Next Level Pros - #58: The Digital Real Estate World: Ian Prukner

Episode Date: December 12, 2023

This episode of the Founder Podcast features host Chris Lee interviewing serial entrepreneur Ian Prukner. Ian shares his background growing up in Michigan and his journey starting in network marketing after facing financial difficulties.  He discusses scaling his business to 48 locations and selling it for millions. Ian provides insights on principles of success like winning fully across faith, family, fitness, finance and future self. He describes tough times like losing business overnight and how he overcame challenges through discipline and commitment.  Ian offers a masterclass on recruiting through identifying pain points and making people feel special. Listeners will learn lessons on building a business through principles, mentoring others and more. Highlights:  "My philosophy is ran by this faith, family, fitness, finance, future self, these are the five things, Chris that like, in my opinion, if we get them wrong, that is irreparable, irreparable damage."  "You can be disciplined, or somebody can discipline you, but there is no escaping the discipline, just like there's no escaping the pain, you can pick your pain, pick it now or pick it later. But you're gonna have to pick it." "Recruit people away from where they are not to what you're doing. So another word for that is expose the nightmare and sell the dream."  Timestamps: 00:00: Introduction  04:28: Quick Vs Long Term Success 09:20: Investing In Personal Growth  19:04: Short Vs Long Term Consequences  28:21: Leadership  31:23: Unethical Practices  40:44: Real Estate During Covid  50:19: Recruiting   Live Links:  🚀 Join my community - Founder Acceleration https://www.founderacceleration.com 🤯 Apply for our next Mastermind https://www.thefoundermastermind.com ⛳️ Golf with Chris https://www.golfwithchris.com 🎤 Watch my latest Podcast Apple - https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-founder-podcast/id1687030281 Spotify - https://open.spotify.com/show/1e0cL2vI1JAtQrojSOA7D2?si=dc252f8540ee4b05 YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/@thefounderspodcast

Hey, Founder Nation. I am excited to bring you Mr. Ian Prochner. Ian has an extensive background in recruiting, network marketing, selling a business for $40 million. The guy has done incredible work and now is building a wildly successful digital real estate world. And so jump on in. Let's get in this podcast. Let's go. Yo, yo, yo, yo. Welcome to another episode of the Founder Podcast. Today I am joined by Mr. Ian Prochner. Ian is a serial entrepreneur based out of Florida. Super successful. He was connected with me through one of our mutual friends. He has a background in the network marketing space, super successful in that space, now has shifted over into the digital real estate world. And we

are excited to have Ian on the show. Welcome to the show, my man. What's up, Chris? Good to be here with you. I'm excited. It's going to be a lot of fun. Yes, sir. Yes, sir. Ian, so dude, you've been involved in all different types of things. Tell me your philosophy on success. What think everybody probably has their own iteration of it, right? What it means to them. But my philosophy is around five F's, faith, family, fitness, finance, future self. These are the five things, Chris, that like, in my opinion, if we get them wrong, that is irreparable. It's irreparable damage. And there are a lot of guys that win in one of those or two of those. And what I always tell people is if you're not winning in all of them, you're not winning at all. What is it? You know, it's like the Bible says, right? What does it profit a man to gain the world, but lose his soul? But I would add, what does it profit a man

to gain the world and lose his family, not be respected by his kids or his wife to lose his health, not be able to enjoy the wealth and the freedom and the family that they've created. It's all relative and it's all a circle. It's all related to one another. And I don't think you can win in one area and compartmentalize that and not have other areas affect it. Right. So I would say that's my first philosophy is if we're going to win, let's win all the way. Let's win all the way, not part of the way. Let's not let's not stop early. Let's finish the job. Right. That would be the first thing I would say. The second thing that I would say is great things take time. Right. So like what I've learned hard way a number of times is is fast success is often fleeting success. Right. And there are some principles that have to be adhered to. And many times those things take time duplicating into people, building great teams, creating a culture.

It can be done quickly, but relative to what quick means. Right. And so, you know, don't cut corners trying to get somewhere quicker than maybe you could or you should. If you build it the right way, you don't have to rebuild it again. And so that's another philosophy that I've tried to live. I haven't always done it well and I've learned the hard way a number of times. And that's why I try to live that philosophy. It's like, hey, you know what? It might look faster or easier or like a cheat code or a shortcut. But at the end of those paths is often something that we don't desire and not something we would have chosen had we known up front. And so it's okay to take your time and to be patiently impatient. This is like a concept

I teach people patient with the process, but impatient with yourself. And most people are the reverse, right? Like they want it done yesterday, but then they're getting up whenever they want. They're undisciplined. They're not taking care of themselves. They don't follow through on what they said they were going to do. It's like, dude, you're giving yourself all sorts of slack, but you're hammering your process or your system or your company. It's like, no, wait a second. Let's be impatient with ourself, right? Like let's be as good as we can possibly be today. And then tomorrow show up a little bit better on all of those five Fs and do that every day. And over time, it's not an, if it's a win, right? It's a win. And if we can approach it that way, you know, we're going to win

guaranteed. It's just a matter of time. And if we don can approach it that way, we're going to win guaranteed. It's just a matter of time. And if we don't approach it that way, then we're going to be really frustrated a lot of time. We're going to jump from thing to thing looking for something that's easier or better. And what I always tell people is I didn't want easier. I wanted something worth my very best. Right. And it doesn't get easier. You just get stronger and smarter and more efficient. It feels easier once you start winning, but it's not actually any easier. It's the same work. It's got to be done one way or the other. I love that. Yeah. I was actually just having a conversation with somebody about like, why is the new generation like so impatient, right? Like,

so they want success now. Like what, why, why can't I be a multimillionaire by age 23 or age 24? Like I've already done the work. Right. And, and the fact is, is like the principles of success are exactly what you're talking about. It takes years. Right. And, and like the rules and principles that govern success of entrepreneurship, like the standard is you don't actually see success until your forties, fifties, sixties, or seventies after many years of laying a foundation and the exceptions to those rules, like the Mark Zuckerberg's or whatnot, everybody today is trying to base their success off of the exception rather than the rule. That's right. Right? And so, and the reality is Mark Zuckerberg

didn't have his early success basing his input off of being an exception. He was actually standardizing like, hey, I got to put in the work. I got to do all these things, lay the foundation. And then he just so happened to get lucky, right? Like the luck is in the exception. It's not in the actual work

right like like he was putting in the work he was doing all the things he was looking long term he was saying i'm gonna go and change the world and then right the exception just happened and so the only way that you can ever become an exception is you got to be committed to that long game like you're talking yeah you're you're exactly right such an interesting thing to think about with that specific example, because five years earlier or five years later, it wouldn't have worked. Right.

Nobody would know who he is. There is an element of timing there that you've got to be prepared and you've got to have the opportunity. They've got to meet. It's so interesting because I think quick success is marketed to people and that's what they want, right?

That's the ear candy that everybody wants, that you can be rich, thin and happy overnight. All you need to do is buy this course, take this thing, learn from this guru. And the fact is you didn't get where you are overnight or over six months or a year or even five or 10 years, taking your whole life to get here. And so why would we think that we can violate the principles of life and change in such a dramatic way momentarily? And what's interesting, Chris, because I fully believe this, I believe that change is instantaneous, but the result of that change is walked out over time. Right? So if I'm a smoker, I can quit smoking today, but tomorrow I've got to make that choice again and the next. And the next

day and the next day until I no longer desire it. It's a process of decision I made now worked out and walked out over time. And that's the four letter word that entrepreneurs hate. It's a cuss word to them. T I M E right time. It's like, Oh, I'm melting. Right. It's so interesting. One other interesting facet of that though, because I believe that you can succeed relatively quickly based on what you put into the process. I wrote a book called Byproduct five or six years ago now. And the idea was our lives are a byproduct. Our financial status, our health, our relationships, the quality of our life. It's all a byproduct of our very best thinking, our very best belief systems and what we do or don't do every day. That's what got us what we

got. Right. And so many of us, we want to change the result, but we don't want to change the person that created the result. We just want to do something different, but doing something different with the same person driving the car is going to, is going to take us back to the same place. You might get a different car, but you're going to drive to the same house every night in it because that's where you live. And if you live there mentally, you don't change that. You can have a million or 10 million, or in your case, a $250 million idea. But if you're not a $250 million guy, you're going to figure out how to whittle that thing right back to where you came from, right? So we got to change. In the book, I wrote about a concept that I call the success quotient. And it's a really

easy formula. It's A times P times T equals result. And you say, I didn't know this was going to be a geometry episode. It's not. A stands for amplitude, like how much of something are you doing? If you go to the gym once a month, that's not enough to make any significant headway. If you go to the gym once a day, your amplitude is now within an acceptable realm to make some movement, right? So you got to do enough of what you're supposed to be doing. P stands for precision, which means then you have to not just do it, but you actually have to do it with a reasonable skillset, right? Like you can't just paint and expect to be a major artist. Like you actually need to be reasonable at painting or maybe have some really abstract

and unusual and unique ideas, but you have to be good. And so the better you are, the more result you get out of the work you put in, right? And then the final letter T is time. So how much time have you run the right amount of activity with the right amount of skill set? And that gives you your result. Right. And what's interesting, Chris, is if you treated this as a math problem, what you would find out is if you want to cut the amount of time in half and get the same result, then you either got to double the amplitude or you got to double the precision. If you could double one of those, you could cut the time in half, you'd have the same result, right? And so that's the only cheat code is to get better fast and to go play in traffic for as long of a period of time as you can. And doing those reps is what makes you good

and what creates the luck that you're talking about, Right. And so, you know, that precision aspect, right? And the way that you buy your time is you up your skill. And you can do that through buying coaches, right? Or education or whatever it may be. Because you got to pay for it in one way or another. You're either going to pay through it with the bruises, the repetitions that you're talking about, the amplitude, or you're going to pay for it with just a lot of time, right? You do it suckily for a lot of time. You're going to eventually get the results. But if you can get that precision aspect nailed in,

which is really where your dollars come into line, right? Where you're reinvesting into yourself, you're reinvesting into coaches, consultants, people that have run the the course that can say hey you're missing here they're identifying the blind spots and so that you can improve the the repetitions that you're doing every single day along with the time and so you're getting that now it's that that is a i love the equation yeah and because to what you're saying like you're going to pay one way or the other for those skills you're

either going to pay with money you're going to those skills. You're either going to pay with money or you're going to pay with time. And I would prefer to pay with money 100% of the time because my time is a finite resource, but money is not a finite resource. There's a lot more of where that came from, but there is not more time. Right. And what's interesting, I always tell people is that rich people buy time and poor people sell time. Right. And so, so if you decide you want to save a few bucks and do it yourself, okay, just stop and think about that for a second. Cause what you're saying is, Hey, I'd rather take my most valuable resource and treat it poorly than take my less valuable resource of money and treat it right. You're going to pay one way or the other, which is what you said. So succinctly, you might as well make a choice and make a good choice of your method of payment, right? Like I pay with money and buy speed or I can pay with time, right? And buy an elongation of the period of time I'm on my path before I get to that promise. Love that. So let's back up a little bit. So obviously you're very confident, very successful. You've got some great principles, great philosophies on life or whatnot. What were some foundational experiences as a child that have led to who Ian is today? That's a great question, Chris. So I grew up in a middle class home in a town called Royal Oak, Michigan. So everybody's familiar with Detroit, probably. And Detroit was made famous in as an immigrant from the Czech Republic. And he

packed up and left town in the middle of the night the day Russian tanks rolled into Annex's town. And he said, we're not going to wait and see. They went on a vacation and never came back. They left their home, their family. They couldn't tell anybody. Took a suitcase, 300 bucks, and came to the United States to make a new life. And he worked midnights as a pastry chef my entire life. And my mom was in banking, in retail banking. And so, yeah, I grew up in a really loving household. My parents are still married. You know, we had a lot of love. We had a lot of good upbringing, a lot of the right principles, but they didn't know anything about money and finance, right? Like they're savers. They've always saved. They live below their means, but they never made huge amounts

of money ever. They've never saved. They still live in the same 900 square foot house I grew up in, right? Like that sort of, sort of person. But they, they taught me to, to do what I said. I'll never forget this. I loved playing baseball growing up. I wrote about a little bit in the book. I was pretty good at it. And, um, and one season, Chris, so there was a local professional. He had retired. His name was Brad Havens. He was a major league pitcher. He was from Michigan. He came back and every summer he would do a school of baseball. And I would go to that every summer. And I loved it. And I got to know him really well and all the coaches and stuff. And they would have an all-star game. It was like an eight week, um, summer program. You could go one week at a time and then they'd take the

best players. They'd put them in an all-star team. And so my mom got a call from Brad Havens and just said, hey, we want to make sure Ian's going to be at the all-star game. He's getting the MVP of the year award. And it's like a five-foot tall trophy. Keep in mind, I'm like 11. This thing's bigger than me, right? From a professional baseball player with all the all-stars, et cetera. Well, my little league team ends up going into the friends are over there playing this all-star game. You see this big old trophy. And I wanted to go play in that game. And my parents taught me, they're like, your commitment is to your team first. And you would shatter every single one of your teammates if you didn't play in this game and you were over there playing.

So I appreciate, they told me, you won this, but we've let them know you weren't going to play game and you were over there playing. So I appreciate they told me you won this, but we've let them know you weren't going to play, that you would be playing here. And we lost that game. We lost that third World Series game. We ended up losing the series. And I had to walk by that field and walk by that trophy on my way out to the car. And it was so painful.

But those sorts of things taught me to like do what was right. Even when it's inconvenient, even when it's costly, even when it seems like there's something flashier or faster or better, just honor your commitments and honor your relationships. And so that was something that I can remember from my childhood. So let's, let's take, let's take that principle because that's a great principle. What ways have you applied that as an adult in your current professional career? Oh, my goodness. What ways are you taking that and utilizing that?

Almost every day, probably. I mean, you know, right? What I love about you is you're not a guru, right? You mean, you know, right? Like, like what I, what I love about you is like, you're not a guru, right? Like you built a great business, right? And we built some pretty cool businesses as well. Right. And, and like every day, dude, you're going to get kicked in the teeth along the way. There's this stuff every single day that doesn't go the way you want it. Tough decisions that have to be made, conflicts between things that are both good or things that maybe are both not good. And you've got to make those choices and being able to stay clear-minded and say,

what was our original commitment? Who are the stakeholders in this that are going to be affected by these decisions? And how would I want them to choose if I were them or if they were me, right? And just approaching like just the little things every day with that mindset allows you to be a long term thinker and a long term player and a long term investor into the people in the systems around you. So I would say it gets applied virtually every single day. And one of my businesses right tonight, I'm going to have a really, really difficult conversation with a very good friend who is also a partner. And it's just, it's heartbreaking. And I would do virtually anything to avoid this, but I'm not going to because I have responsibilities that other people have entrusted me with. And it is my duty to affect those responsibilities, even when it's hurtful to me, or even when it's a challenge, or even when it can be

a negative experience. I don't get to run. As leaders, we give up the right to run away from things that make us uncomfortable, period. Absolutely. Absolutely. You know, it's interesting that that principle of doing the hard thing in spite of whatever else is going on is really the thing that separates the successful business owners from those that aren't, right? And I learned that early in my career when I ran away from the truth a lot, right? Like in my first business. And that's why ultimately I believe that we ended up failing and I had to file bankruptcy is because I was unwilling to do those difficult things, to have those difficult conversations,

to embrace the truth, embrace what was going on, ask for help, whatever it may be. And so it's such a costly principle if you don't learn it. Yeah. It'll cost you everything. Yes, it'll cost you everything. And when you do learn it, there's so much power in being able to have those frank conversations, even though nobody likes it. And even in those type of conversations, I'll be like, hey, look, I don't want to have this conversation, but we have to have this conversation. And this pains me as much as it pains you. Probably pains more.

Right. And this is something that we just have to get through. And the commitment, the commitment to always doing the right thing, like in spite of whatever else, all the, because man, there's, there's a lot of accolades, like the MVP trophy or everything else that the short term fruit, right. That, that, that can be born. But you know, the, the principle that I talk about a lot is, is that of the, the pain index where you, there's no such thing as no pain, right? And you can either experience short-term pain with long-term fruit, or you can experience short-term fruit with long-term pain. And too often we, we choose the latter. We choose the short-term fruit, right? Like put off this conversation, put off, you know, whatever, whatever it is, because I just want to feel good in the moment. I don't want the hard thing. And then we get this lasting, lasting pain that we can just never quite shake versus doing the difficult thing in the moment

and having, having that long term. That's so good. You know, one of the, the things that, that I always try to teach the people that I mentor is to have a clarity of cause and effect, right? And, and what you're talking about there is the death of a lot of entrepreneurs, which is this period of time between cause and effect, right? Why do people smoke still? I mean, that's the craziest thing in my, right. But it's because you're not going to die today or tomorrow or next year, or probably five or 10 years from now. Right. Why do people eat terribly? It's because you're not going to have a heart attack today. Why do people cheat on their spouses? Well, because you're probably not going to get caught today.

It's probably not going to destroy your kids today. It's at some point in the future, maybe. And because people have a hard time connecting those dots, like kindergarten, can you play connect the dots? When I do this, eventually I'm going to get that. Most people are not playing connect the dots in adult life, right? And so they do these short-term things because they haven't bothered to think or care about what those short-term things bring long range. I say the same thing about discipline that you're saying about pain, right? Like you can be disciplined or somebody can discipline you, but there is no escaping the discipline, just like there's no escaping the pain.

You can pick your pain, pick it now or pick it later, but you're going to have to pick it. Yeah, absolutely. So, dude, let's talk network marketing. Okay. So, uh, you know, early, early in my career, I, I chased network marketing a little bit. Um, it was kind of, you know, I was sold on the side hustle aspect of, of network marketing that like, Hey, don't quit your nine to five, do what you're doing. But you know, this you can do in evenings and, and everything else. And, you know, you can do in evenings and and everything else and you know

it's interesting because i have a lot of successful friends in the network marketing world and you know it's i forget what the stats are but it's like one percent of one percent you know that actually make it that actually do phenomenal in in the network space and so there's you know there's a lot of work and effort. And the thing I realized quickly, I'm like, look, I'm not going to dedicate the full time to this. And so I know I'm not going to be successful at it because I think it's a lie and a fallacy that you can do anything part-time and be successful. And so I always said, you know, if I'm ever going to get into network marketing, I'm going to go full in balls, the wall, make it, make it happen.

So, because I, it's interesting, there's a lot of lessons that are taught in the network marketing space, similar to like, I come from the door to door space. So first of all, let's talk about your journey in the network marketing. So one, at what point did you go all in? Two, what were like some of the foundational principles that you learned along the way? Because obviously it's turned you into a very well-spoken, very influential person. Like let's talk about some of that. Yeah. So I got started in that space by accident. I was a pastor and I was a music pastor. I wasn't a speaking pastor. So I ran bands for a pretty big church in Michigan. And I was like the happiest guy in the world, man. If you know any musicians that can make enough money to survive playing music, we're like the happiest people on earth. And that was me, right? Like, that's all I did. I played music for a living. I just had one problem. Her name was Jessica. I married her and she did not love the lifestyle of a musician. Right. And so I was working for this church in Michigan. I was newly

married. We were in our first year of marriage and I love what I was doing, but I wasn't making very much money. And so I was, you know, playing in bands still and teaching music lessons still and singing at weddings and funerals and whatever anybody would pay me to do. And so I'm in my first year of marriage. My wife's love language is quality time. And between the church and those gigs, I mean, I'm working 80, 90 hours a week between four things to make up about 40 grand a year total, which was not a lot of money. And we were in Detroit Metro and Detroit Metro was the second hardest hit area in the entire country during the recession in 08, 09. I don't know if you remember that, but like GM went bankrupt.

Chrysler went bankrupt. I mean, real estate was down 50% where we were. I mean, it was crazy. It was a crazy time. And charitable giving is the first thing that goes when the economy gets tight. Like we knew something was coming a year before it came because it just, the wells dried up, right? And so the church that I was working for was in this big building. They were building this massive building behind us. All of a sudden, one day I get called into my boss's office like six months in and he sits me down. I don't know if you've ever sat in a meeting with a supervisor where it's not going to go well,

but like I walked in and you could cut the atmosphere with a knife. Like it was that thick. I didn't know what it was, but I knew some bomb was about to be dropped on me. And my boss, Stephen, who was like a year older than me, super smart guy, had bought and sold a couple of businesses like at 18, 19 years old. Just like a savant sort of dude. Right. And he sits me down. He's like, you know, I'm so sorry to tell you this, but we're in a bind. The church isn't making its bond payments effective today. We're cutting all of the staff by 10% and hopefully we'll be able to make it back to you in some way. And so I was making 30 of my 40 from the church. So now I'm making 27 and we were on thin ice financially. I mean,

we were broke. We were barely making it as it was. And then, I mean, not literally put me a couple hundred bucks a month into the negative. And so my radar went up for like, how do I make an extra $250 a month? That's what I was looking to do. I didn't want a fifth job, right? Like I'm like, look, this isn't working. And so I actually, my best idea, Chris, is I was going to be a night manager at Rite Aid. I don't know if you have those where you are, right?

But I was going to be $14.55 an hour. And I was going to work three midnights. And after taxes, I'd make back that money. And so my boss called me again, like a month later, it was August of 2006. He's like, Hey, are you still looking to make extra money? I'm like, Steven, with all due respect, you see what you pay me here, right? That is the dumbest thing you've ever asked me. Of course, I'm looking to make extra money. You're paying me nothing. And he says, well, there's this guy that goes to the church. He does this thing. That's what he called. He says, he does this thing and you could do a part-time and you'd probably be good at it. You should go talk to him. I figured, well,

I couldn't make any less than you're paying me. So I called him and keep in mind, like I grew up in this 900 square foot house. I was living in an 800 square foot condo with my wife. We didn't know anybody that had any money. We didn't come from money. So he's like, yeah, come. So he gives me this referral to this guy from the church. I call him. I didn't know who he was, but I figured he'd know me. Right. He sees me on stage every week. I'm like, Hey, my boss, Steven said he might have an opportunity. When can we talk? He said, how about in an hour? So it was a Wednesday in August of 2006. He invites me to his house. So I pull up to this guy's house, Chris, no joke. He's got this castle looking home on the lake. Right.

And I'm like, if this guy's not selling drugs to kids, I'm in. I don't care what he's doing. Like, I just didn't care. I was smart enough and broke enough to understand a really foundational principle. This man knows something about making money that I don't. Right. And I would be a fool not to try to learn from him. That was my thought, right? I didn't know anything about the business at all. I have

no business experience, but here was an opportunity to be mentored by a guy who was clearly making a good amount of money. And so it was a couple hundred bucks to join. At the time, I didn't have that money. I put it on a credit card. I called my wife back at the church. I'm like, I'm going to start working with this guy. It's a couple hundred bucks. She's like, no, please don't. We don't have the money. I'm like, I just did.

I'm so sorry, but I promise I'll make it back. Click. She was so pissed, dude. She was pissed for days, right? Because she's like, we're supposed to be saving money, not spending. What was the product? It was in the financial services. So it was insurance and investments.

So it wasn't like, you know, your typical network marketing stuff. It was more like an agency hybrid, right? It's like a traditional business, but I could build an agency. And so I started and I made a grand a month. My first four months part-time to me, that was life-changing money, right? Absolutely. I mean, absolutely life-changing. I had no desire to ever do it full

time. I loved what I did. And another series of incidents happened with the church. Uh, somebody left my supervisor left and I took over some of their roles. I was supposed to be paid some of their income. And then they were the board rejected that transfer of salary after I did the work. And I'm like, Oh my gosh, if the church ain't going to take care of me, I'm going to have to take care of me. So I decided to, I called my mentor. I'm like, what do I need to do to do this full time? And he told me, and I said, okay, I'm going to, in six months, I'm going to quit my job and I'm going to open my first location and I'm going to go for it. And six months to the day later, I quit my job at the church. I opened my first location. 15 years later, we had 48

locations, thousands of people who are licensed working for me. And we ended up selling that business almost two years ago now in a multi-figure transaction, which was fantastic. But I mean, it really taught me everything I know about relating to people and about influence and sales and leadership. Like, like these people were a volunteer army. Not a single one of them was on sale. And yet some of my top guys, you know, make 70, 80, 90, a hundred thousand dollars a month. And, um, and, but they were all there because they wanted to be there and because they had a dream they were pursuing. And because there was something about being a part of that group and doing something that they

felt good about with their life that sparked something inside of them said, you know what, I want to do this. I want to go be somebody. I want a chance at being and building something special in my life. And so it was really an amazing thing. And man, I built some of the best friends that I'll ever have. And even after selling the business, I mean, we still see a lot of these guys all the time. I've got some of them coming over to the house tomorrow, you know, just continuing to invest in people. But it was, it was an amazing journey for me. And, um, and really for anybody that, that takes it seriously and does it, does it the right way, right? One of the things I used to tell people, I don't know who's quoted. It's not mine, but it's not the millions you make. It's who you become in the process. And that business taught me how to be a man,

taught me how to be a husband, taught me how to be a father, taught me how to be a leader, taught me how to set goals that were big and scary and unreasonable and made me nervous and excited at the same time. It taught me how to persevere. It taught me how to overcome obstacles. It taught me how to discipline myself and my thinking taught me how to manage my money. I mean, I could go on a laundry list of ways that it enriched my life. It's awesome. It's awesome. So, you know, you go from going full time to scaling it up to a bunch of locations and selling it for many, many millions of dollars. Obviously there's some, there's some tough times along the way. Tell us, tell us about a time that like, that was really difficult in building the business where you wanted to give up and what you

did to overcome. I can tell you about three of them really quickly. Okay. So the, the worst one, I, it was 2011. I had just bought a big, beautiful home in Michigan. Um, it was granted at the end of the recession. So I got a great deal on it, but it was a big move up for me. And I had a couple of guys who were a couple of years younger than me and they were crushing it, right? Like they were growing like crazy. And I was just so excited to have somebody that was like doing something. It's like, oh my gosh, I found somebody that doesn't just fog a mirror, but they can actually like get some results. And dude, I was just so happy. And their business looked legitimate. But what we found out later was they were basically, you know, most network marketing is what's called internal consumption. Nobody's actually buying the products out of the space,

right? They're recruiting people in and then they're selling the starter pack to the recruit, right? Okay. That's not how this business worked at all. You can't sell financial products based on an involvement in business. It's actually illegal to do that, right? So like 95% of our transactions are coming from legitimate consumers out in the marketplace. And the recruiting of the agents was just to build the distribution capacity. You didn't make any. I recruited 35,000 people. I never made a nickel for any one of them until they were building client books. And then I would get a broker override from it.

And so long and short, these two guys, they were squirreling around, right. And they were, they weren't doing anything illegal, but, but it was borderline unethical. Right. And it, it came crashing down on them. Right. What they built was a house of cards and it came crashing down. The problem was it comes crashing down on them. It comes crashing down on you too. So I just bought this big, beautiful house. And literally overnight, Chris, overnight, my business volume dropped in half. I lost those two guys and about 25 of their top people because they just got into a pickle, making some bad decisions. And I was not an astute enough leader to get in and look at what they were doing and not just assume the best.

Right. And what happened was my income cut in half literally overnight. And I remember calling my mentor. I'm like, dude, I just bought this house. I just got all this stuff. He's like, well, you're still going to make 20 grand a month. I'm like, I need more than 20 grand a month at this point. Right. Like I got it. And, but dude, it taught me to like, Hey, inspect what you expect, right? Like have the tough conversations. When you see something that you just catches your eye and you thought, Hmm, that's strange. Trust your gut and follow up on it. And dude, it was so, it took me like nine months to build that thing back to where it was. But when it got back there, it was solid and it was built the right way. And it taught me how to put some safeguards in place that when the organization

got so big, I mean, there's dozens of deals a day coming in from all over the country from people I've never met. We put systems in place to make sure you couldn't squirrel on us like those guys did before. And it ended up saving so many people in the future from those similar paths. That was one. Second time, I can remember sitting in my office in Michigan in the middle of winter. It's dark at 4.30. It's sleeting and gray and cold.

Nobody has done a transaction in days. The momentum is just dead. There's nobody in the office, not even my office manager. And it's just dark. And I just felt like death. Like so many times, Chris, I thought like, am I good enough to keep this going? Right? Like, I don't know. I remember not knowing where I'd get my next client from multiple times. And I, I went and I printed off the yellow pages in the phone book. And I just started calling people, just cold calling people all day long until I found one guy's name is Trevor. He's with a mortgage company. He's 10

miles up the road. I drove, I talked to him. He came on board, went full time. I mean, and I just had to make something happen, but I'll never forget looking out those windows, just thinking like this sucks. Like this feeling of losing sucks i remember going door to door in my neighborhood once same thing it was like middle of july no momentum i'm scared to death it's all gonna come crashing down i'm like i don't know what to do so i'm just gonna do something i'm just gonna go talk to people and there's a guy named jim he's like 70 years old he's like oh man i have this retirement account have this. I made like 15 grand helping this dude. The same day I knocked on his door, he ended up becoming a good friend. We've kept in touch for a lot of years, but it was like,

I can remember those decisions where it's like, dude, do you go home and feel sorry for yourself? Do you go home and numb the way you feel with entertainment or people that aren't doing, or do you commit harder in this moment and do the things that you don't want to do, whatever you can find to do to just make something happen, to just bridge yourself to that next place of momentum. I remember those three times really clearly that they were not fun in those moments, but what I learned in those moments taught me a lot about how to build something. And I think I want to just point out to the listeners right now, just how important that principle is of when you feel like you're out of,

that you have no control, you just need to do something that you have control over. That's right. Like whether it's picking up the phone book and dialing cold numbers, whether it's going out on the doors and knocking doors and getting in front of potential, doing what I call RGA is revenue generating activities. There was nothing more fulfilling and more like that's a better medication to anxiety or stress than actually going out and doing the work. And that actually reminds me of an experience. So when COVID hit, we had luckily, about four months prior to March of 2020, we had launched our inside sales floor.

And the fact that we were already selling remotely by the time COVID hit was beautiful. we had launched our inside sales floor and to, to our, you know, the fact that we were already selling remotely by the time COVID hit was beautiful. But, but that very first week that COVID hit, like things came screeching to a stop, like the whole world had just stopped consuming everything. Right. Like we went from, I can't remember, we were selling like 80 a week to i think that week we did two uh you know and and it was just like how we built our whole business off of 80 how are we

supposed to you know survive off of two you know and and so i remember thinking like like no matter how i try thinking through this it wasn't solving the current anxiety or stress or anything that I was feeling. And so I went to the team. I said, guess what? I'm going to be selling with you guys. I'm getting on the phone and I'm going to show you that we can still sell regardless of what's happening. And so I spent the next, it wasn't very long. It was only like five or six days selling. And I started making sales myself and it reignited a belief in our sales floor

that, Hey, if the CEO is willing to get back on the, on the phone and like, he's committed to this, like, and, and it was such a awesome shift in just in our, uh, pivot in pivot in our business. And, and so we, we started like using, using the slang pivot, don't panic. Right. And that was like our little mantra for the next three or four weeks in the business because, because the whole world was panicking at this time. Like nobody knew what was going to happen. Nobody knew if it was going to kill us all. Nobody knew if consumers were just going to stop. Meanwhile, I own several Airbnbs and literally every single reservation cancels. My whole world's crumbling, right?

My additional streams of income and my main thing that I thought was worth like lots of millions of dollars is like down to nothing. And I, and so, but getting back on the phones, getting back and doing the work, doing the things like it helped me get through that anxious time. And it really just shifted the whole momentum. And, you know, three weeks later we were back on pace. And then like six weeks later we were hitting our record weeks. And, uh, you know, it, it, it, three weeks later, we were back on pace. And then like six weeks later, we were hitting our record weeks. And, you know, as an entrepreneur, it's so important that you go through these type of things and you get back to the fundamentals of doing the work. Control what you can control and don't let the stress and anxiety take you. I love it. You do what you can't, right?

I mean, you can always do something. There's always something you can do to move your business or your situation forward. You just got to be bold enough to go do it, right? And not have an ego that says, well, I shouldn't have to do this anymore. No, it's your deal, right? Like you have to do whatever you have to do to make it work. It's so funny though, because I was in the same spot with Airbnb. So I live on Siesta Key in Florida, which is like it basically every other year, Siesta

Key wins the best beach in the country. Sometimes it wins the best beach in the world, right? It's like a super tourist hotspot. I live right on the beach here. But I owned a bunch of Airbnbs on the island, right? And so these aren't like $300,000 homes. These are like million, multi-million dollar homes, right? And dude, that like March, April, May, that's like peak season there, right?

Like I can get two, three Gs a day for some of these houses here, right? So I have all this stuff and then all the reservations. I mean, the RBO canceled the reservation. I don't know what Airbnb did because we weren't on Airbnb. Same, same. They literally just said, hey, here's your money back. Yeah, they didn't even ask us. Like what?

Yeah, they're like, do you want to rent your house? Yes, I do. Cause I still have to pay for the house. Right? Like I have to pay for these things. Dude, I had hundreds of thousands of dollars in receivables just disappear and nobody knows what's going to go on that to this day, the single worst financial decision I've ever made. Thank goodness. I sold them all. Oh no. I sold them all. And it's so stupid to piss me off. They're one of them. So one of them literally just listed again for a million and a half dollars more than I sold it for. I'm like, Oh, if I would have just waited six months, I'd have made like an extra four or 5 million bucks off of it. But it's like, Hey, we didn't know, right? Like, is the world just going to stop traveling? Are we going to

be locked down for years? What's going to happen? Right. You know, that was my, uh, I, my sister-in-law, she actually did a panic sale as well. They had bought a house in Seattle years prior, and they'd built up all this equity in the home. It was worth like twice or three times of what they paid and COVID hits. And they're like, we got to sell this thing. We got to be able to get our equity out. Otherwise this equity that we built over the last few years is going to be gone. So they go and they sell it. And, and to their surprise,

they sold it quickly. And then like six months later, it's worth double. You know, it was just like, It was super tough. So the last one, the last one of them is we were getting ready to close, I knew something was up. I got three unsolicited direct phone calls from guys like, I'll pay you two energies more to cancel your contract and sell it to me. I'll pay you $250,000 more. Let's go back to the baseball thing. I sold it to the guy I had a contract with, even though I had a clear, because we have an agreement and I'm going to honor the agreement, right? But it killed me to do it because I had multiple six figure offers above, but I knew right then, Chris, I knew, oh my gosh, I'm like, this didn't go the way I thought it was going to go. Thank goodness for the world. But if I would have just held it a little longer, you know, so. Yeah. And man, going, going back to the principle of, yeah, doing what you're supposed to do. You know, this actually brings up a little bit of a nightmare for me. So during, during COVID, um, actually a little bit later, it was like in, uh, 20,

uh, ended 2021, beginning of 2022, I had 80 units under contract. I was building some apartments here in my local area. And I had signed a contract with somebody that was what I thought a friend at the time, right? And put a huge down payment. And then we were paying like the last. So since it was being built out, we kind of were making payments for a certain down payment. And then we were paying like the last, so we, since it was being built out, we kind of were making payments for, for a certain down payment. So I'd put like a million bucks down and then we had like another $400,000 due before our down payment was finished with these guys.

And we paid like all, but like 150,000 bucks and it was supposed to be done by the certain date. And we had an event coming up where we were going to be getting some cash out of another business. And I just said, Hey, when this closes, we'll send it over to you. Oh yeah, that's fine. No problem. But we never had a written agreement of that's when it was. And, and so the day comes and goes and they never like, they never called me or said, Hey, and I, at that point I could have easily just paid them the money, but they never asked.

And then a week later they're like, Oh, Hey, we're sending your money back. I'm like, what are you talking about? They're like, you didn't, you didn't pay us, uh, you know, what, what we were expecting. I'm like, dude, we didn't even have a conversation. There wasn't like, Hey, that money's due or any, anything else. And I've given you a million three right now. And, and you're telling me because I didn't pay you 150 grand, you're going to cancel this agreement. And what had happened was like some outside investors that come in and, and offered them significantly more. Yeah. They were looking to get out of the deal. And so they took the first opportunity they could. And so, you know, and that just goes back to like the importance of like doing what you said you were going to do and like stick being a man of your word and doing the harder thing, even though the enticing cash can come in. And, and like, like these lessons, like for me, it was just like, all right, I know I'll never do business with this person ever again. Yeah. Like the, the fact, the fact that they're in,

and it was, it was the craziest thing. They sent me back my money with like 2% interest. And I'm just like, dude, I literally had like double the equity and, and you're going to, you're going to feel good about giving me 2% on my money.

Yeah. It's, it's, it's a nasty, it's a nasty world out there, you know, for, for people that don't live by these principles.

Yeah, absolutely. And it's, it's an interesting thing too, right? Because it sort of comes into a, an interesting dialogue, right? Because it's like, here you have this contract and these things. So like, is it their right to do that? Yeah, it's their right to do that. Is it the right thing to do? Well, maybe not to you or I, you know. But it's like, how do we enforce our morality and our values on other people? It becomes an interesting conversation, I think. But yeah, dude, that sucks, man. And there are people all the time like- The difficulty thing in business, and the longer you're in business, you realize things aren't just black and white, right? There's a lot of gray and moral compasses and everybody's moral compass

is different. Right. And so I, you know, I'm sure in their eyes, they're like, we're completely justified in this. Why wouldn't we do this? Like, you know, he, he didn't pay the 150 grand that we were expecting on X date. And so we utilize that at whatever else. And, and so it's, it is, and I always try to put myself in perspective of, uh, you know, a viewpoint of from them because the reality is, is like their viewpoint could be totally valid and they didn't think that it was an immoral thing. And so that's, that's the other thing I've learned in business is that there's always like 17 sides to the story and never one is completely. Oh, my goodness. Yeah, absolutely. And it just shows you like, you know, it helps you set your personal preferences and your philosophy about who you want to do business with.

So, you know how people are going to react in certain ways. For sure. It's very interesting. Yeah. So a couple more questions and then we'll wrap this up. But so being in network marketing, obviously you recruited, you said like over 30,000 people. So you were a magnificent recruiter. And I think recruiting is a key skill set in building any business. What are some principles or what are some best practices that you utilized in, in your recruiting efforts? Yeah, that's, that's a good question. So I like to here's a couple of them recruit people away from where they are not to what you're doing. So another word for that is expose the nightmare and sell the dream, right? So like one of the things if you want to be a great recruiter is to help find the pain points

in people's current situations. What are the things that you're unhappy with? What are the things you do like? And how can I give you less of the bad and more of the good by being involved with me? And people will join you if you can communicate in their language, right? So people have a hard time acquiring and retaining good talent. It's like the five love languages, right? Okay. So if I'm speaking French to you right now, we could be talking about the same things. I could be delivering the same value, but it wouldn't mean much to you because you don't speak the language. It doesn't have anything to do with what I'm giving out, but it has to do with your ability to accurately receive what's coming in. And so learning to speak the people's languages that you are trying to

recruit is really, really important. So we just hired a CEO for one of our businesses and he came from a pretty big company, a household name. He was chief operating officer there. He's making less money with us currently than he was there, but he's got a better title and a lot better upside, right? And so we had to find what were the things you dislike? Well, I dislike being in a $5 billion lawsuits because of the company that I'm involved with. I dislike having this. I dislike these big corporate. Okay, great. Well, we can fix those problems for you. Knock on wood. We don't have any lawsuits. I'm sure at some point we will, but you know, knock on wood. We haven't had to face that yet. And it's an entrepreneurial company. It's moving faster. It's smaller. You're going to have a big chunk of it. So when it does what you want it to do, this is going to be really valuable for you. So learning how to speak that language and tap into the dissatisfaction, symptom plus solution equals result. If you can identify somebody's

symptoms and you are the solution to that symptom, you're going to get a lot of results. And a lot of people in that business and really in any business is recruiting people. They're always like benefits, the benefits, the benefits. Okay. Well, that person may not be interested in hardly any of those, but if you can dial into the one that keeps them up at night and has pits turning in their stomach, you will move mountains in that way. Right. That's number one. And then just making people feel special and operating out of an attitude of approval on people. That was one of the most important things I learned in that model, right? Like most people weren't going to do anything with it. And even the ones that did, most of them weren't going to do anything big with it. And if you see people as numbers and as means to an end, and you'll treat them in that way,

high performers are treated a certain way and everybody else treated the other way. One of the things that I had to learn is be grateful for everybody where they are. They're in your life for a reason, a season or forever. And maybe it's not monetarily, maybe it's not this, but they're there for a reason. And the way that I looked at it is, you know, God has entrusted us with the people he's given us. We're stewards of his people. Beyond his people, we're stewards of the dreams God himself has put in those people. And so if I'm not going to treat that gift as a gift, if I'm not going to treat that with respect, if I'm not going to sow into it, why would I expect more opportunities to steward more of his people? He'll find somebody else that

will treat his children as he wants them to be treated. And so for me, that was a big key in recruiting. And recruiting is one thing. Anybody can sell you on something. Keeping them is different. Like some of those people have been with me for a decade, 12, 13, 14 years. They stayed after I sold. They're still there growing, getting better. Right. And it was because of that sort of culture. It's like, Hey, you know what? You're a killer. That's amazing. You're just here because you like this and you think it's fun. You're also amazing. Right. And thank you for being here. And how can we serve you? And that was our mentality. To me, my clients were my agents, not the tens and tens, probably hundreds of thousands of clients. I don't

know how many they had at the end, but at least tens and tens of thousands of clients. Right. Those weren't my clients. My clients were my people. Right. That's awesome, man. That's a masterclass on recruiting, the identifying of pain, right? Creating a specific solution for the pain of that individual, not hitting them with a smattering of all the different benefits and like, this is why you should buy, buy, buy. I got a patented miracle formula that extracts this from the juice from the South American jungles. And that's why you need to do this. Nobody cares about your extraction process of the berries from the Amazon. They care. Can this get me to stop fighting with my spouse about money? That's what they want to know.

I love it. And then on top of that, just the focusing on the individual and especially as that, and this is something that I've always preached in my organization, that our number one customer is one, our employee, right? Is the person that works for us. And if we can take care of them, they in turn are going to take care of our end user that actually generates the business. So beautiful, beautiful, beautiful. Last but not least, who are a couple mentors or books that have absolutely changed your life or been foundational from a principal standpoint? Oh my goodness. I've been so blessed, Chris, to be surrounded by, at first from afar, a lot of great mentors.

I read voraciously, you know, all of all of the classics. Right. But there was there was one book in particular called Launching a Leadership Revolution by two guys named Chris Brady and Oren Woodward. And they were big network marketing guys way back in the day and built a hundred thousand person teams multiple times. It was an absolute masterclass in the intangibles of building people and building communities and building culture. I reread that book 20, 25 times. No joke. I mean, I have multiple copies of it around the house. For me, it was so foundational, right? Because you read the John Maxwell and it's like, what do you do if you're a mid-level manager and you're in Boston and give you a 10, how do you lead up? It's like, that wasn't my scenario. I was out in the jungle trying to get people to believe in a dream that only they could see, hey, to be involved in it and then do

it for free until they figured out how to get, well, that was such a great book. There was two other books. And I'm going to give a disclaimer here because I know this is in the spiritual podcast. And so just take it for what it's worth. Two other books that were absolutely instrumental. One is a book called Destined to Reign by Joseph Prince. Joseph Prince, a pastor in Singapore and the church that I worked at, they were really pro-business, very business friendly.

It was great, but the theology was a little bit like, you know, if you want to be more blessed by God, you've got to spend some more time in prayer, or you've got to give more, or you've got to, you know, come to the small group. It was sort of like, you know, you can't expect to have more of God's favor if you're not giving more to God. And that's a very human mindset, right? Like I do things, I get things. That's not the gospel. That's not the gospel. The gospel is in spite of what you've done or haven't done,

it is done for you on your behalf. And I knew that conceptually, but I didn't know it internally. And that book, it was like a legal treatise on basically that nothing you can ever do in your life will ever put you in a better or more right standing with God than you are right now. If you know him, if you've accepted him, it's finished. It's done. You are walking there. You might not understand that. You might not apply that, but it's there. And to me, dude,

that was just like, cause I was building my business. I couldn't go to the weekly prayer night every night at 7 PM. I couldn't, I, and I thought to myself, I'm like, well, I guess this is as far as I'm going to go. Right. And that book fundamentally changed my belief that no, my relationship with God is not dependent on that. I'm in right standing right now. And as big as he wants me to be, I can be. And that, dude, I went from making 300 grand, I was stuck at 300 grand a year for a number of years. I went from

300 grand a year to a million two in like 13 months and just kept going from there. And it was like this breakthrough, right? The other one was a book called Breakout by Joel Osteen. And I know people have different feelings on Joel, but I met Joel a number of times. I'm really good friends with a couple of people who are very good friends with Joel. Dude doesn't take a nickel from his church. I hadn't taken a nickel from his church in 20 years. And that one book, it was written in the heart of the recession. And dude, even today, that's another one. If I had it on my shelf here, I'd show it to you. I've got it highlighted in six different colors, right? There's just something about that that challenged me to believe unreasonably that my life didn't have to go one, two, three, four. It could go one, two, 36, 37. I could make these quantum jumps because who I am and whose I am, it's all his anyways. There's no shortage there of things that I can tap into. And so those books were really revolutionary for me. And they ultimately, they changed how I saw me. And that was what I needed to change. That's what the people watching you change.

You probably are already doing 99% of the things you need to do to win, but you're not showing up as a winner all the way through. There's a reservation somewhere in the deep, dark recesses back there that wonders and doubts, right? And you got to clear that up. I love that. Yes, we are absolutely our biggest limiting factor when it comes because, yeah, God already believes in us.

We just need to start believing in ourselves. So, Ian, thank you so much for your time, as we know that it is the most important asset and for dedicating so much to our team and our listeners here today. Where's the best place to find you? Instagram? Yeah, just Instagram at Ian Pruckner is totally fine. Shoot me a DM, say, hey, what's up? And I'd love to connect with you. Awesome. Thank you so much again. Once again, Ian Pruckner, ladies and gentlemen, until next time.