S2 EP 1 | From Grit to Growth: Building My Billion-Dollar Purpose

In this episode, I sit down with my good friend Pace Morby for a real, no-filter conversation about the journey from blue-collar grind to building an empire. We talk about what it really means to grow a business, the guilt that comes with success, and the mindset shift that helped us break through the ceilings that were holding us back. Pace shares how he built a half-billion-dollar portfolio without using his own money or credit—and how purpose, not just passion, became the driving force. If you're an entrepreneur chasing growth, building a team, or just trying to get out of your own way, this one’s for you.

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Episode Transcript

S1 (00:00):
This is Brandon Dawson with another episode of Building Billions.
I can't wait to bring on the stage. A good
friend of mine, hugely successful dude, friend to the Ten-x community,
someone respected by Grant Cardone and all of us.

S2 (00:15):
Pace Morby we're win win no matter what. Got money
on my mind I can never get enough. And every
time I step up in the building, everybody hands go.

S3 (00:25):
All right. Great to have you here. What's up guys? Greg,
this guy's wearing a hoodie and he's supposed to be successful. Gosh,
good to see you. Thank you for having me.

S1 (00:36):
Absolutely. Do you want to tell everybody who you are
and what you do for those that might not already know?

S3 (00:40):
Yeah, sure. My name is Pace Morby. A lot of
you guys might know me from my A&E TV show
Triple Digit Flip. We were their number one TV show
for a couple of years before that. I was known
as a creative finance real estate investor. I have about
half $1 billion in my portfolio. I have never used
a bank loan, never pulled credit, never used any of
my own money. I acquire mostly RV parks, mobile home parks,
small multifamily B class stuff, basically anything that Grant Cardone

(01:04):
won't touch. And, um, I got my start fixing and
flipping houses, but before that, I got my start as
being a contractor. I was a contractor. I grew up
in a contractor's household with 12 kids. And so my
dad grinded man, traded time for money like crazy. And
then I got into my 20s and I also traded
time for money as a contractor, built my construction business.

(01:24):
He has no Opendoor Offerpad Zillow. I was their first contractor,
and I built a construction company around Opendoor Offerpad I
was Opendoor's first contractor in Phoenix, Arizona, helped them open
up in Texas. And then, um, that was about an
eight year run. I turned 30 and had a lady
come to me and punch me in the gut and say,
you're a slave. You don't actually own your business. These

(01:45):
companies that are giving you work own your business. You
need to get into real estate where you actually own
something tangible. And she showed me how to get into
real estate. And the, um, the world also knows me
as a community builder. I have about 30,000 people in
my community that all buy real estate with no money down.
Anybody in here in sub two? Cool. Awesome. Hey, Brian
Catalan from California. What's up brother? Good to see you. Um,

(02:08):
so that's where people know me from. And I became
really good friends. Um, about two years before the TV
show came off. And so we started hanging out a
lot more then. And then I started acquiring businesses when
I got around. Brandon Dawson, probably the smartest dude on
the planet. Very opposite from me, actually. You are my
business partner, Josiah. My business partner. Cody. You are their

(02:29):
number one hero. You're my number two hero. Grants my
number one hero.

S1 (02:33):
Yeah. That's awesome. Thank you.

S3 (02:34):
And, um, you have done so many amazing things for us.
We now have a portfolio of businesses that do about
$50 million a year in business. And everything is modeled
after after what you've taught my partner Cody and Josiah.
So thank you for everything.

S1 (02:46):
That's great. That's awesome. Yeah. Congratulations. And it's fun for me.
This is why I do it. I mean, first of all,
when I get to be around successful people like you. Right. And,
and and I was talking about the ether a few
minutes ago. You kind of get up in that ether
where we all know of each other. We don't necessarily
have the time to spend a lot of time together
because everyone's moving at a thousand miles a minute.

S3 (03:07):
Well, I think we're challenging each other from a distance
as well, which is really fun. I think the best
friends you guys have, everybody's kind of the same way.
Your best friends are the people that are challenging you
from a distance. They don't talk to you every single day.
You're just challenging each other because they're doing cool shit
and you're doing cool shit, and you kind of challenge
each other. That's how it's been with me. Brandon and
Grant is that you're constantly looking at those guys. Go, man,
if they're doing that, I guess that's what I should

(03:28):
be doing too.

S1 (03:29):
100%. Yeah, 100%. I still don't nobody's asked me to
be on a TV show, though. You know.

S3 (03:36):
We'll bring you on season four. It'll be great.

S1 (03:38):
That'd be.

S3 (03:38):
Awesome. You'll change everything around and improve everything. That'll be
the problem.

S1 (03:41):
So it was awesome. So what's it like to go from, like,
a successful business person and then get a show and
have people, like, watch you and see how you do things?
And what does it do to your like internally? both
because I get a little bit of when I'm going somewhere.
People are like, oh, I know you. I read your book.
I have learned something in the last three years that
I never, ever had to think about before. What? Always

(04:05):
assume wherever you're at, people know who you are.

S3 (04:09):
Yeah. And somebody who's got a camera on you. I'm
in the gym this morning, and somebody's recording me from
across the gym. Like, it's hard to, like, get used to.
I'm sure Grant's used to it. Yeah. But you, in
the last three years, you catapulted. So I imagine that
you deal with that. To answer the question honestly, guys,
I'll be real. I'm just a regular dude. I'm not Grant,
I'm not Brandon. These guys are superstars. I'm a regular dude.

(04:31):
I definitely will be a billionaire, there's no doubt about it.
But I'll tell you the number one word that pops
up in my head as I've gone from blue collar
guy to an owner of a business, is I feel guilty.
And why do I feel guilty is because I had
a mindset that my parents gave me in a blueprint
that my parents gave me, that how dare I own
something that I'm not touching every single minute? How dare

(04:51):
I touch something and not do the work myself. How
many people have parents like that? If it's meant to be,
it's up to me, right? If I if it's going
to be done right, I got to do it myself.
And so that was so ingrained in me in my
20s that it was my biggest struggle. And I could
not get past that point. I when I was working
with Opendoor, Offerpad and Zillow, I kept hitting the $25
million a year revenue mark, which is massive, obviously. So

(05:13):
don't get me wrong, I knew we were massive at
that point, but I kept hitting this plateau, this this
invisible ceiling that I just couldn't get past. Anybody feel
like that in the last year or two in your business? Okay.
For me it was partnerships, people I was spending time
around and my employees. That's what it was for me.
A lot of what you guys have talked about with
Sean and I felt guilty, honestly, like stepping away because

(05:36):
I watched my dad. My dad's 68 years old. What
do you think he's still doing to this day? My
dad is still spraying cabinets like I used to when
I was 21 with him, and my dad still puts
guilt on me, right? My dad still. I have 600 employees.
We do $150 million a year, and I'm supposed to
be the one doing it all myself. Is in is
what my parents think in their mind. And so there's

(05:56):
this little boy in me. I hate to say it,
but there's this little boy in me that I've got
to constantly tell to shut the hell up. And I'll
tell you why. Okay. The biggest joy I get on
a daily basis is I track a number that's very
different than most people that are trending towards $1 billion.
I track the number of people that I feed on
a daily basis, people that their paycheck relies on, the
work that I put in. So I've got 600 employees.

(06:18):
Those 600 employees have an average of three people that
rely on them, which means four total people rely on
one paycheck, which means 2400 people every other week get
a paycheck and that those kids rely on it. Backpacks,
shoes for their school. I could cry thinking about this.
I love my I love what I do every single day.
That's 2400 people get fed three times a day. That's

(06:39):
roughly 7500 meals a day. Get get put on people's table.
Because of good decisions I make scaling, I make good partnerships,
I make people I spend my time with. And with.
And so honestly, the biggest difference was ten years ago.
I felt that guilt from my parents, and the way
that I shut that little boy up is I look
at all the people that rely on me to make
good decisions and all the all the meals that are

(07:00):
fed on a daily basis. And I realize I'm on
the right path. It feels weird to make a lot
of money, guys. I know a lot of people in
this room have probably felt that same way. You wake
up and you're like, wow, this I'm I'm not used
to being worth $100 million or more. What the hell?
And you see a lot of people implode. You see
a lot of people, they they you've seen it a

(07:20):
thousand times. In fact, one of my favorite things I
ever learned from you, Brandon, was in Grant's office. You were.
I don't know what you called this talk, but I'll
remind you of it. But it's basically all the phases
and the breaking points of each business at revenue models. Yeah, bro,
that changed everything in my life. I took the recording.
Your team gave us the recording. I gave it to

(07:40):
Cody Barton. Cody Barton is my partner. Cody came in
to this exact room, just like you guys are at.
We signed up for you guys have a $40,000 thing? Yep.
Signed up for it. Immediately. Changed everything in my business.
We doubled. Tripled. Cody Barton, you are his hero.

S1 (07:54):
That's awesome.

S3 (07:55):
And we couldn't have done it if you hadn't been
through all the BS. We couldn't have done it if
you hadn't been through all the things. And the same
thing with with Grant. Um, so sorry I'm a long
winded person, but honestly, you get to a point where
you start feeling guilty from your parents, the people you
go to church with, all the people you hang out with,
and it's being in rooms like this that really helps
quiet that all down.

S1 (08:14):
And I love what you said, um, because Shawn talked
about the importance of people. Right. And we are people centric, personal, professional,
financial goals, teaching people how to be responsible, how to
set targets, how to win for their family. And what
you said is when you go home at night, you're like,
you saw. My benchmark is how many millionaires and multi-millionaires

(08:35):
I've created, like, I'm on a mission. I've I've got
290 right now that I know personally. I was involved
with creating, and I want that to be a million. Right.
Because if I can create a million multi-millionaires millionaires. The
number of other people impacted is going to be tens
of millions, if not hundreds of millions. So when you

(08:56):
sit and talk about, I think, how many people I'm
allowing to have a great life where they can feed
their family, the basic necessities aren't even a thought because
the success is there, right? That's such a great way
to frame it, because now you, from a sense of
ownership standpoint, you're like, I'm responsible for 600 people. Yeah.
Real leadership is making other people's success easy, and being

(09:16):
proud about the impact you can drive in their life.
And this is why I told all of you, stop
being in love with the thing you're doing and fall
in love with who you're doing it with and how
you're doing it and and watch it explode. The resistance
get out of the business. And this is what he's
talking about.

S3 (09:34):
Yeah, it's it's fun. So in our real estate portfolio,
I give 20% of my portfolio to my team. And
so the goal there is to turn everybody on my
team into multimillionaires. multi-millionaires. Right. That's the retirement. That's what.
That's what we're building. Which is. Which is incredible. And
you think it's cool to get your first, like zero down, 0%
interest seller finance deal. You think that's cool? The thing
that's way cooler is somebody goes, hey, I retired my

(09:56):
wife today because you make me. I make enough money
being with you, or I learn something from you or
I did something. It's called the helper's high, right? I've
never done drugs. Diet Coke is about as hardcore of
a drug as I've ever done. Um, but I imagine
that heroin is, like, the greatest thing on the planet,
drug wise. It's like helping somebody else achieve their goal.

(10:18):
Passion is where you light up, right? Where your passion is,
is where you light up. Purpose is where you help
other people light up. And I'm living in a purpose
right now. And it is the it was the weirdest
transition to go from I'm passionate about what I'm doing
to now I'm living a purpose. Brandon's living his purpose.
I'm living my purpose. And what's weird is, as you
let purpose the ether, the deals get brought to you,

(10:38):
the vibration changes, the people you're around changes. Pages. And
then those people that are, you know, your team members, um,
the responsibility is no longer my my kids, my wife
that's taken care of. The responsibility is now I wake
those people, wake up in the morning, go. I hope
pace makes a good decision today. I hope pace spends
his time with good people today. I hope pace goes

(11:00):
and partners with the right people today. That puts pressure
on me and that is the pressure I need to
continue to perform. So man, I love my life. Being
able to help people is just the most incredible thing.
I mean, this dude sold for so much freaking money
and here he is helping people that that is passion
turned into purpose. Everybody in here wants to live their purpose.

(11:21):
You don't want to just live passion. You want to
get to a point where you're living in your purpose. Why?

S1 (11:24):
And that's the only way, in my mind, the true measurement.
Of course you have revenue. Yep, you have profitability. And
you have value creation in a business. So okay, so
those those are three metrics that, you know, you got
to look at. But all three of those will only
increase to the extent that you can surround yourself with

(11:47):
people who are doing the necessary things to increase all
three of those things. Yeah. So for so many business owners,
their focus is in what they do and then they
get frustrated by it not having great people where they
don't realize that's actually the skill set they're not good at. Right.
At what point did you realize I can go out
and get deals? I can go and improve properties. I

(12:09):
can go and flip them. At what point did you
be like. But I can only do so many. So
I need to become a master of 600 people. Going
to a thousand.

S3 (12:16):
When I hired somebody to smack me in the face,
basically I had I had a coach named John Boehm,
and this was my first coach I ever hired. A
lot of blue collar people in here. Right? Okay, so
blue collar people, we are like anti hiring coaches, okay.
Our parents are our parents teach us that. It's the
weirdest thing. And actually in the building. Your guys's old
town building. Yep. I became a loan officer when I

(12:38):
was 25 years old. I was on a team in
that building. That was the building I was a loan
officer in, and I had a guy that was above
me and he says, if you're going to be on
my team, you're going to hire a coach. I was like,
a freaking coach. Are you kidding? That's the stupidest thing ever.
He says, well, you're not going to be on my team.
He forced me to do it. His name's Steve Mikes.
So shout out to Steve Mikes and he makes me
hire this guy named John Boehm who is 500 bucks

(12:59):
an hour is like some dude's going to charge me
like an attorney. Are you kidding me? A coach and
I get the address to meet this guy. I venmoed
the $500, and I go to the address, and I'm like,
this has got to be the wrong address. It's a
freaking Starbucks. It wasn't the wrong address. It was a Starbucks.
And I was paying a guy 500 bucks an hour

(13:19):
to sit in a Starbucks with him for an hour.
Greatest $500 I spend my entire life. This guy saw
me in a way that nobody in my circumference could
see me. Everybody around me at that point, before I
had started getting in the right rooms, was a yes man. Yes, pace.
As long as it benefits me. Yes, pace. As long
as it benefits me. I finally had a guy that
was like, I am bipartisan. I don't care what the

(13:41):
result is. I will tell you exactly what I'll tell
everybody else. He broke me down and this is what
he did. Brandon, he says, all right, your problem is
you're doing $12 million a year in revenue and you're
doing it all yourself. Can you guys imagine? Now, I
was subcontracting and stuff and in my mind, that was
my employee team was ten, 99 people. It's an irresponsible
way of looking at your business. Some people in this
room are doing that too. Anybody guilty of that? Okay, boom!

(14:05):
There we go. I've been there. I know the feeling.
So John Boehm, he says before we meet next month.
And I could not freaking wait to meet this guy.
He's the best money I'd ever spent. He says, here's
your homework. You go hire your first person. A month later, now,
he told me, he says, do not come back a
month later into this room unless you've hired somebody to
take these things off your plate. I was like, all right,

(14:26):
I'll be back a month later. I walk in the
Starbucks door. He stands up from his chair and he
walks towards me aggressively, and he says, you're fired. Get
out of here. In Starbucks, there's 15 people in Starbucks,
and I'm being told I'm fired. He could tell from
my body composure that I had not done my work.

(14:50):
You change physically when you do what you say you're
going to do. You change physically. When you have a team,
there's a confidence. There's an aura about you when you
actually have a good team around you. And so he says,
I go, John, I. I. I gave him all the excuses.
He says if we're going to spend any time together,
you're going to sit your ass down right here. We're
going to open up your phone and we're going to

(15:10):
hire somebody. If I knew what he had taught me
at that moment in my life that there were people praying,
literally praying on the other side of these job ads
and these classifieds, there are people praying to get out
of a bad relationship, to move to a different part
of the country. Praying for you guys to bet on
them and give them opportunities. I would have been hiring
people so much faster. I hired this girl named Anna martinez.

(15:33):
She stayed with me for ten years. I bought her
a house, paid it off cash, let her retire. She
became my sister, and she was the first person I
relied on that helped me build my business. And John
Boehm taught me the way. The problem is, just hiring
people is what he taught me. It wasn't until I
started hanging out with Brandon Dawson and Grant that I saw,
have you guys ever seen how their team operates? My

(15:55):
team takes notes. My team comes in and watches how
they operate, putting people in the right positions, incentivizing people properly,
getting them to live their purpose. That was probably for
four and a half years ago. I was hiring aimlessly,
just putting people in random spots on the bus and
breaking things over and over and over. And I kept
hitting that ceiling, hitting that ceiling, kept hitting that ceiling.

(16:17):
And we hit a ceiling of probably like 60, $70
million a year. And then when we put a purpose
behind what we were doing, and we learned the breaking
points and we learned where we should be and what
the biggest problems were, we could look for them rather
than wait for them and react. That was the biggest
thing that you gave me.

S1 (16:33):
And that that thank you for stating that, because it's
hard to express, um, to people that are brand new
and they've seen the breakpoints that and they think, well,
I can figure it out and everything, but what they
don't understand is the breakpoint stack, and it's like the
thickness of the pad of your concrete. And if it's
just poured too thin and you stack, it's going to shatter.

(16:54):
So it's it's it's like it's not you're here. So
you need to do the next five things to go there.
You're here. And did you do the 3 to 5
things before you got there at each breakpoint. Because statistically
if you didn't you will shatter. I mean, with with
a high probability, 97% always do. And so you see
that when you're when you're especially where you're at because

(17:16):
you're like, we're coming up on that 75 million. We
know all the shit we've had to deal with. We
know all we recognize many of the holes and you
just don't know how to fix them. And you're sitting
there looking at it and you're like yep yep yep yep.
And then it's like, oh, there's 3 to 5 things
that we didn't think about, right? But then it's like, now,
what are the 3 to 5 things to go to 100,

(17:37):
100 million, 125 million. And if you don't fix the
things before you try to make that technical move, you're
going to shatter. And so we see a lot of
businesses get to 100 million, and they're losing 10 million
a year by the time they got there.

S3 (17:50):
It was like when I took that when I did.
You guys go through the breaking points? Did he teach
you guys that? Anybody have your, like, brain melt through
your ears? Okay. He's probably even better at it than
when I first learned it four years ago, four and
a half years ago. Um, when we first learned that,
it was like you had a crystal ball into my
life and you were reading my freaking, like, you know,

(18:11):
Chinese cookie. Like you knew everything about me. And my
partner and I were looking at each other like, how
the hell is he talking about us right now? You
knew every single breaking point. What was interesting? There was
even a point where you go, people that will get
here that haven't fixed these problems will fall back down here,
lose key personnel, lose partnerships, lose this, that, and the
other lose. employees. Lose, um, lose customers. And you won't

(18:32):
understand why you're working your freaking guts out. You're working
harder than you ever did in your life, and it's
because you didn't preemptively do these things and we had
to go back. This is what we did. After I
first learned this from Brandon, we had to go back
and and start over. We aligned with these guys, and
we actually started building it the right way and had
the preemptive, um, understanding of what we needed to start solving.

(18:53):
One of the biggest things that we did wrong, um,
and I had to go back and fix all this
stuff is partnership agreements. A lot of you guys, especially
in the blue collar world, here's what we'll do. We
do this really poorly because we can't see past 20 million.
We can't see past 10 million. So what we do
is we'll give like employees 30% equity in the business.

(19:14):
It's like that will what's going to happen is that's
going to implode the entire company. Once you get to
$30 million, that person will not scale with that business.
You have to get out and start all the way over.
You're going to have to have a really hard conversation.
Those were the conversations that Brandon coached Colchester is like,
this is how you structure things properly and you need
to leave room for a CFO at some point, and
you need to leave room for this person at some point.

(19:34):
This person, you haven't even attracted this person to your
business yet because you're not at a revenue model that
makes sense. You're down here and you're attracting these people
and we're like, oh my gosh, oh my. I probably said,
oh my gosh, in that two hour time frame and
that dinner and all of that stuff, probably 40, 50
freaking times. And I imagine a lot of you guys
are dealing with some of these things in your business, right?
It is. So when I said the word guilty, I

(19:56):
felt guilty. Once we solved it, I felt guilty that
I wasn't working so hard. I went from 18 hour
days to 18 hours a week. And so I start
feeling guilty. But here's here's where the beauty is. And
I'll tell you where I also learned. So guilty is
like a big thing I went through. Another thing I
went through is understanding why people won't delegate. Okay. I

(20:19):
went through this with getting coached by these guys. I
other things that I read. One of the biggest reasons
why people don't delegate is because they fear stepping into
their purpose. Because if, let's say I free up four
hours a day of my schedule right now, I free
up all of your guys's schedules four hours a day.
I hire the right person that does the thing without
me babysitting them all the time. I have the right system,

(20:40):
the right process. I hire the right person. All of
a sudden I'm liberated four hours a day. What's the.
The question is, what the freak do I do with
those four hours a day? And so subconsciously, people go,
I'm not going to delegate that because I don't know
what I would do with that time. And so they
keep that role in their pocket. How many people are
guilty of this? That was a huge realization for me

(21:02):
to go. It's because I don't understand where I'm supposed
to be. And one of the things that Brandon really
helped me understand is what does a CEO or what
does the brand, the face of the company, where should
they be playing? Where should there be role or where
should their role be and where should they be playing?
Once I understood where I should be spending my four hours,
I then ran towards it and I felt really comfortable

(21:25):
delegating because I knew I wasn't supposed to be in
that that role. That was a big part for me,
as well as understanding where I should have been spending
the time and energy. I essentially am like Ronald McDonald
for my business. I don't flip the burgers, but I
sell the burgers, if that makes sense. I'm kind of
like Grant. Do you guys want me in the kitchen
if I'm Ronald McDonald? Hell no. You're gonna be tripping
on my big ass feet. You know what I'm saying?
Like you do not want me in the kitchen. You

(21:47):
want me on the billboard selling the thing. And when
I started understanding where I should have been. A lot
of you guys are the founders of your companies. Where
should you be? You should be doubling down on the
growth of your company, the brand, the networking, the sciences,
the acquisitions of maybe smaller companies around you. That's where
your purpose is.

S1 (22:08):
And you can't actually what you heard him say where
he recognized. Wait a minute. There's this there's this persona.
So what you need to do when you think about
your business because everything's so hard, is you need to
disconnect from it emotionally. because high emotion is low intelligence.
So when you're all stopped up with all the things
that are wrong or the frustrations, you can't think at

(22:28):
all clearly. So here's a cool drill that you could
go through. Um, when you're when you're sitting back and
you're relaxing and you're just like, you got ten minutes,
just visualize this persona that you could create for your company,
and that persona would be the person who is the
lead promoter for the organization, the person that has no pressure,

(22:49):
no stress. Everything's always optimistic. Everything's always fun and exciting
to talk about. And everyone's interested because you're talking about cool, fun,
exciting things. And that's what you love to talk about.
And that's what that's what that persona is now. Now
you're going to relate that to your your actual engagement.
You're going to be like, well, it's hard to be

(23:11):
that way when you're dealing with all these problems. Would
you agree with that? That would be the first limiting thought.

S3 (23:15):
Like, I've been there.

S1 (23:16):
So so now you're like, I want to be that,
but I got to deal with this. Well, see the thing.
As soon as somebody uses the word I, they have
trapped themselves. Because I'm just going to be honest with you.
Nobody in our company or in any company ever does
everything with an I. They represent somebody else that's helping them.

(23:38):
And if they're not, they're the wrong person for to
be on my leadership team or to be responsible because
I don't expect anybody to be good enough, or it
always be I, because I know, I don't know, but
what I do know is I will go find from
people who do know. You get it. And that is
actually my job. So if I'm sitting here trying to

(23:59):
be the perfect person for every single thing in the company,
I have entirely trapped the company. So knowing that, I'm like, okay, well,
what am I good at? Well, I'm not good at finance.
I'm pretty good at promotion. I can convert, I can sell,
I'm great at setting strategy. I'm good at looking at
investment opportunity. So I go scan across those ten elements

(24:20):
and I'm like, the ones I really love is strategy, investment, thesis,
building people. I don't really like operations and that's what
my wife does. And so now I'm like, okay, there's
that persona. I'm going to slide into that persona. And
what you don't know that he just told you, in
case you missed it is once you slide into that

(24:40):
persona and you're up here, you realize this is a
lot more cool, but also law, this, this attractor factor.
Because now you're in the ether. Because what you think
is what you say, what you say is what you do.
What you do is what you're known for. So when
you're like, yeah, I love selling security systems. We saved
a family from being burglarized. We had we saved cops

(25:03):
from potentially being killed. I loved these neighborhoods. The drop
in crime when I install my stuff and the kids
are out in the sidewalks playing because no one's afraid.
Because we put all these cool alerts in and I'm
talking about all the fun stuff all of a sudden says, shit, man,
I'm doing a whole development across town. I want to
promote that for the safety of the development. Hey, what

(25:23):
would it cost me to wire that in this whole
development I'm building? And all of a sudden I'm doing
deals at this, at this level up here that I
never did before because I was busy, busy down here
looking and making sure that every employee crossed the T's
and dot the I's and did the invoice correctly, or
yelling at some Sally for not getting the bill out.
See you. Can't you attract what you put your attention on?

(25:47):
So for those of you struggling, it's because you're struggling
and you're going to get more of it. There's no
other choice. And what he said is as soon as
he moved, as soon as he realized there's that persona
out there and I moved into it, everything else opened
up because now people that have quality. How do you
think I recruited the number two guy in charge of
finance globally for KKR? Waiting for that CFO, the most

(26:09):
prestigious job in private equity. Because I was talking about
this massively Huge thing that we're going to build. And
every time I saw him, he'd say, hey, how's it going?
Because he was a golf buddy for three years, I'd say,
oh shit.

S4 (26:23):
We're blowing up.

S1 (26:25):
I knew he wasn't going to leave his job for
a $50 million company or a $90 million company. But
if he knew it was 50, that it went to 100,
then went to 150 and then went to 250, then
at some point he's going to be like, I missed out.
They won't need me at some point, right? So maybe
now all I had to do is strategically wait for
him to do what I'm telling you. Hey, man, how's
it going at KKR? Oh, shit. Blah blah blah blah blah.

(26:49):
I'm like, you want to fix that? Why don't you
come over now? We've been talking about it. Boom! The
cracks open, right? You got to plant those seeds for years.
But if you're not talking about what you're excited about
because you're bitching about what's wrong, why would somebody join
you if you're complaining? Does this make sense to you?
And the ether can't come to you unless you're really

(27:10):
super excited and talking about beautiful things, because there's enough
drama for everybody else, so they don't want to be
around more drama. And he put himself in the ether
and I watched this guy's career just explode. It's fun
to see it. It's fun to see all the great
shit you're doing.

S3 (27:24):
It's fun. You got. You guys keep me going. It's
that balloon thing, right? It's like these bubbles that I
get to be. I get to be in a bubble
inside of your guys's bubble. And as you expand, I go, oh,
I got to hurry up and expand. My friends are expanding.
I got to expand to, you know, to dumb it
down for a lot of my blue collar homies in here. Um,
for me, when I was a contractor for Open Door,
we were doing 50 turns every single month for Open Door. Right?

(27:46):
So a house a day, basically. They'd buy a house
and we would quickly turn it, move to the next one, whatever.
And my guys, I could I could not find the
right person, or at least I thought so at the time.
That's the terminology I use. What I put out is
what I got back, right? What I what the output is,
the input is also and I couldn't find a guy
that would do finish work. It was really hard for me.

(28:09):
Anybody in construction like finish work is the hardest part.
It's like the last three freaking weeks. Blue tape, 18
freaking times, you know? So what? Who did that? I
bet you guys have done it right. You guys have
had blue tape running around in the back of your
car and slam it against the car doors because you've
done blue tape at the projects. What I used to

(28:29):
do is do I called it hugging toilets. And what
I would do is I would install the toilets because
my guys, for some reason, the wax ring, they would
never do it right. And then we would pass the
house on to our client and somebody say, toilet's leaking.
Gosh dang it, these guys just can't do it, right?
So that's the words I'm using. Then I put myself

(28:50):
in this job where now I'm the guy at the
end of the job that is cleaning up all this.
This is a $25 million a year company, and I'm
doing the finished work, right. So what does that do?
It takes me. Where does it take me out of
it takes me out of my purpose. Takes me out
of that ether. Now I'm missing opportunities and jobs. Open
door offer pad. Zillow. I didn't have offerpad Zillow at

(29:11):
the time. Why? Because they were calling me and my phone.
I'm not joking you. My phone was in my back
pocket as I'm installing a toilet with both my hands.
How am I going to pick up the gosh dang
phone and get another opportunity if I'm installing a toilet?
There's some of you guys that are doing this in
your businesses right now. You are doing the thing and

(29:33):
there's a call that's coming in right now and you
miss the call. John and other coaches that I've had
and hired, they said, get the gosh dang phone in
your hand, get in the ether, get out of that,
get out of that position, and boom, I get a
call from Zillow. Biggest contract ever got the second. It
was the second I realized I needed to get out

(29:54):
of my own way. All of a sudden, the deals
start flowing in. I'm like, where were these deals? They
were there the whole time, my friends. I just had
my face in somebody's somebody else's toilet. So you got
to ask yourself the question, where are where's your face
right now? What? What? Where in your job? Where in
your business right now? Now, Brandon said something else that

(30:15):
I've learned from these guys. I have never seen a
company hire and attract higher quality talent than you guys.

S1 (30:22):
Thank you. Yeah.

S3 (30:24):
It is insanity. And here's what happens. The person, the
first person that attracts other people to your company is
who you. Then what happens is freaking cool. People come
work for you. Who then attracts the next cool people?
Those freaking people. So it becomes this amazing recruiting machine
where everybody wants to come work at your company, but

(30:47):
nobody wants to work at a company where a guy's
installing the toilet and missing the phone calls. So when
you're saying, how do I hire great people? Get off
your hands and knees, pull the phone out, get into
the ether, get into your purpose. So whatever that is,
I know I'm speaking generally. Hopefully you guys are picking
up what I'm putting down. There's something something in your
business right now. What's your name? Blonde. She's actually paying

(31:08):
attention to me. Lori. Lori. Are you thinking of things
when I talk about installing toilets? Are there things that
you're stuck in your business right now? Do you feel
like you're missing opportunities, missing calls? Missing your purpose because
you're stuck doing those things? Yes. Okay. And do you
guys have employees in your company? We do. Okay. So
on a daily basis, you're not avoiding those opportunities for
you and your your family. You're actually avoiding opportunities for

(31:29):
those families. And that's a hard realization for blue collar people.
Because what do we care about more than anything else?
Loyalty and loving on our people. Gives me chills to
think about. I come from a family of 12 kids. Guys.
12 kids. Same mom and dad. I'm number three. I've
changed more diapers than most moms that have four kids. Okay.
Nothing is more important to us blue collar people than

(31:51):
family and loyalty. And so when I got to the
realization that I'm actually robbing opportunities, not from me, I'm
robbing opportunities from the people that work at my company,
and I'm stealing from them because I'm on my hands
and knees and avoiding the ether. Oh my gosh, this
massive sense of purpose hit me and I woke the
freak up. So hopefully this is helpful for you guys
to get woken up as well. Yeah.

S1 (32:14):
And you guys, there's a reason I like to stack
a couple of my speakers together, my guests, my friends,
because it becomes when you hear it side by side
from Sean and you hear it from pace and you're
like their start, and then you hear it from me earlier,
and then at some point you're like, all three of
those successful people are speaking exactly the same way. Have

(32:37):
you guys noticed that? Yeah. And that's why when I
meet my buddy over there with a $90 million exit,
we see each other and we both smile at each
other because we got that exit. Smile. Wow. We know
exactly what it took to get there, don't we? And
you look at each other. You have so much respect

(32:57):
for people who have done it because it's so hard
to do it. And then when you do it, you
want to keep doing it. But it's a lot more
fun to bring a lot of new people along with
you so they can do it with you, man, it
becomes a party because most people just don't even understand
what doing it means. But when they experience the journey.

(33:21):
Because here's the real art of all this the actual
doing it isn't the thing. In fact, sometimes that can
be a little bit of a letdown afterwards. You're like, okay,
now what? It's the journey of doing it with the
people you're doing it with. That's actually because when you
reflect back with the money, you're like, fuck, I got
all this money, but I don't have any friends anymore.

(33:42):
Like all the people I left at the company, I
got to start over. And then you're like, golly, what
about all those nights where we huddled around and had
steak dinners or pizzas trying to solve problems, and we
did it, and then we conquered it, and it felt
so amazing. And we celebrated. I remember that one night
we got all so drunk. Nobody showed up at work
the next day like you have all these things, right?

(34:05):
And though those are really the things, the money is
the byproduct of that. And then what happens is now
you're by yourself again and you're like, I miss all that.
I miss the and a lot of our military people.
This is what happens. They come home from 20 years
of service. They're now they don't have to do anything.
They're on their own. They're still a remarkable people. But

(34:25):
now they're lost. They lost all that community. And some
of them fill that time with other things because it
becomes painful. Well, what I would tell you is as
an entrepreneur, you have the ability to get up in
that ether he's talking about to where every day is
like a high because you're watching people. When you're watching
them change their lives, you're watching them propel forward. You're

(34:46):
watching these little families. Do you know how many families
I've got to watch grow up? I mean, from like
birth to go to college or to eventually come work
at the company. I've because I've been running teams of
people since I was 23, 24 years old. I've seen
hundreds of families get created out out of nowhere. It

(35:08):
gets pretty exciting.

S3 (35:10):
Yeah. Anybody here Christian in here or believe in a
higher power? Okay. So you believe in a higher power?
What what what were we made after we were made
in his likeness, were we not? And what is his likeness?
His likeness is a creator. He's a creator, right? So
at the end of the day, we are supposed to
be creators, right? My friends? So not only are we
here to create opportunities for people, we're here to create
products and create value. We are here to create pathways

(35:33):
for other people to create as well, right? Because if
God gave us opportunities, our job is to give other
people's opportunities as well. Passing the torch, so to speak.
The craziest moment, I think, is about when I started
figuring this out, and I got off my hands and
knees and I started becoming a business owner, not an operator,
is when people started coming to me and my company
and saying, we're deciding to have another kid because the

(35:53):
company is doing so well. I just got a raise.
Those types of things, those things. Honestly, guys, I'll be
a billionaire. I 100% will be. I don't care. I
just I'm a little bit different. I'm built a little
bit different. I care about somebody saying, I came here.
I wanted to build a family. I wanted to build
something special. And you gave me the ability to do that.

(36:14):
I bought my first house because of you. As silly
as that sounds, there's people in your teams, people that
are out there that want to come work for you.
You're in your own way. You're there's not enough space
for them to come and work in your ether. You're
robbing from them. Yes. But then also, there's a lot
of you guys right now that have kids or grandkids.
Are you spending enough time with them? Yes or no?

(36:39):
Greatest moment of my life was four years ago. Three
years ago, I bought a Montana ranch writing this Montana ranch.
I walk onto this Montana ranch, and I'm like, I
made it. I freaking made it. You know what my
best thing was? That whole summer was getting on the lawnmower,
having my daughter sit said on one lap, six year
old daughter, my three year old daughter sitting on my

(36:59):
lap and riding my lawnmower for eight hours that day
and just mowing my pasture. And I'm like, this is
literally what my life was meant to be. And I,
I could tell you five years prior, two years prior,
a year prior. Couldn't have done it, couldn't have done it.
My phone's blowing up. People are trying to text me.
There's a problem. There's a fire. There's an issue. There's
a this. It was all me. Systems, processes and understanding

(37:21):
that you got to get to another level. Um, one thing.
I also made a mistake as a blue collar guy, like,
at a smaller level, is, I would say if I
could just get to this point monthly, I could be okay.
I know people in this room have had that mentality
or maybe already have that mentality. Your company, my friends,
should be growing indefinitely. You shouldn't be going. I need

(37:42):
X amount of income and then I'm okay. And then
I'm going to slow down. Your company should be growing
with or without you. I'm here on a Saturday. I
actually this morning I was with Jeremy. Jeremy is a
good friend of mine. Jeremy is helping run. He's head
of marketing. He's unbelievable. Guy. And I go, man, I'm
upstairs in their office getting a tour and I go,
Holy moly, are you guys haven't moved in yet? He goes, dude,

(38:03):
it's Saturday. I go, oh, it's Saturday. I forget what
days it is. To me, it's every day is the
same day I wake up, I get to create, I
get to do amazing things. I get to change people's lives. I,
I am so grateful to be here and I'm grateful
to be in this room. And I hope that you
guys are getting the wake up call yourself and saying,
I gotta, I got to change something. I got to

(38:24):
get off my hands and knees. I got to get
the phone in my hand. Got to get in the ether.
A white blouse or white, uh uh, suit coat. What's
your name? Sherry. Sherry? What do you do?

S5 (38:36):
Sherry I am I take the pain out of, uh,
business insurance.

S3 (38:41):
You take the. Okay. Amazing. You take the pain out
of business insurance. What part of this resonates with you?
Where do you feel like you're stuck in your own
business right now?

S5 (38:47):
Um, I think that I need to look at the
bigger picture and sometimes get definitely stuck in the day
to day.

S3 (38:55):
Do you feel like you're also in that that point
of like especially some of the an insurance I'm going
to get to this revenue model and then I'll be good.
Do you ever have those thought processes?

S5 (39:04):
No, I always said it. I said an annual goal. And, um,
do that each and every year.

S3 (39:12):
Okay, cool. And do you have a team right now
that if you took a year off, the team would
take it to another level with or without you being there?

S5 (39:20):
I have a team that does the servicing side, but
they're not a team that's going to grow my business.

S3 (39:26):
Okay, cool. So that was a that was a big
turning point for me as well. Right. I know that
if Brandon goes to France or Brandon goes here, Brandon
goes X, Y and Z. Is this company going to
continue to grow? His sales organization is going to continue
to grow. That was a big thing for me too,
is understanding that this company has to grow with or
without me, because if I get hit by a car,
I get this. Then all my employees lose their jobs

(39:47):
because I'm the one that's making this whole ship go
in the right direction, right? That was a scary moment
for me. That was another big wake up call for me.
I was like, I have to fix this. It is
my responsibility to make sure that this is fixed whether
I make another dollar or not. It's my responsibility to
fix this company and make sure it's going in the
right direction, whether I'm around or not. So that's also

(40:07):
those moments you pull yourself out of certain things and
you'll go from 20 million or heck, some people in here,
3 million guys, you go to 3 million to $15
million in like 18 months. And you will not even
believe that your life is is you're in the same lifespan.
It's crazy. Little tweaks in your business, especially insurance. There's
so much opportunity in that, oh my gosh, you could
be a billionaire in insurance.

S5 (40:29):
Yes. So, for example, um, our agency developed an online
platform where businesses can go online and get quote to
bind in minutes both their liability, their worker's comp cyber liability.
And instead of marketing that to franchises or companies like yours. Um,

(40:52):
I'm stuck in just servicing the book of business that
I have. Yep. 30 years into it. So I've got
the book of business, and I get stuck servicing versus really, um,
expanding upon the resources that I have. Right.

S3 (41:10):
Which is where you want to be, right?

S5 (41:12):
Absolutely.

S3 (41:13):
How many? How many people have the same thing you
resonate with the exact, exact thing. There's something in your
business right now you're stuck in, and, you know, there's
25 things right now you should be doing. In fact,
things that you were built to do, that you wake
up in the morning and you're freaking excited about doing.
But these things prevent you from doing it. Yes. Thanks
for that.

S5 (41:31):
Thank you.

S1 (41:33):
Yeah. He said something very interesting. And I like everyone
to take their notepad because it's when I hear things.
When I hear things for because it takes two things
to build a business context and contrast. And he said it.
It isn't until you look backwards that you actually get
the context because you don't know at the time. Okay.

(41:56):
So I want you to write two words down, um,
creating because he said that's actually I mean, I agree
with my dad's in the back of the room. He's
my dad's a I was a preacher's kid. So, you know,
our creator created us. Wouldn't he or she expect that
we would do the same thing? Create. That's why we're

(42:19):
supposed to be here. And the word next that I
want you to write down is oppressor. Now, I'm just
going to do something here that we do often because I,
like my lawyer friend, said words actually matter. The definition

(42:42):
of creator. One that creates, usually by bringing something new
or original into being. You guys got that? Bringing something
new or original into being. Now let's look up oppressor.

(43:07):
The definition of oppressor. To crush or burden by abuse
of power or authority. To burden spiritually or mentally. Weigh
heavily upon. Okay. Now, what I'd like you to do
is I'd like you to look at those two words

(43:27):
side by side. And I'd like you to be honest
with yourself and ask yourself this question during the normal
course of action in your daily routine. Which one of
those are you being? Because there really isn't a neutral point.
You're either walking around and crushing everything around you, or

(43:49):
you're walking around creating something better every single minute, every
single day with everyone doing it. You're doing one of
those two things. You have to be honest with yourself
to assess. If you go back over the last 30
days when you're normally going through your day, which of
those two things are you doing? Because if you're oppressing,

(44:13):
the results will show it and how they show it
is what pace just said. If you're not continually growing
every single day, every single month, every single year, then
somebody or you is oppressing your organization. And if you're small,
8 million or less, 15 million or less and you're flat,

(44:37):
the oppressor is you. If you're hundreds of millions, the
oppressor is a group of people, and they're there the
moment a business starts to struggle. They're there. That's what
I'm a turnaround expert. And if you just want to know, like,
where's the body of work that that made that so
apparent to me? It was how The Mighty Fall by

(44:59):
Jim Collins and I spent a lot of time talking
to Jim about the lead indicators to oppressive environments that
run off good people, and then they start new companies,
and then they crush the big ones. So if you're
losing good people, if people are not happy, if revenues
aren't growing, and the more creator you are now, that's

(45:19):
not reckless creation, by the way. That's actually creating value,
creating with intent because most of you will be oppressing.
I want you to think about it this way. Your
creative has to be intentful and it has to be
towards value. Otherwise, you're not really creating. You're distracting if
you're capped or anything isn't growing. You're oppressing because the

(45:44):
business will follow the leader and your people follow the leader.
And we learn that as little kids. So now you
have to be honest with yourself. Growth. Enthusiasm. Excitement. Targets.
Hit or stagnation? Decline. Struggle. Simple answer. Look at those

(46:05):
two words and they'll tell you exactly what's happening in
your business. That's all you have to do. And he
said that you have to be growing. You know why?
You have to be growing every time you think about anything?
Because the moment you're no longer thinking about growing, the
business will not grow because you're or your team's oppressing it.
It's one or the other. There is nothing in the
there's no neutral. Some people will say I'm flat, so

(46:30):
I'm not oppressing and I'm not creating. For some reason
I'm flat. Well, flat is oppressive because all your costs
go up. So you go out of business and it
means there's no growth, there's no create.

S3 (46:41):
Or your or your people leave.

S1 (46:43):
Or your people leave and you're stuck back doing it yourself.

S3 (46:46):
If you have a flat business, you have people that
are right now. This was another realization for me. You
have people right now looking online for jobs right now.
If you're if your company is flat, if it's not growing,
your good people are either a being recruited by people
who have got it figured out, or b they're already
looking to to make a departure, and they come to

(47:06):
your company and they act like, oh my gosh, I
love being here. Meanwhile, they're over at home looking for
another job. That's what a flat company looks like. I
didn't realize that until probably four years ago when I
started learning from these guys, and we started asking our
employees very similar to what Shawn was talking about, like
taking surveys and doing all of those kind of things
and figuring that stuff out. And we would take anonymous
surveys and be like, yeah, I'm looking for jobs on

(47:28):
the side. I don't see a path of growth. I
don't see you growing. I don't see you improving. I
don't see the company coming up with new ideas and
new ways to write Right. Or if a problem persists
in the company, let's say a roofing company, for example,
let's say a lead comes in and the sales team
doesn't handle it at the right time, then customer gets

(47:48):
customer service, gets a call, and customer service has a
complaint like, hey, sales is not on it like they're
supposed to be, and da da da da da. There's
these things that persist in our business. We all have
dozens of them. I have them, even Brandon, believe it
or not, has them. They're just at a very different level.
If those problems don't get solved right away, people start
getting this itch of, I don't want to be here.
Problems don't get solved at this company. And what ultimately

(48:11):
happens is subconsciously, your best people will end up leaving
and working for somebody else. So even when you're flat,
you are not flat. You are declining. You just aren't
seeing it.

S1 (48:24):
Good stuff huh? Something gives you something to think about.
The good news is, is literally I. I kid you
not when I tell you this. If you remove the
emotion piece out of this, other than I allow one
emotion in our business, it's the only emotion because high emotion,
low intelligence. So we have a rule. The only emotion

(48:46):
allowed in our business is the emotion of celebration. Because
here I'll give you a tale of two stories. You're
all pissed off. You're all fighting with each other. Somebody
gets so mad they pick a football up and throw
it at the other one because they're pissed and misses them.
It hits the TV, it knocks the TV, it smashes.
You are now giving that employee a pip, or you're
yelling at them, or you're firing them because they just

(49:07):
destructed your property, right? Same scenario. You guys just smoked
your targets. You're all cheering up and down. You're all
jumping around and somebody's like, yeah. And they throw the football,
hit the TV, it smashes and falls off the wall.
The owner's like, let's break one next month. It's an
entirely different reaction because you're.

S6 (49:27):
Like, yeah, we're crazy because.

S1 (49:30):
You're emotionally charged and you can accept collateral damage when
you're emotionally charged. The negative emotion causes more damage and
becomes irreparable at some point in time. So our rule is,
if you're celebrating, break shit. Go ahead. Uh, if you're fighting,

(49:54):
you're in trouble. What you want to do is you
want to create that celebration emotion around people because it's
it's fun. You know how many people. When I see
businesses struggling, I watch everyone start filtering out on a
Friday at 233, 34, 35 with their heads down. You
have a good weekend, man. And they're like, I cannot

(50:14):
wait to get out of this freaking place. You know
what you really want? You want people going like, I
can't wait to be here Monday. We killed it today.
And you should remind them and show them what killing
it looks like. And sometimes, as a leader, you find
things to kill, even if it doesn't have the financial
results because you're training people to look for that explosive

(50:39):
in the day because we killed it. And you should
put little if you gamify your business. And this is
one thing you're also fixated on the strapping yourself to
the toilet, being pissed off, looking for the problems versus
gamify your business. Find little things where every day you're like, yes,
because then that energy carries. And that's why we have
role plays in the morning. That's why we get people

(51:00):
fired up before before they get on their phones. So
they're already spooled up. Any of you ever do anything
where like you're like, oh, it's so.

S6 (51:07):
Hard.

S1 (51:08):
Maybe working out. Oh, I drag my ass and then
finally get on the bike and you're like, I'm just
gonna do it. And then eventually you're like, okay. And
you start going and going and going and going and
going and you're like, man, I'm in it. And you're like,
that was a good workout. You ever had that experience
where where you were just resisted and finally went, whatever. Well,
that's what it's like in the workday for most people.

(51:30):
So the faster you get them into the spool up.
So ask, how can I do things quick in the
morning to get my team fired up? Morning meetings. That's
a great way to do it. We do it every
single morning. Like, what are you doing. Because the number
one job of a of a business owner is to
put energy in your business. Electric charge. And if you're

(51:53):
not doing it, then you got to be the owl.
Who is? Does that make sense to you? So these
are all, all, every problem that you could identify in
your business is literally a single decision away from fixing it.
And then when you fix it, you're like, shit, that
was easy. It's just you have this accumulation of things.

(52:13):
I call it particles in posts. There's just so many problems.
There's so many people and so many things. Really, all
you have to do is grab one of them and
fix it and celebrate it. And people are like, hey,
that's that's pretty cool. Let's do more of that. Change
the culture.

S3 (52:25):
Yeah, it was interesting. We had when I was talking
to John Boehm, my first coach, he had me identify
a lot of the problems that I had in my
business and how long they were persisting. And it was
kind of, you know, opening me up and looking at
me as like, oh my gosh, I can't believe I've
been dealing with this for so long. He said, you're kind.
This is what got me over it. It's also I

(52:45):
get my kids kids to stop crying. So if I
if I'm at target and my kid is here, we
hear another kid crying. I go to my kids, I go,
that kid sounds really annoying, right? Like, oh my gosh,
that kid's so annoying. That's what you sound like.

S7 (53:01):
When you cry.

S3 (53:02):
And all of a sudden they stop crying because they're like,
I don't want to sound like that. So John Boehm
says to me, he says, so, you know, all these
little problems that you have that just continue to persist.
Have you ever had somebody in your life that should
have broken up with this really bad person? Everybody in
the family knew. Every one of your friends knew they
should have broken up with this person. They were cheating
on them. It was not serving them. I was like, yeah.
And he goes, that's you. With all of these problems,

(53:25):
you're dating all of these problems, and you should have
broken up with them a long time ago. Everybody in
your company, your employees, and everybody around you knows that
you should have broken up with these a long time ago,
but for some reason, you just can't get over this person.
And I was like, oh my gosh. We all have them.
We all freaking have them. And for some reason, when
you're in the 3 to $15 million mark, you want

(53:48):
to marry them. For some reason, they become your problem.
The culture needs to shift of these are problems that
persist for five minutes and we celebrate the win. And
that's the thing. Now the company is all about solving problems,
celebrating wins, solving problems, celebrating wins. Um, one of the
things we say in our company is we love problems.
As long as they weren't yesterday's problems. We want new ones.

(54:10):
I want new problems. It's not that I don't want problems.
I want new problems. I don't want to hear about
yesterday's stuff. Let's fix it so we can create problems
for tomorrow. You know, Grant said something to me at dinnertime.
Who has a YouTube channel here? Anybody? Blue collar people.
Something with us. We just don't want to be on camera,
do we? So it took me a while to build
a YouTube channel, but I realized I am my billboard

(54:34):
for my company, right? And so if I'm a roofing company,
for example, I'm a pest control company. You should have something.
I'm not going to convince you to build a brand,
but I'm at dinner with Grant like five years ago.
And he says one thing to me that changed my
life forever. He says, pace, you're a you're a millionaire
because you're 1% of clients that see you through your ads,

(54:58):
through your this your YouTube channel. They use your title company,
they use your lending business, they sell you deals. 1%
of people that see you will ever do business with you.
You will become a millionaire from those people. I'm like, okay.
He goes, I became a billionaire from the 99% of
people that don't buy from me.

S6 (55:20):
Yeah.

S3 (55:22):
Grant says some stupid shit sometimes. But like, once you
understand it, you're like, oh my gosh, that makes so
much sense. So I'm sitting across from Elena and Grant
right here, right in front of me. And I'm like,
I look at Elena like, what the heck is he
talking about? And she goes, I don't know. And she says,
here's the thing, I built something. This changed my whole life. Okay,

(55:44):
I put a fund together. I don't know if anybody
here has ultimately ever going to do a fund. I
know these guys do all sorts of big things. Grant
and their team with, um, Ryan Secco and their fund
bigger than I will be for a long, long time.
But the inspiration of drafting behind somebody, right. Think about like,
Lance Armstrong. How did Lance and all these people that
are winning these bike races, how are they winning? Are
they at the front of the pack all the time?

(56:06):
Where are they? They're drafting behind the leader. And so
Grant says to me, he goes, I'm going to give
you one of these moments where you can just draft
right behind me. I'm going to give you one of
these moments in your life that if you do what
I tell you to do and you just draft behind me,
you'll become a billionaire. And I'm like, bro, I don't
have my pen and paper. What did it tell me?

(56:27):
So he says the 99% of people, the reason they
don't buy from you. Now, this may or may not
help you. I hope it does. The 99% of people
that don't buy from you, is it because they don't
trust you, or is it because they don't trust themselves?
Now I'm in real estate. Okay. So if I tell somebody, hey,
I have a $5,000 course on how to buy real estate.

(56:50):
What does that tell that person to do? It tells them,
buy a course, do the work right. He says, I'm
going to create business partnerships with people that I actually
joint venture with them. I do all sorts of things.
But let's put that aside. This is what you guys
are doing. You guys are doing incredible things. Joint. But
like the schedule that your joint venture thing that got
you gave me chills when you said that was freaking amazing,

(57:11):
Grant says. I built a fund where I give people
the ability to just invest with me in my deals.
I find the deal, I run the deal, I do
the thing. And he goes, all of a sudden I
opened up my world to my 99% of people who
don't believe in themselves, but they believe in me and
they invested in me. And that is ultimately how I
became a billionaire in multifamily real estate. And my net

(57:33):
worth at the time was one fifth of what it
is today. And because of that one piece of advice
and drafting behind Grant and what he said and what
he was doing, that literally, I haven't annexed my net
worth yet, but I have five x my net worth
from that one piece of advice. I went home immediately.
I called my partner, Josiah said, we're putting a fund
together because we're going after the 99% of people that

(57:54):
we're not even tapping into. Opening up your mind, being
in rooms like this. Will anybody take notes today? You're like,
if I implement this one thing, I'll make an extra
million dollars a year. Anybody? Yeah. You are in the
right freaking place on a Saturday. Bunch of lunatics in
here learning on a Saturday. It's the only place I
want to be. And so I want to draft behind

(58:15):
people like Brandon and like Grant that have these ideas.
They're leading the pack. They've done the thing. They've won
the tour de France. You've. You've made an exit. I haven't,
so I want to draft behind people like you instead
of trying to fight against the wind. Go uphill. I
want to draft and follow somebody else's momentum. And that's
what being in rooms like this meant for me. That's
what meant. That's what it meant to be around Grant

(58:35):
and ideas that these guys have, that give me one
little nugget that changed my entire life, as long as
I implemented it. And shout out to Grant, I brought
I want to tell that story. Since Grant you're texting Grant.
Grant will just that one piece of advice because I
implemented it. I spend the time around him. It will
make me over $1 billion in my life. Incredible stuff.
Same thing with.

S1 (58:55):
You. And I think, yeah, I mean, people ask me
all the time when I first partnered with Grant, they're like,
why'd you partner with Grant? You were already unbelievably successful.
And I'm like, because exactly what you said. I heard
Grant say like three things during Grocon and the real
estate summit, and I had already owned like $50 million
of real estate. And I thought, well, I know about

(59:16):
real estate. He said one thing in the real estate summit,
and I was sitting there and I just, I he
literally he says it and I go like that. And
I looked at Natalie and then he stops and he
looks at me. He goes, what, you don't agree? Oh, damn.

S3 (59:29):
In front of the whole audience.

S1 (59:30):
250 people in the real estate. He goes, what? You
don't agree? And I went, no, no, no, no, no,
I just realized how much of a dumbass I am.
And then he started laughing. And that's what he that
connected he and I. Because later he circled around and
because he asked me, well, why? Why are you thinking
you're a dumbass? I said, because I've been doing 100%

(59:52):
the direct opposite, thinking I was doing it right. And
I just realized, had I done what you just said,
I'd had five times the real estate portfolio. And he goes, yeah.
And I'm like, yep. And then he circled around. He
circled around. And he's like that really? He said, like,
I appreciate you being vulnerable and saying that in front
of everybody because you are really super successful. And for

(01:00:15):
you to admit that to everybody in the room? Most
people wouldn't admit it. They'd just keep their head down
and keep their mouth shut, of course. But it was
such a huge like boom right in my face that
I literally was like, Look at Natalie. And he stops midstream.
He's like, you disagree with me? And I'm like, no,
not at all. I just realized for the first time,
sitting here, I am a complete dumbass. And it broke

(01:00:39):
the whole room up, right? Everybody started laughing and everything else.
It's okay to have those moments, because those are the
moments where you show your vulnerability to like your team.
All of you go in, you want to be all
that to the team. Sometimes when you're sometimes it's okay
to show your team. I have no idea. Frick. I mean,
anybody with a great idea and it sticks presents it
to me and we try and it sticks. I'm going

(01:00:59):
to do a spot bonus of a thousand bucks. You
just you push all your team down instead of get
the best of them coming out. And then when you
explore how much greatness is in a human being, and
they explore how much create they can put into themselves,
and that's really what he uses. A word that I
will tell you. The reason our personal, professional and financial
goal planning works is because out of tens of thousands,

(01:01:21):
if not 100,000 human beings over 22 years, when we
ask people, has anybody ever sat down and taught you
how to set your targets personally, professionally and financially to
win so you can win when the business wins and
the business wins when you win, and you can accomplish
the things that are important to you 99% of the time,
people look at you and say, nope, no one's ever.
I mean, I didn't even know. The saddest thing is

(01:01:44):
that most people are taught they don't have the power
to create. They're taught all our life growing up to
sit and be told what to do. When you give
somebody the, the, the blessing of being able to create,
you watch how much people will create. And that's when
you get to sit back, get yourself in the ether
and go, that is more fun than anything else we've

(01:02:05):
ever done. Pace man, I admire you so much, dude.
I appreciate you spending time with us. Thank you.