The Entrepreneur DNA - Meet the King of Creative Finance and his Journey of Resilience | Pace Morby | EP8

Episode Date: February 19, 2024

Meet Pace Morby, host of A&E’s most popular TV show ‘Triple Digit Flip’ and one of the most creative real estate investors on the planet! Using dozens of non-traditional strategies called Creative Finance, Pace has acquired 1,000’s of doors nationwide and built a portfolio totaling over $450 million in assets. Each week, Pace teaches tens of thousands of students in his online communities which is becoming the #1 source for anyone looking to get started in real estate utilizing Subject To, Seller Finance and the Gator Method!     We dive deep into the rollercoaster of building kick-ass businesses, with a spotlight on the wild realms of real estate and construction. I spill the beans on my real estate adventures, eager to share the wisdom I've picked up, and can't hide my admiration for Pace Morby's extremely impressive and successful business. Pace opens up about climbing out of tough spots to make a name in real estate, emphasizing creativity and resilience. He shares his saga of starting a construction biz from scratch, facing down bankruptcy, and pivoting on a mentor's advice. We also riff on seizing COVID opportunities, leading to Pace's staggering $450 million net worth, despite the debt drama. The convo gets real about the importance of giving back, the art of patience, and how empowering our teams turned things around overnight. I get into the nitty-gritty of scaling challenges and the quest for a top-notch team, while Pace talks about the power of community, resilience, and genuine connections at networking events. Wrapping up, we touch on staying hungry for success, with Pace eyeing billionaire status while juggling family life, embodying the essence of chasing dreams, staying real, and breaking barriers.

What is up, Entrepreneur DNA family? I have a good friend of mine and someone who I genuinely admire. He has done something in a very short amount of time that not even myself or many people you know have been able to build. Pace Morby is in the house. What's up, brother?

What's up, Justin? How you doing, brother? Dude, I'm doing blessed. I'm doing blessed. You are up early right now. It is Saturday as we record this. I'll tell all of you entrepreneurs out there, the grind is real. This man has built. He doesn't have to be doing this. Let's put it that way. He's

financially in a place. He doesn't need to be up at six in the morning on Saturday doing a podcast with me, but that is why I needed to have him on this podcast. And I want to give you a lot of credit to start because if you don't know Pace Morby at this moment and you've been following me, you must be living under a rock. He has built something incredibly special in the real estate space. He has created a community that is the best we have ever seen in our space, but he is just a go-giver. It is all because of the person he is, not what he's doing tactically, which is also very amazing. But guys, first, make sure you are following him. He's a bestselling author of two books, I believe at this point. He has an incredible community. He has hundreds of millions

of dollars in real estate, but we are going to be talking about how it is to be running a business. So I'm excited for this one, dude. This will be good. Thank you. Well, first of all, let's start off by this. I met you at probably one of your lower points in life, I would guess. Now I don't know you as a child, so maybe there's other moments, but I met you at a RIA meeting and you were basically coming out from the ashes of a very dark moment in your real estate space. And we both, I think, know what we're talking about, but I wanted to come in here and let everyone know all the accolades I just gave them are even that more powerful

because it's not like he was just given this. He literally built it from burning all the way down. Let's talk about those moments of- Yeah. Let's see. Let's see. 64 months ago, so a little over five years ago, my daughter was born, Corbin. And the same day she was born, I also received a letter in the mail that one of my largest customers was filing bankruptcy on not only me, but also like 16 other people. And what I was doing at the time, I was doing two things. I ran two businesses. One, I had been doing wholesale fix and flip and doing two things. I ran two businesses. One, I had been doing wholesale fix and flip and rentals for three years prior to that. And I was also running a large

construction company that that's all I knew at the time. So when I got home, I'm a Mormon. So what Mormons do is we go to our missions. I went on my mission, got home from Korea, immediately it was like, how do I get into a business? Well, the only thing I knew, the only options I had, right? Everything comes down to options. The only options I had were getting into construction because that's what my dad did. So I got into construction and I got really creative with the way that I would build my business in construction. One, I used social media freaking 15 years ago. I was actually using social media and I got a lot of work because of that. In fact, I landed Open Door, OfferPad the hashtags that say like Arizona contractor or whatever else. And the name of my company was Arizona contracting. And so my name would come up all the time in these hashtag searches. And I did that intentionally

because I was like, I don't care what the name of my company is. I just want to make sure that it's recognizable and it's something that somebody is going to type in. Right. And I just, I just had this company called AZ contracting, Arizona contracting and open door calls me one day and they're like, Hey, we're a new company. We're starting out and you know, we're looking for contractors. I'm like, okay, some cool little company. I had no idea how big they were going to be. And I was their first contractor for a number of years. I ran all of their construction, ran all of their, um their operations inside of Arizona. And then I jumped to Dallas, jumped to Vegas. Everything went incredibly well with them until they came to me and they go, hey, we're changing our entire business model. We're not going to do any renovation whatsoever.

I'm like, what? Hold on. What do you mean? You're not going to do any renovation on the next house? They're like, no. Because they're giving me 50 houses a month to renovate, right? 50. And the average ticket, the average amount of money they would have me renovate was 50 grand. So they were giving me like $2.5 million a month in revenue. It was crazy. I was making crazy good money. And I got lucky, but then one day they come to me and they go, hey, we're not going to do any more renovations. We're basically going to put in less than 1% of the purchase price back into the house. I'm like, your average purchase price is 300 grand. You're going to put $3,000 in these houses? And they're like, yeah. And on top of it, we're going to bring it all in house. So here's a $100,000 check these houses? And they're like, yeah, and on top of it, we're going to bring it all in-house.

So here's a $100,000 check. Have a great life. I was like, oh, shit. So I had 180 employees dedicated just to Opendoor at the time, 180. And you know the feeling you have when you have an employee. You feel responsible for these people as you are responsible for them. So I go crap. All right. So here's what I did. I found local investors in Arizona. I go, all right, I'm going to, I'm going to take my 180 guys. I'm going to find 18 customers of mine

and basically dedicate 10 of my guys to each one of these customers. And so I landed a customer and his name is John. I don't need to say his last name. I don't want to embarrass him or call him out, but that is truly his name. And for four years, I would do work for this guy and I would put a hundred thousand dollars of renovation into his business. I was pulling a lot of it out of my wholesale business and I was putting it into his business because I just started wholesaling and doing all these things all simultaneously. And I'm just a doer, right? Like a lot of, I'm just a doer. I implement immediately. I have a hard time. Last night I had Jim quick on my show and I have three pages of notes and today I cannot wait to actually implement them immediately. Right? No doubt. If I take a note, it's getting done tomorrow. I'm just one of those people. And so I immediately start diversifying my customer base, but I am pulling wholesale money

in. I'm putting it into John's business because this is how I got creative. I went to all of these customers, 18 of them, and I take responsibility for this. I gave John a loaded gun to shoot me in the face with. Like I gave him, I gave him a loaded gun. And here's what I mean by that. I would go to all these fix and flippers. They're much smaller than Opendoor is. They have a much smaller bank account than Opendoor did.

So I said, look, if you don't squabble and squibble over my renovation costs and we don't do this whole, I'm going to get three renovation or three quote thing and just hire me, I'll get to work and I'll actually front load your construction. I'll pay for your renovation costs. And then you pay me when you sell the house. And what I want is I want a little percentage of your profit. And I was just leverage, creatively leveraging myself into people's businesses. Now I was doing creative finance at the time I was doing sub two and seller finance and all these things. And so I was really starting to use my creative juices. And essentially what I did with John is over the course of about three years, I just deployed,

I don't know, 400, $500,000 in money that he had not paid me back. And so one summer, this is 2018, one summer he comes to me, he's like, I know I owe you half a million bucks. I know I do. What I need is another half a million dollars and I could pay you back. And bro, I was already dug. I was already dug in this hole. And I didn't have anybody around me that I was like leveraging their advice. I just wasn't part of masterminds. I wasn't doing any of that stuff. I didn't have a mentor. So I made a really stupid decision. And what I did is I sold a bunch of my rentals and I got a bunch more of my wholesale business and I put a half a million dollars into his business so we could finish these houses that he had on his chopping block to sell.

And he goes and then sells these houses, gets all his money back and then files bankruptcy on me and 16 other people. So I didn't lean the properties because I was one of these guys that did a deal off a handshake never again. If my grandma asked me for a dollar loan, I'm documenting that freaking thing, right? So I just- The image of your grandmother, you're like, great grandma, hold on, let me get this docusign over. She's like, dude, your document is costing more money than the dollar you're loaning me. Yeah, exactly. But I want that dollar back, grandma. That's right. So he files bankruptcy on me. This ends up being the best thing ever. And here's a couple of reasons why. I had already been told, the universe had already told me, you're going to crush it in

real estate. Here's this amazing business. And I was making probably $40,000, $50,000 a month as either wholesaling or fixing and flipping or acquiring rentals, et cetera. And I'd already been doing that, but I, dude, this was the psychology of what I was going through. I believed so much in other people's businesses because I did not believe in myself that I had a hard time or an impossible time letting go of my construction business that actually relied on other people to go and do my own thing that only relied on myself. And because I did not believe in myself, I continually divested my risk into other people's businesses. So I would put all my eggs into other people's businesses.

So I would put all my eggs in other people's baskets of like, okay, you have the open door offer pad Zillow. You guys give me this comfort blanket that, you know, everything's going to be just fine. And I'm divesting all of my risk into your businesses. And then when John filed bankruptcy on me and all those other people, and I had to liquidate, I had to sell 43 rentals, everything that I had just to pay my payrolls, cover all my costs, get out of the business and start from scratch. Essentially I had no money. I didn't even have like a hundred bucks on a credit card.

Like I didn't have anything. Luckily I knew how to wholesale. I knew how to do these things. So all I had to do is fill my pipeline, get money going. And I was good. Yeah. And you look back on this and it was the universe smacking me in the face saying, dude, believe in yourself, you stupid son of a bitch. Like go and believe yourself and go do the thing. Now, what I did different at that time, which was the game changer for me is I started hiring mentors and having outside counsel, outside advice from people that were doing bigger things than I was doing at the time. And I had nothing. I started from nothing, but I had everything. It's the same thing that you give your students. It's the same thing a

lot of really great mentors give their students, which is options to make money without the need of somebody else. I had that. I didn't have any money in the bank, but I had skills, bro. I had skills that I could go make money next week, right? No matter where I was in the country. I love when Jay-Z says this, he says, drop me anywhere on God's green earth and I will triple my worth, which to me is financial freedom. Take all my money away, but I have financial freedom because I know how to go make money in a day or in a week that does not rely on any outside factor besides my own knowledge. So built everything from 60 months ago to where we are today, zero to 60 months. So let's talk about exactly that. It's

a great pivot because I want everyone to know that was a pivotal time in your life that I've gone through. You've gone through anyone that people are like, Oh, we want to be paced or Justin or whoever we've had these moments, everybody that is very, very important for you to understand is we don't shit gold every day. We don't, you know, it's not always puppy dogs and rainbows. We absolutely have to eat our shit sandwiches too, because we want something bigger and we want to go for bigger you're going to have hurdles and challenges and so pace has gone through it too but now i want to fast forward because i met you i remember very specifically meeting you your energy is downright contagious is why you've been able to build it we were at um uh the phoenix ria i believe i think it was

chris iman's ria and you came i was talking to jamil uh and you came up like a thunderstorm justin colby what's up i'm pace more be good to meet you ask anyone they all know who i am good to meet you both and you just bound bound bound you knew my name first of all so i immediately was like who is this cat right jamil Jamil's laughing. Cause you obviously are, you know, with Jamil and I'm like, uh, and it, from that point, right. You've, I've had you speak on my stage. We spoke on virtual, uh, we've spoken to other people's stages. Yeah. And I sit here today in admiration, uh, you know, you and I had a four hour car drive. You mean Jamil did a road trip together from Greensboro, South Carolina. We

went over there from Atlanta. Yeah. We've had great stories along this friendship that we've developed over five years, but I'll never forget how you introduced yourself and how that started for you. And you were just going this way. Now you're coming out of those ashes that five years ago. Yeah. When I, when I saw you at the Phoenix Ria, I had nothing but skills and a dream. And I was like, I'm never going to rely on another human being. And so, and yeah, I was, and still am a fan of yours. And I immediately walked up to you. I was like, Hey, Justin Golby, huge fan. You're amazing. I think you had somebody on your team was there and you were speaking at the RIA that night. Yep. You were a guest speaker at the RIA and I was volunteering at the RIA that night. You were a guest speaker at the RIA. And I was volunteering at the RIA.

I was volunteering for Iman because I was like, I have all this time and energy. I don't have to be in my construction company because I just shut it down. Where can I apply myself? And instead of, you know, it's that thing that people say, if you can't get in the room, serve the water at the table. And that's what I was doing at that RIA.

I was serving the water at the table. I was just figuring out how can I get in wherever I possibly can provide value. And so I was bouncing around because I was actually volunteering at Chris Hyman's RIA. Dude, you were incredible. And so like, like we just talked about, I wish I knew you closer then and could have been riding this train with you. Because again, I give you all the credit, man. You have surpassed all of us who've been around for, I've done this for a decade, brother. You have to understand, I've done educating in real estate investing since 2007, but I've been educating since 2014. And you've taken all of us who have done it for way longer and you've just showed us and you said here. And here's another thing, I'm going a little sidebar. You also are

the guy that quite literally is taking us old heads who have been done doing this for a decade and said, let me show you my blueprint. And you are literally exposing your blueprint of what you've done in this amazing culture you've created to a mastermind that we both belong in. Yeah. We're part of the same mastermind together. And you're like, guys, we're going to set up meetings. We're going to, you guys can come to my office.

I'm going to do these zooms. I'm going to set up meetings. We're going to, you guys can come to my office. I'm going to do these Zooms. I'm going to expose everything. And that just continues to go to your credit about the person you are, the leader you are, the, you know, in the industry leader. And so I couldn't be prouder to call you a friend, but dude, just to kind of get back in track, I want everyone to know where you are today, right? Because we just went over your darkest, maybe it wasn't even your darkest moment, but because that was the thing that I'm very well aware of when you're a million dollars out and you get a bankruptcy

note saying, Hey, you're never getting this money back. You have a, I think you had your first child already, right? Is what you said? The day that she was born, I got the letter, the bankruptcy letter. Super neat. I mean, that is exact. Now, dude, it is so empowering to hear that because I think everyone has to understand where you are today, because that is a tough moment. You have the best thing in your entire life ever happened personally. And in such shambles over that experience that I had to stand up, get the ceremony going, get the grave site, get the this, get the headstone, do all of the coordinating because my mom and dad were basically crippled with emotion. And it was similar to that. I just had to grin and bear it, push the trauma down, shut up and put a smile on your face and walk forward with faith. And no, like Jamil didn't know until about two months later, I called him and I said, I have no money. I need to sell my rentals. Will you have Kegley sell all my rentals? And he sold 43 rentals at like 60 cents on the dollar so I could get capital to pay my payrolls and do all my things and whatever else. And I remember paying for my daughter's hospital

bill with a credit card, wondering if the credit card was going to cover the costs. And we've all been there. Everybody's been there before. And then fast forward to today, this is what our business looks like now we have. And I know this specifically because on YouTube, it's starting to get become a thing where the FTC is starting to actually go on influencers YouTube channels. And they're saying, if you claim something, even on your free content, and then we see an ad for your mentorship, and you claim something here that you can't back up, we don't care what you said in the ad. We're going to say you're nuancing and you're conditioning the marketplace to believe something that when they see your ad, even if your ad is spot on and you don't make any wild claims, we'll come in and shut down your business. Wow. So I had this idea where I was like, oh, you know what? I love that. I think

that's great. I'm going to lean into that. So I called this person from the FTC and I said, can you advise us? What are the things you don't like about my YouTube? I put them on like a retainer. No kidding. Yeah. And I said, what do you not like about my YouTube? And they go, you make a lot of claims. You say stuff like you don't pay taxes. You say you own this many units, you blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Do you know how many units you have? And I go, honestly, I don't. Down to the door, I do not know that. But I could ask somebody on my team and they're like, yeah, but you're saying stuff on YouTube that's like, you're saying 2,200 units. You don't own 2,200 units. You own 2,181 probably. And you're just rounding up. And I go, yeah, you're probably right. So I hired this person

and then they gave me this FBI investigator, like this third party company to go through and verify all my assets, verify all my revenue, verify my tax returns, verify how many doors I own. And this is what they came up with. I own 2,181 doors. Wow. I don't own any of those with a single credit pull. I did not pull any credit, did not use any credentials. All of those are owned with creative finance, all the way from single family homes, mobile home parks, RV parks. We just closed on a big $5 million RV park the other day, all seller finance. I saw that. Up to my largest asset, which is 587 units, Creative Finance.

Love it. Massive buildings. All of this is owned with Creative Finance. So that's cool. I'm at a point now where we have about $450 million in real estate that we own, and I only have partners on 20 million of that. Say that again. How much do you own? $450 million in real estate, which is great. Now, we have a lot of debt against that, obviously. It's not like I have a net worth of $450 million, right? No, but I'll tell you another great story about me and Pace. I remember

specifically going, getting our car rental and I'm wearing a nice watch and he is wearing his Timex and I can afford more than a Timex. And me and Jamil are like, all right, Pace, come on. You could probably do something here. And you say, until I have a net worth of what was the number? Because I remember it clearly. Do you remember the number you said? Net worth was, I think it was half of, I think I wanted 500 million or something like that. Yeah. And I think you personally said like 20 million to you or something of that nature. That's what it was. Yeah. At the time it was like, I want to make sure my net worth is $20 million just from real estate. And then I'll buy myself a nice watch.

And let's just say he has done both of these things. So I just, but that delayed gratification is what we don't see anymore. Right. And God, we could go for hours because that alone, I remember sitting there and again, Jamil and I, you know, you may have been around longer than people know you have in the Phoenix market, right. As to your point. But, you know But I've done this now since 2007, Phoenix. Jamil started, I think, 2005, I think, in Phoenix. So we knew each other for a lot of years. You, five years ago, came into my life

and it has been incredible, but I'll tell you, whether it is the lessons that you learned from your experience that we just spoke about and in finding a way to have delayed gratification, but you might be the only person I know that would have delayed that amount of gratification and had bigger objectives and had bigger desires. I'm not just talking about the material things, right? You have nice stuff. I've been to your house. I know where you got you. You know what I mean? But the watch thing, you said, I don't need to go spend that kind of

money on a watch. Cause I don't care enough about it until I hit a certain goal. Yeah. I don't know anyone anymore, quite literally that, that has that level of commitment, um, to have delayed gratification. And that's a huge reason of your success, bro. Yeah. I was thinking about one time I said, all right, so you walk into a country club or a restaurant or whatever, and there's a bottle of cherries that they'll put into a Shirley Temple or some sort of drink. And a lot of people go over, pull the cherry out and eat it while they're waiting for their drink or they're waiting for whatever. And I always looked at it like I want the cherry on the very top of whatever it is that I built. Right.

I don't want to have, let's say that I'm doing like a build your own Sunday thing. Right. And build your own ice cream thing. And you're all with your family and everybody's kind of building banana splits and whatever else. I wanted to build the actual Sundayae and then put the very, the cherry on the very top without eating it and like have it. And the cherry on top

was a nice watch, right? Like for me, I go, I want a Patek specifically. I want a Patek Philippe. I want the nicest watch I could possibly get. I don't want to like gradually get to that watch.

I want to build something get to that watch. I want to build something so impressive that people go, why do you not have a watch? It's more than $200. This doesn't make any sense. And so I thought about it and I manifest it, manifest it. And, uh, you know, we did the thing, which is crazy to think about how much the net worth has built just because of COVID, like think about COVID, all the real estate I bought during COVID and how it all went up. Just by sitting there, this year, my net worth will probably go up $20 million this year just by sitting, doing nothing because of the real estate we acquired. It gives me shivers, brother. I love it. Go ahead. It's crazy. And what's also crazy is I'm at a point now where I don't need any more real estate. That's the weirdest thing is like, do I want to continue to buy more real estate than I currently have? Well, here's the problem. The problem is if I make the money that

I'm going to make next year, I will have to buy real estate. I'm kind of in this now, this world of I have to buy a hundred million dollars a year in real estate or I'm kind of in this now, this world of I have to buy a hundred million dollars a year in real estate or I pay taxes and I don't want to move to Puerto Rico. I want to live here and I hate paying money to the tax man. And so I'll continue to buy real estate. But what I've done different is now I've gone to my team and I go, all right, anybody that stays with me for over 10 years, you guys will, I'm going to give away 20% of all my real estate holdings to people that stay with me for over 10 years. Now, not 20% to a pool of people, right? So I'm now building the real estate portfolio, not for me anymore. I'm building

it for the people on the team. And so like my head of operations, Molly, my head of transaction coordination, Alison and Heidi, my asset manager, all of these people will now, when I buy a piece of real estate or, and I talk about it on YouTube, I now know I'm not rubbing their face in my success. I'm actually bringing them along for the ride. And bro, I'm telling you, it's like, hey, we just bought this and we this and we that. My whole team went from saying, yeah, Pace bought another piece of real estate. We got to go and do this. Pace did this, but we have to do the work. Pace did this, but we have to do the work, which is what it was before. Now, without me even changing the culture purposely, just giving them a piece of the

success, a significant piece, by the way, all of a sudden it's, we bought a piece of real estate and we need to do this. And the management, the cashflow, the vacancy, all of those things improved almost overnight. And I was like, whoa, why wasn't I doing this before? This is crazy. That's right. So we pay them incredibly well. But anyway, so just to cap that off, we own $450 million in real estate. We have a great lending business that we make 16, 17% on our money every single year off of that. That's great. That alone is enough money for me to survive on just that. That's it. It's such a great thing because nobody really wants to own real estate if you really think about it. What you want are the benefits of real estate, but you don't want to deal with the crap. You want the ROI, right? You want the return on your investment. You want your money to make

money while you sleep, period, end of story. That is the passive income. That's it. You and I both know I have a big grudge against passive income. It's not passive, bro. I got a seven-man team managing it, right? I've got a freaking football team managing my assets. And so there's problems every day. We just had a, Molly called me yesterday and she says, Hey, let's catch up. I want to talk about things. And I go, why don't we not ever talk about the real estate? Like, you don't want to talk to me about the real estate. She's like, cause we got it covered. We don't want to, we want you to go do the thing you need to be doing.

We got it covered. I'm like, are we having anything bad happen? She's like, we have bad things happen every day. You just don't need to hear about it. I go, give me one. I need to be connected to the real estate portfolio for a minute. Give me one. She goes, okay, I'll give you one. 43 unit in San Angelo, Texas, we decided we needed to fire the property manager that we inherited from the seller. And we fire her. And we did not know that the laptop that she used was actually her laptop. The guy who we bought the property from never bought her her own computer. He was such a cheapskate. So when we fired her, she took the laptop home, which has all the deposits,

all the tenants' names, all the situations, all the leases, everything you could imagine. She took it home. And so now she's holding it hostage. She goes, yeah, I'll give it to you, but I want $25,000. This is my computer and my this and my that. And I'm like, oh, all right. Yeah. That's great. Please don't tell me anything more about the real estate. I don't want to. And that's our last conversation for a little while. Yeah. So we still continue to buy a lot of real estate. This year we bought a hundred million. Next year we'll buy another hundred million. We now own six different businesses. We've acquired all through creative finance. So one of those businesses right down the road from you, it's called the plant guy.

Very cool business does like $5 million a year in revenue. I bought that with creative finance. I now we own 50% of it. Matthew Lang, the founder of that business, just didn't know how to scale past where he was, which is about 5 million a year in revenue. So we brought RC Suite to the table. So I now have kind of an Alex Ramosi model where I get businesses that come to me and say, I need help. And either we're helping them sell, we're buying them, we're getting a piece of them through consulting, like consulting for equity type of situation. All three. You're probably already doing this, but just you talking about that on this episode probably drives more traffic and you get equity for the traffic.

I mean, it's just brilliant. Yeah. The challenge we have right now is that we don't have a C-suite capable of handling more than like five businesses a year. So we turn a lot of people down and our team just isn't big enough yet. So we're kind of in the beginning stages of that. And I think at some point in five years, seven years, people will go, wait, you're a real estate guy too? Because we'll buy so many businesses. And so we've got that going. I've got a big virtual assistant business that we used to work with real estate investors. We don't do that anymore. It's

mostly like medical billing, insurance companies, stuff like that. That business does $20 million a year in revenue. So a bunch of stuff. We have a bunch of things that I have my fingers in. I own a nationwide title company, all 43 states, not 50, but 43 states we're in. And I do well on all of those things. I've vertically integrated a lot of the things that my community needs into ways that I can provide a service that I can control that provides a need that they have in a very specific way. So for example, if I teach somebody creative finance and I go, go find a title company. I got sick of saying that. And I got sick of my people. I'm sure you deal with this too. They come back

and they go, this title company doesn't want to do this, or this person doesn't want to do that. They don't want to do a double close or even a wholesale deal. And I go, fine, I'm just going to freaking buy a title company, expand nationwide, and I'll control the narrative. And boom, that took us three years to do, but here we are now. When somebody learns what I do, they go to a specific title company, they don't have any issues, right? So there's a lot of those things that we've built. And I now have a little over 600 employees. So the day I met you, I had zero. 60 months later, I have 620, I think is the amount of employees that I have.

We're going to pause because we need to talk about that. And what I mean, pause throughout this last 34, 50, 40 minutes, you've, there's been a consistent theme that you've been talking about, bro. And this is what I hope most, if not all entrepreneurs will get from this, regardless of where they're at when listening to this episode. Pace has cared more about the people than he has created. Then he cared more about the money or the business itself. He sold his rentals to go pay for his payroll. He is always focused on the community, the people. How many community members do you have now in sub two right now? Sub two, 13,000.

And this is a year ago, two years ago, you talked about kind of creating subject matter experts within that community, like transactional coordinating, all these different things, because he's looking at what people need versus what he wants, right? And he's delivering the need of those people above his own self, if you will. And so hopefully if you're out there and whether you just went through a moment like Pace has gone through, like I have gone through, find a way to care more about the people. I do something similar to Pace and I didn't even know Pace did this, but my general manager now has 30% of all my holdings. And it's because he's been with me for eight years and he has seen some dark, dark days. I mean, dark. And he hasn't gone anywhere, right? He has come. He's there in that 30%. That's awesome.

Yeah. And the reason being is because he's fought through it. I mean, we've had days where we've cried together because it was, when I say dark guys, it was literally, there's nothing left. I can't pay him. I can't pay myself. We're empty, right? And he's been there and he hasn't left. He hasn't gone anywhere. He's stayed true. We're buying two to five houses a week right now. He gets 30% of whatever we're keeping in the portfolio. If there's a business partner involved, like a lot of my community members, just like you will bring me a deal. We'll have an equity share. So whatever my side is, he gets 30% and it's because of the person he is. So I would encourage you and implore you if you take nothing else from everything Pace has been talking about, focus on your people first

and you're going to reap the rewards. It's really hard to do that, especially when you have nothing to give. Right. And it really, really is. And I tell people the reason why Michael Jordan was the greatest of all time is not because of the rings, not because of the shots that he made, because you look at him, he missed way more shots than he made. But why was Michael Jordan the best in my mind? He was the best because he made the impossible look easy. And so when you're doing the impossible stuff, which is you're standing at a meetup and you're like, I don't have any value. I don't have any money. I don't have any of this. I haven't had success. Okay. Who would you have to be? Who would you have to become in that moment in order to convey that you are there to help people? Like, how would you feel? How would you have to be? Who would you have to become in that moment in order to convey that you are there to help people? How would you feel? How would you walk? How would you talk? And so same

thing when I met you at that RIA, I had that thought process of, I have nothing but my own face, my own hands, my own voice, my own this. That's all I have to give. And so I'm going to just pour into everybody I possibly can, meet as many people as I possibly can, love on as many people as I possibly can. And those compound effects don't show up the next day. They don't show up for weeks. They don't show up for months. But then all of a sudden, somebody has a deal or an opportunity or this, and the first person they think of is you. Those things will start producing fruit. Those seeds you plant will start producing fruit. But gosh, damn, it's hard when you have nothing.

It is so hard when you have nothing. And there's people that come to me and they go, well, I don't have any value to give people. I go, let me tell you the number one thing that people need of value from you or anybody else. The number one thing people need is a friend. So when you're going to a real estate meetup or you're going to an entrepreneur meetup, you're going to wherever, a seminar, whatever, the number one thing people need in that room is not more education, not more information. The number one thing people need is a friend. And so if you can't figure out how to be a friend and friendly, then go read How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie and then

go and do it. So that is all I had. That was the only tool I had when I first started it. And same thing with Justin, like when you lose everything and you start from scratch, guess what you have? Your ability to connect with people. And it is honestly the most powerful tool. The problem is it just takes a while for those fruits to start to bear. There's so many, we haven't even gone to a bunch of my questions because I want to be respectful of your time. But when you go through those dark days and we'll kind of wrap it up on this, because I know all of us as entrepreneurs, there are dark days, weeks, months, years, uh, for some, what helps you push through? And by the way, how funny are these? Where do these even come from?

Do you watch this? You want it? Yeah. Let's just make it happen. It's an Apple thing. That's neat. All right. I turned it off in your settings. I keep forgetting to turn it off. What helps me get through? I have a very specific personality type that if my back is against the wall, I will perform better. Other people don't perform that well. They break down, right? They'd rather, if you go and watch Jim Quick stuff, he has four different types of animals in terms of learning style and how you communicate and how you perform and how you show up. He's got the dolphin, the cheetah, the elephant, the owl. The owl, as you can imagine, the owl is all wise, but they also like to plan things very specifically.

I'm the cheetah and you need to tell me, Hey, you're going to starve to death. If you don't take down that gazelle, that is where I perform best. And so what I have always done is it doesn't matter if I make a million dollars in a month, I make $10,000 in a month. Does not matter. I get rid of all of my money every single month. I deploy it into things that I'm building, right? If it's a vision or an initiative, I'll deploy money into something. I will buy tons of assets, buy a business. I get rid of all my money because I always want to be in that position of my back is against the wall and I have to get more money in. Now, is it tiring? Yes, it is so tiring. I have no downtime. I don't have weekends. I don't have these things, but guess what? I know myself. I know myself. It's the same thing with

Grant Cardone. He has the same personality. Sitting there talking to him, he's like, bro, if I have a hundred million dollars in the bank, I'm going to freaking South of France and I'm hanging. But I have no money to make account and we're just buying things and buying assets. I'm grinding, I'm working. I want to keep that hunger. And so somebody, people make that funny joke where they're like, if you stay ready, you'll never have to get ready. That's the mindset I'm trying to always stay in is I always want to feel like I'm one day away from not having anything so that I perform every single day. The greatest advantage you have when you're starting out, you have a massive advantage. And the advantage is you have nothing to lose.

That's it. Yeah. I have 620 employees and half a billion dollars in real estate. I got a lot to lose. That's it. Yeah. I have 620 employees and half a billion dollars in real estate. I got a lot to lose. That's right. And so you start being a little trepid, a little hesitant, a little this, you start playing safe. You start doing these things because you kind of need to. In the very beginning, you can make all the mistakes. You can screw everything up and nothing can happen to you. Nothing other than, you know, maybe a little bit of egg in your face, but guess what? People will say stuff like, oh, it's okay to fail. No, it's not okay to fail. It is a requirement to fail. It is the glue that puts all of this stuff

together. You have to fail. You have to forget people's names. You have to forget this thing that you learned on a zoom. You have to forget these things, but apply it and go, crap. I know I know this, but I'm now in this moment where I'm in a homeowner's house and I can't figure out how to get over this objection or this and the other. You have to fail. You have to be in these moments all day long. Otherwise you're not learning. And it sounds like common sense, but why is it not common practice is because people are comfortable. So I know myself. I know that if you put a hundred million dollars in my bank account, I'm chilling. I'm going to the Bahamas. I'm investing in stupid things. So I've learned myself is get rid of that money, go put it in assets and act as if I don't

have money every single day. And my whole community, if you ask somebody in my community, how much money do you think pays out sitting in their bank? They're, oh, he shows us all the time. He has like negative $3,100 today. Now my companies are different, right? Like I have partners who have, you know, we have CFOs, we have COOs, we have five financial analysts. We have money. We have millions of dollars in the company's bank accounts.

Those are not my bank accounts. Those are joint's bank accounts. Those are not my bank accounts. Those are joint partnership bank accounts, but my money and my personal investment stuff, I am to zero all the time, all the time. And I think a lot of high achievers, when you realize that that's who you are and how you show up, I know if you put money in my bank account, I'm like, hey, sweetheart, let's go do this. Let's go do that. Now, here's the difference. If I go to my wife, I go, we need to go on vacations, which we do a lot of vacations all the time. But guess what I'm actually doing?

I'm taking my kids and my wife on road trips and flights and travel to go make more money. I'm going to a real estate thing. I'm speaking on stage. I'm showing up to real estate. We did a nine day road trip through Texas. Like, Hey guys, Hey kids, we're going to go on a 90 road trip through, through Texas. Guess what we're doing? Visiting my properties and making YouTube content while they sit in the car while I film. That's right. But they don't, they don't really know the difference. So that's the family vacation all simultaneously. And I want to build something so much bigger than I think was even possible 10 years ago. And I know you're the same, like the more you do, the further the goalpost changes.

That's right. It's extended out. And I really just want to become the person that's worthy of a billion dollars. I don't want a billion dollars. I don't care about a billion dollars, but I want to become the person that's worthy of obtaining it. And in order to do that, I have to stay hungry all the time. If you stay ready, there's no need to get ready. That's basically the motto. Mike drop. I think we can wrap on that, everybody. Again, if you follow me, then you've got to be following pace. If you don't, somehow, some way. Best-selling author, has grown one of the largest real estate communities out there, if not the largest, has a half a billion in real estate. This is a close friend of mine,

someone I am honored to call a friend, someone I look up to, someone who advises me, whether you know it or not, my friend, you advise me. Even the moment that you just said what you said, I started taking all my traveling experiences and generating revenue from those traveling experience every time. You told me that down Tampa recently. And so brother, thank you for your time today. And hopefully everyone goes and follows his pace on where YouTube, Instagram, where do you want to have them all go to? If you ever want to talk to me, go to Instagram. I answer all my DMS myself with a voice memo. Typically I'll like, while I'm driving or doing a thing, I'm voice memoing people back like, Oh, that's a great question. Hey, I have a YouTube video. Go and type this in. YouTube is a great place to learn

and watch my deal breakdowns, stuff like that. Instagram is a great place to come and ask me a question. And I am the one 99% of the time answering those DMS. So you want to ask me a question? You can't do that on YouTube. You want to ask me a question? Come over to Instagram. That's it. And they're all Pace Morby? Just Pace Morby. Yeah.

Luckily, I've got a stupid name, so it's hard to duplicate. All right, y'all. I appreciate you. Talk to you guys later on Entrepreneur DNA. Peace.