about any of that stuff. I just, just give me my time. We talked earlier and I said, everybody in life gets humbled at some point, right, by choice or by force.

And I think that the most genuine grateful people are those who've been humbled at some point and who've now been able to see how bad it can get so you can see how good it can be. Yeah. I told you beforehand. I said, that's my tribe. I believe in energy. I believe that there's energy in this world. And I'm very much attracted to people who have faced extreme adversity in their life and conquered it and triumphed in the end. Absolutely. Those are my people. Awesome. Hey, it's been absolutely fantastic talking to you. I've really been looking forward to this conversation and getting to know you. We'll be definitely having all of your social media information in the show notes.

So do you have any final words you'd love to share with our audience? Just, I would say, just do it. Don't wait for things to be perfect. A lot of people that I coach, they're like, yeah, when I get it perfected, I'm going to do it. I think the Nike quote, just do it. It doesn't have to be perfect. effort outperforms talent every single time, every single time. Absolutely.

I'm a firm believer in that. So just get it, man. There's opportunity. There's agents that are struggling. We're listing like a machine right now. I think I have 16 deals pending personally right now. Wow. That's amazing.

Yeah. Like, it's there. There's plenty of opportunity. People are buying, people are selling. People always ask me like, are you worried about the market shift? No, I'm not worried about the market shift because I create my own market. I love that. I've said that for years.

I'm in charge of my own economy, right? Yeah, it doesn't matter what the market's doing. If anything, it floods out the people that shouldn't be out in this industry in the first place. That's awesome. Thank you so much for joining us today. It's been a true joy in talking to you. And hopefully I can get out there to Michigan or you can come on out to California. and we can meet and connect.

And I'm excited to hear more about you. So thank you so much for joining us today, Ben. We appreciate it. Absolutely. Thanks. All right. Thank you, everyone, for joining us on Real Estate Real World today. You can find us on all your favorite podcast apps.

And we're also available on YouTube. Thank you, everybody, for joining Real Estate Real World. We'll see you on a next fabulous episode. Have an amazing day. Thank you for joining us today on Real Estate Real World, where we talk with masters and leaders in real estate and beyond on how we can race the bar in our industry. Please subscribe over on iTunes. And while you're there, be sure to give us a review.

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