Midwest Dreams to Real Estate Mogul with Mike Simmons

Episode Transcript
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(00:00):
This show is sponsored by dn tenInsurance Services, helping businesses get the right
insurance for all their insurance needs.Visit dn ten dot io to get a
quote dn ten dot io and remember, when you buy an insurance policy from
Denten, you're giving back on aglobal scale. Hello all, my entrepreneurs

(00:22):
and business leaders, and welcome tothe Michael Esposito Show, where I interview
titans of industry in order to inform, educate and inspire you to be great.
My guest today has shared the stagewith Gary Vanderchuk, Ryan Sarhant,
Joko Willink, Russell Branson or Brunson, Russell Brunson, Walter Bond, Andy

(00:47):
Frizzella, and Tom Ferry, amongothers. As the owner of a successful
real estate investing company and also apartner in one of the country's largest real
estate mentorship master companies, he specializesin helping entrepreneurs create systems, processes,
and automations that allow them to workon their business and not be a slave

(01:11):
to it. He has personally workedwith hundreds of entrepreneurs to help them optimize
and grow their businesses. Additionally,he is the producer and host of his
own online show and has conducted oversix hundred interviews with entrepreneurs who run six,
seven and eight figure businesses. Heis a husband and father of two

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daughters and one son. Residing inMichigan. He's always looking for a reason
to escape the cold weather and getto the beach. Please welcome my guest,
Mike Simmons. Welcome Mike. Thanksfor having me. I appreciate it.
Wow, that was a nice read. I appreciate that that's my bio,
But I was like, this guycould be interesting. Let's check it

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out. I pride myself in readinga good bio, especially after doing a
jog to get my water and gettingthis first time and first read, I
was just like, all right,I'm going to do a cold read out
of breath. Let's go listen.That is a skill that I know how
it goes, and it's not easyto do. So well done. It's

(02:20):
a first time for me. Butit was a nice challenge. And we
were actually just talking about that beforewe went on air here about challenging ourselves
when doing podcasts. So I wouldlove to dive into your backstory and where
you started and everything, but hey, you know, we're two podcasts hosts
kind of getting on here, whynot kind of break the ice about podcasting

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a little bit. You know whatinspired you to start a podcast? Well,
what inspired me was I'm a bigconsumer of podcasts, and before podcasts,
websites sometimes would upload audio and Iwould actually download like MP three's and
you know avis and wave files andlisten to them. So I love that

(03:06):
medium. But the thing that reallypushed me was when I started off in
real estate. I shared with youthat I'm an introvert before we got started
on this. Not that I don'tenjoy these interviews. I'm good one on
one. I'm sort of an introvertwhen it comes to dinner parties and things
like that. They're stressful. SoI would go to real estate meetups and
local gatherings in my community to tryto figure out this whole real estate thing

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before I had started. And Iwould go to them and I would find
myself sitting in the corner. Mywife would come with me, because she
was my partner in real estate backthen, and she would come with me
and we would end up just hangingout together. And I had questions,
but I was too shy to askthem, and I thought they're dumb questions.
I don't want to waste anybody's time, and I was sort of self
conscious about how beginner level the questionswere. And it took me a long

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time to get my business up andrunning because I just was too nervous to
ask questions of people that had moreexperience. And so starting my podcast was
really twofold number one. I trulybelieve there's people out there like me that
want to do something and they struggleto find the information because they just don't
love going to meetups and meeting strangersand things. So I wanted to be

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able to share information with people,give them that outlet, but also to
be perfectly transparent. I wanted toAt the time, I was trying to
raise money for ideals and raise moneyfor real estate, and I thought,
what a better way to create credibilityand have that platform to start reaching out
and raising money for real estate transactions. So that's why I started it.
The reason I continued it was itbecame not about raising money very quickly,

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because I was able to do thateven easier outside of my podcast. But
I started meeting really interesting people andlearning from them, and sometimes, you
know, I've had people on mypodcast that would in a billion years wouldn't
get on the phone just to talkto me, right, They're too busy,
they have too much going on.But to be interviewed they will.

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It's sort of a hack to getin front of really real interesting, high
level people and kind of learn andget you know, knowledge and learning from
them without you know, trying toget them to sit out for coffee.
Like you know how many times Isaid, hey, let's have coffee.
I want to pick your brains.Like you don't want to hear that again,
right, So you get these peopleon that you could ever talk to
you otherwise. And so it becamea little bit about that I've really made

(05:17):
a lot of money and a lotof friends and grown quite a bit just
from conversations that I've had with peoplethat I never would have talked to you
otherwise. It's so cool because that'sso true about the I love that you
call that a hack to get infront of some of these people, because
it is true. There's so manypeople that I wanted to meet that you
know, if I reached out tothem and said can we grab a cup

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of coffee, they'd be like,I don't think I'd get a response.
Yeah, the other the other coolpart about this like so called hack is
yeah, you're going through their intermediaryof their VA or their assistant or their
PR agency. But all of thosepeople that I just listed have an interest
in booking their boss or their clienton our show, and so we get

(06:03):
the meeting with them without even trying, which is really cool. And you
know it goes to you know whyI started this podcast too, and very
similar to you and that, Likefor me, it was I'm an extrovert
and you know, I show upto a party, I'm a ball of
energy. I get energy from beingaround people, and so for me,

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it was all about like meeting peoplelike yourself and learning as much as I
can from them. So when Iwhen I started it, that's what it
was about for me, and whatI ended up finding out was exactly what
you just said, was like Icould learn so much from these people that
I more than likely would have nevergot this knowledge from. And then now
by putting it, you know,putting them in front of a mike,

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putting me in front of a micand recording it, I can share it
with people and create a community aroundit, which is really really awesome.
You know, I kind of wantto just stay here for a second because
you mentioned something you said, youknow, as an introvert, you were
afraid of that asking dumb questions.And I mean even as an extrovert,
I'm afraid of asking dumb questions.And I think that you know, our

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listenership is full of entrepreneurs and businessleaders and community leaders, and I know
that they may experience some of thatas well of you know, being in
front of a board or being infront of a group, and they want
to make sure that you know thatthey are the expert in the room.
And sometimes we have to have that, we have to have portray that.

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But how do we ask questions thatsometimes may make us feel like it's a
dumb question? And how do youovercome that? Yeah? I think sometimes
well they say there are no dumbquestions. I think we know better.
Sometimes there are dumb questions. Butthe questions that you think are dumb when
you're like maybe trying to launch abusiness or do something that you've never done,

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that that makes you, you know, feel nervous. The reality is,
after all these years of having myown business and coaching people and mentorships
and all that stuff, the questionsthat I thought were dumb were the exact
questions everyone asks, right, everyonehas, and in different industries and reels,
have that you think are dumb andyou're nervous to ask. Have thousands

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of times of whoever you're about,they've heard it before. It seemed dumb
to them. It seems like,Okay, here's the questions that I always
get, and so they're usually notdumb. But here's the bottom line.
And I wish I would have hadthis perspective early on, even if they
were dumb. What's worse the painof not knowing and staying status quo in

(08:31):
my current situation, or feeling alittle bit dumb for the question that I
ask. Like, until the painof your status becomes greater than the pain
or the fear of sounding stupid,you're going to be stuck. So if
you don't want to ask, don'task. And that means you're comfortable enough.
You don't really have a lot ofdrive to learn or to grow or

(08:52):
to get better. But as soonas you have enough drive, uncomfortable enough,
no matter what it is, youwant to lose weight. Once you
become uncomfortable enough with your body tostart doing something or asking a fitness person
or a dietician questions that maybe youthink are dumb or embarrassing, until the
pain of the way you look andfeel is greater than the pain of putting

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yourself out there. You're going tobe stuck with how you look and feel.
And if you're in a job thatyou don't like and you want to
you want to start something else onthe side, or you want to grow
something until the pain of that jobbecomes great enough. And I'll tell you
this, I actually decided that Iwanted to start my own business in real
estate back in two thousand and three. I didn't buy my first house in

(09:35):
a real estate capacity. You know, I owned a home, but like
I didn't buy an investment property untiltwo thousand and eight. That's five years.
So what happened during those five yearsdoubt you know, being afraid of
failure, being too comfortable in thejob that I had, the corporate position
that paid well, I just wasn'tit wasn't painful enough because I could pay

(09:56):
my bills, I could go onvacation, and until it became painful enough
for me to actually put myself outthere and start making offers on properties for
investment purposes. I got stuck forfive years, and I you know,
I told myself I was educating myself, which really was paralysis analysis. I
was reading and consuming, but Iwasn't taking action on anything. I mean,

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how many people do you know,Michael, that they get a great
book and they read it and they'relike, oh, this is a great
book, and they put it downand then they go find the next great
book that they can read, butthey don't really implement what was in that
book. Right, I was doingthat like crazy. I was consuming but
not acting on any of it.And I did that for five years.
And we can get into it andgo down this rabbit hole. But the

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way I was raised had a lotto do with being held back from success
and ultimately was the reason I wasable to break through that. You know,
it kind of played it kind ofworked on both sides of it.
So and sometimes the upbringing does that, you know, we get things that
get put in our head, orthat we put in our head or whatever

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our environment growing up that either makeus more risk takers or they make us
more conservative and not wanting to takerisks. So that has a huge impact
too. Right, we have toI always use the analogy that everyone has
to if you want to do something, achieve something that you previously haven't been
able to, you have to beable to escape the gravitational pull of your

(11:20):
background, right, And so mybackground was, you know, my parents
were an automotive were from Michigan,right the motor city. Everyone sort of
had this union job and you know, you work, you get up early,
you work late, and that wasall I knew, and so well
into my twenties and thirties, that'swhat I thought was the only playbook for
life. You just work hard ata union kind of place and job security.

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I'm doing air quotes if people aren'tseeing this, and that's all I
knew. So I had this thisgravitational poll that was pulling me back down
to earth, and it was reallyhard for me to get the thrust to
get out of that gravitational poll andhit orbit where everything seems possible. I
just wasn't raised that way, andthey weren't trying. They didn't tell me
I couldn't do things. But everythingI had seen all my experiences growing up

(12:09):
was nobody has other people run businesses. We go to work, We show
up at six am. We staythere until six pm. We work on
the weekends. If our job allowsus to get extra hours, you work
Saturdays and Sundays. Like that's howpeople. That's success, and that's all
I knew for a long time.So it took me a while to get

(12:31):
out of that. Have you everheard of Eric Thomas. Yeah, he's
local to me. Well he was. He doesn't live in Michigan anymore,
but yeah, I love Eric dude. I listened to Eric Thomas often in
the mornings, and it's sort ofmy life hack for getting myself in the
right frame of mind to go outand get after it, because we can

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go down this rabbit hole too.But I am not a miracle morning person.
I don't subscribe to the miracle morning. I know it works for other
people. If I get up atfour am, five am, six am,
I am really irritable and in abad frame of mind for the next
six hours. So I pride myself. And one of the perks of having
some success, whatever you consider successfinancially, is I don't set an alarm.

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I don't wake up to an alarm. I woke up to an alarm
for twenty years in my you know, nine to five career. I don't
wake up to an alarm. Iwake up when I wake up, right,
And then you know, me andmy wife have a routine where we
have coffee every morning because she's nowretired, we have coffee every morning for
and that's, by the way,that's a whole episode in itself. Like

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why that's critical for a marriage,I can't even begin to tell you.
But I'm an evangelist for that.But we have that coffee time where we
talk and then I get started.My assistant knows I do not schedule any
appointments, meetings, interviews before eleveno'clock just doesn't happen. Do not do
it. It's a mandate, Sothat that's just how I do it.
Man, I don't wake up toan alarm, And to me, that

(14:03):
is how I know I'm successful becauseI don't have an alarm telling me to
get up. Awesome. We're goingto talk more about that right now,
but I just want to kind ofjust go back to this whole idea of
whether questions are dumb or not.And I like your philosophy on this and
that if if we don't ask thequestion, then we're going to be stuck
where we're at. And I havea suggestion in all of this as well,

(14:24):
in that sometimes you're in a conference, you're in a room, and
it could feel embarrassing, it couldfeel very hard to ask this question.
And so my suggestion to anybody who'sfeeling this way, because you know,
not everybody is willing to just pushthemselves and say, you know what,
give me the microphone. I wantto ask the question to this person on
the panel or whatever it is,right, my suggestion is, you know,

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go to them afterwards, go upto them afterwards, get their email,
get somebody's email there, and askthe question, or ask the question
of somebody close by to you.More than likely somebody that's around you might
actually know the answer that you're lookingfor, or might know somebody who knows
the answer. But back to yourpoint and what you just said there is
that like, if if you don'thave enough pain driving you and driving this

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quest that you're on, then you'renever going to ask a question, You're
never going to take the action onit. And we're going to definitely dive
into your story of how it tookabout five years till you really invested in
property. But I want to stayhere with this miracle morning idea because it
is a big thing on social media. It is a big thing. You

(15:31):
know, everybody's looking for a littledifferent than New Life Hack and everything.
And actually what you said with notwaking up to an alarm clock resonates with
me because I don't wake up withan alarm clock either. So it's kind
of cool to meet another person that'sweird like me. And people are like,
they don't understand that, and I'mwith you, like, I want.
I want to wake up when mybody says it's time to wake up.

(15:52):
Now. I do wake up anywherebetween four thirty and six o'clock,
depending on the way my night goesand what I need. Yeah, yeah,
I know. Well, I alsohave young children, and we got
to bed really early, so there'shave to be a home invasion for me
to get up at four thirty.I don't care it is. It is
incredible. So I have young children. I have. My daughter is Denise

(16:15):
and Tenley. That's who dn tenis named after our insurance company. The
Denise is eight years old and Tenley'ssix years old. So this has been
a routine that we've been in forquite some time. And what I why
I say, if waking up atfour thirty or five o'clock is amazing,
is because nobody else is awake andI have time alone to myself. I'm

(16:36):
not I don't really know what themiracle mourning is, but I'm sure it
has to do with waking up superearly and doing some exercising and journaling and
meditating and all that other stuff whichI speak about in other podcasts, which
is wonderful. I'm more interested inthis two hour coffee with your wife because
that is what I search for withmy wife, if I can get,

(16:56):
like literally, this morning, mywife and I we're catching our five or
ten minutes together of coffee of her. You know, she's she's a teacher,
so she's out the door early.I take the kids to school,
and so I actually can hang outa little bit longer. So I'm looking
to have this like little time alonewith her to talk. And one of
our daughters came up and was startsasking questions and I said, I said,

(17:17):
Denise, it was Denise. Isaid, Denise, Mom and I
are trying to plan a surprise foryou, so please go away. And
of course she's like, well,what's the surprise? I want? To
know. I'm like, just Ijust want five minutes alone with mom so
we could just talk about like what'sgoing on today, what's going on tomorrow.
So I would love the life hacksince we're on hacks today, the
life hack on this two hours alonewith your wife and spending that time,

(17:41):
I would love to. I've actuallythought about writing a book about this,
that's how important I think it is. But before I do that, let
me just jump back for one second. Yeah, please, you get up
at four, nobody's awake. It'sbeautiful time in your life. I get
that. I get I go tobed at like one p thirty two.
No, I don't, and solike eleven two am, I'm alone.

(18:02):
And honestly I work sometimes at thattime of night because it's alone. That's
the time that I feel most atpeace and where I get that sort of
serenity that most people get in themorning. So it's just like my clock
is just adjusted. Like I don'tgo to bed at nine and wake up
at four. I go to bedat two and wake up at eight.
Right, It's like it's just everythinggot adjusted. But that's my two minute
defense of that. No, no'sand just real quick, just because you

(18:26):
don't have to defend it, youknow. I want to make sure that
everybody knows this because when we're talkingabout this, there's no right or wrong
way. And this is for ouraudience, for our listeners here, there's
no right or wrong way on howyou manage your life. I think the
most important thing, which which doeshave a right and wrong, is that
you're getting sleep. You know,you want to get six to eight hours
of sleep, and that's the onlyway you're going to be productive and just

(18:48):
and then let's just jump back intothis for you. But I remember hearing
about this billionaire who like pretty muchlives on a yacht and and because he
works in the different markets, hedoesn't wake up till a leven o'clock New
York time, and it's because he'sinto different markets. And he's up till
two three o'clock in the morning becausehe's got to be with different markets.
So there's no right or wrong timeto wake up or go to bed.

(19:11):
Just make sure that you're getting sixto eight hours, is what I want
to make sure one hundred percent.Yeah, I think the people are celebrated
who wake up at five in themorning, and if you sleep till nine
or ten. It's like you're lazy, right, It's just like no,
it's just it's just how you shiftand how you kind of clock that time.
Right. So yeah, I valuemy at night time. A lot
of people value their morning time.But it's all the same. I agree

(19:33):
with you all kidding aside, thissleep is super important, right, So
I tend to get my seven sevenand a half hours a night, So
yeah, it's all good. Ijust I get defensive of my late night
time. I get it. Butthe coffee time super important. So I'll
be super transparent here. I havebeen divorced, and so I had the

(19:56):
benefit. The silver lining of havingsome you know, colossal issue like that
in your life is you can goback and like assess what happened. And
one of the thing that I thinkhappens with a lot of people, a
lot of married couples, is theydon't communicate enough. They especially like in
your world, you have two youngdaughters, right to both daughters, and

(20:19):
so you have a lot going on, right, school and events and maybe
sports and friends and all this stuff, and so couples tend to talk about
what they have to get done andhow they're going to get it done and
divide and conquer. Are you goingto pick up? And then I'll drop
off? And then what are yougonna be home? I need you to
cover there's parent teacher conference. It'sright, and it becomes you're this business

(20:40):
that's trying to figure out how toget things done effectively. What gets lost
is actual communication about things that youdon't have to get done right, not
about utilitarian things. My wife redan article years ago that said most married
couples only talk about things that youknow, not things that have to get

(21:00):
done. But just like conversation that'smeaningful, fifteen minutes a week is all
they get. And there's no wonderwhy people grow apart and why they don't
have anything to talk about when theirkids grow up or get older. It's
like we have nothing, and theyget divorced. And so I am convinced
that regular communication with your spouse aboutwhat you can't count the time where you're

(21:22):
talking about who's gonna pick up who, and why you're gonna be home for
this, and don't forget we havethis thing tonight, All that crap aside.
After all that, that time thatyou talk is critical to a successful
marriage. I know it is,and so we have the benefit of our
kids are older, and my wife'sretired and I work for myself, so
we can talk for two hours inthe morning. I get everyone can't do
that. I have friends who havetime at night when the kids go to

(21:45):
bed. That's the time you cando it, especially if you have young
kids. Hopefully they're embedded a reasonabletime because they need that sleep. I
have friends who don't like coffee,Like we literally drink coffee. We turn
music on, so there's no likevisual stimulation that we're being drawn to.
There's music on eighties because we're older, and we just talk. And Man,
if you sit there with your spousefor an hour, hour and a

(22:07):
half, you'll talk surface things.Eventually you will get to deeper stuff,
hopes and dreams, like things thatyou know you're happy about, things that
you're not happy about. You'll getto really deep things, and you'll get
to a much deeper understanding of yourspouse or your significant other if you do
that. If you don't, you'rerunning the risk of just getting through the

(22:29):
day and you end up being partners, you know, in terms of like
we're partners in this organization we calla family this business that we call a
family, and we're trying to makesure that all the trains leave on time,
but we're not really getting to knoweach other and growing together. And
so I can't even stress enough.Like I said, I have friends who
don't like coffee, and so theygo for walks. They go for you
know, half an hour forty fiveminute walk every night, no electronics,

(22:52):
and they just talk. And Iguarantee you if you start doing this,
well, what are we going totalk about for an hour and a half.
That's ridiculous. Yes, it willget to a point where maybe you
run out of things. And guesswhat, when you run out of the
things that are already buzzing around yourhead weekends, we just talk and man,
you will unload everything in the topof your brain, the middle and
the deep stuff will all come outeventually, right eventually. And I think

(23:18):
it's critical. I think people whodon't do that are missing out on a
huge opportunity and they're running the riskof sort of just kind of communicating what's
absolutely necessary and never really having Andthat's how people go I didn't even know
you felt that way, you know, Or this is the worst thing.
This is the thing I hear frompeople that blows my mind. Could be
could be an in law, couldbe a friend. You'll be talking to

(23:40):
him about something in their marriage andthey'll say, oh, my husband whatever,
and they'll go, well, whatdoes he think about that? And
they'll go, I don't know.This is a major thing in your marriage,
and you don't even know what theythink about it, Like, you
haven't even asked them their thoughts onthis thing. You're just speculating what they
think, but you haven't asked them, Like, are you kidding me?
So you have to have those Youhave to get past the surface level stuff

(24:03):
if you really want to have areal, real understanding. And so there's
so much conflict avoidance that goes onwhen you regularly communicate. I just can't
even stress enough. It's it's thereason my marriage is super strong, and
it's probably the reason why a lotof marriages fail. It's just not communicating.
They're not communicating right. And italso goes into teams. I mean,

(24:23):
you know, when you're thinking aboutthis and I want to stay on
a families thing for a second here, but the same thing with teams,
like when you're managing a team,very similar to what you were just saying.
I was just thinking about it withbeing an employee in the corporate world
like yourself. It's like, youknow, the manager comes in and it's
like, here's the numbers. It'slike you said, like we're just managing
the trains going in and out asa station. But you don't feel like

(24:45):
they care about you. And thereason why you don't feel like they care
about you, like they'll say,like, you know, I care about
you, I want to help youin your career, I want to help
you earn more money. But youdon't feel that way because they don't get
deeper with you. They don't learnabout you. They don't learn about your
dreams, your ambitions and all thatother stuff. And I think when you
know, we're right now in aplace in society where it's hard to hire

(25:06):
people, it's hard to find peopleto work for companies. And I think
the big and we know that thebig reason is because of company culture.
You know, the millennials and genzers are seeing that company culture is very
are feeling that company culture is veryimportant to them and what is company culture?
But you know, I think thatthat's the other thing that is confused

(25:26):
in all of this and that companyculture is not just saying, hey,
these are our goals, this ishow we're going to help you earn money,
but it's also what you're talking aboutthat you do with your wife.
It's digging deeper, going to adeeper level. And I am interested in
I don't know exactly the size ofyour team. I'm very interested in your
company culture and if if you're ableto get that personal with them, great

(25:49):
question. We have built in oncea week for half an hour, we
meet individually. Not not necessarily meevery time now, but my COO meets
individually with everybody and the team.There's no agenda, and it's not a
business meeting. It's a half anhour. Well, we can talk about
anything. You can tell me aboutyour home life, you can tell me

(26:10):
about your kids play that they justwere. It's completely unscripted, and actually
we sort of don't We don't sayyou can't talk about work if that's truly
what's on your mind, but wediscourage it being a work conversation. You
just want to have a human conversation. And I actually wrote a book a
few years ago called Level Jumping,and part one of the chapters was on
company culture. And I talk aboutin the book something called debits and credits

(26:37):
in relationships, and this goes forthis is for personal relationships, and it's
certainly for work relationships. And whatit is is like, I'm sitting down
with you, Michael. You know, maybe it's just before a meeting,
right, we both get their earlyphysical meeting, right, we both get
there early, and we just startchatting and it's like, well, you
know, what would you do thisweekend? Right, typical talk, and
you go, well, you know, we went, I went skiing with
my son and we had a greattime. And next week we're going to

(27:00):
go you know, snowmobiling or whatever. And I'm like, that's awesome,
it's great. And then at theend of the week, I go,
hey, Michael, have fun Snowmollbyon this weekend with your son. That
should be a good time. Right, that's a credit. Right, I'm
building a relationship. I'm connecting withyou in a human way. Now in
a corporation, there could be atime in a month or two months where

(27:22):
maybe we have a conversation that isn'tas comfortable. It's like, hey,
Michael, I told you to getthat thing to me, and you didn't
get it, and you know nowthis person, you know, it's like,
so we have to have this kindof a conversation that's a little bit
more disciplinary, or maybe it's alittle more uncomfortable. Well, if I
have never shown interest in you,I've never shown up at your desk and
said how are you today? Youknow, it's just all about you didn't
get me this. You didn't dothat for me. You didn't do that

(27:42):
for me. You have all thesedebits coming out of the relationship account and
no credits, right, and sowe're just in the negative all the time.
You think of me as a jerk. I only approach you when I'm
mad about something or need something fromyou. But if I balance that with
truly getting to know you and care, and I know your kids' names,
and you know we have these andI can say, hey, how was

(28:03):
you know? How was your daughter'splay this weekend? Right? She had
one last weekend? You said youwere going to go. That's the credit.
Right. And so in relationships,even with your wife, right,
your kids, or whatever it is, if it's always just what you don't
like, is something going wrong,some argument? You know, clean your
room, do this? Why didn'tyou do the dishes, how come you'll
get into the negative to the pointthat the relationship is ruined. Right,

(28:26):
you have to balance that out,and so I call them debits and credits.
But you have to show true interestin your team and if you want
them to truly care about you andwhat you want from them and the job.
It's not just about I mean,studies have shown now it's not about
just giving someone a raise that's notultimately going to make them happy. It
don't make them happy that day,and maybe for a few more days a

(28:47):
week, but after a week ortwo or a month, whatever raise you
gave them is just normal. That'sstatus quo. That's not even a benefit
anymore. I'm just that's what Iexpect from you, right until I get
the next raise. Well, moneycan be like sugar sometimes, right,
Sugar will give you a short highand a burst of energy and then it's
just like you come down from it. Money does the same thing. So

(29:07):
if money isn't the ultimate motivator,what is It's company culture? And I
think company culture you asked, whatis it? My definition, just like
the simple definition, your company cultureis your company's personality. And if you
don't pay attention or think that yourcompany has any culture. Chances are your
company has a bad culture and ithas a bad personality and people don't love

(29:30):
being there. It's like anything elsein your life. If you don't focus
on it, it's probably not goingto go really, really well. And
so you know people who say,oh, company culture, that's guess what.
I bet they have a turnstyle ofpeople coming in and out, hires
and fires, and people who arethere probably are only there until they can
find a better job. You know, you're a placeholder for them until they

(29:52):
can find a better job. Ihave people in my company that have worked
me for years that you know,I jokingly say, maybe I'm not joking
that they would hide bodies for me, like I know they would because they
love working there. They know Icare. I've demonstrated that I care.
You know. For example, wehad someone who used to answer phones for
us, and in my company,there's a lot of outbound marketing, and

(30:14):
so that generates a lot of inboundcalls. Call volumes peak between one and
four for the most part in myin my industry, well, I had
my lead call person or lead phoneperson had to leave work every day at
three because she had a parent whoneeded therapy, physical therapy, and she
was the only sibling. She wasthe there was no spouse involved, like

(30:37):
she was his only way to getto this physical therapy. And she's like,
I know this is in the middleof our day, but I'm responsible.
I have to take my dad tophysical therapy. And we were like,
then do it, take them tophysical therapy. We'll figure it out,
we'll work around, we'll hire andkind of schedule in a way that
makes that possible. But go aheadand do that. Be there for your

(30:57):
dad. Guess who would have doneanything for us, because we demonstrated that
we were we were about more thanjust the bottom line and just efficiency,
right, We're about people too,Like we need people who love us,
who are passionate about us, andwho believe that we care about them.

(31:18):
And you do that with your team, those kinds of things. And by
the way, she wasn't looking forraises, like she she never she got
raises, she never asked for one, because she just knew we were giving
her something that was more valuable toher than money. And if you can
find the things that make people tick, like what is it that's most important

(31:38):
to the people on your team andhelp facilitate them getting that forget about it
game over. They'll do anything foryou. Yeah, And it's so funny
because so many managers and this isan experience. This is that's what I'm
speaking to here is not just speakingblanketly. Here is that it's like,
oh, family comes first. Familycomes first, and then you're like,

(31:59):
I got to cut out early topick up my kids from school, and
are like, you got to getsomebody else to do that? What I
thought family came first, you know. And I literally had a manager say
that he goes, that's that's nota problem that I want to hear about.
Like that was like kind of moreof his wording was that's not a
problem that I want to hear about. And I was like, man,
this is just not the right placefor me. Well, it looks good

(32:20):
on powerpoints to the team when you'redoing an all you know, whole company
presentation or something, but in actualpractice, people don't know what it means,
especially if they don't have a family, like forget about it. But
even people who do have families sometimessell themselves to the company. And it's
like I worked in automotive automotive youknow, if we make cars and that's
all great, really tough industry,there's a lot of unhappy people. There's
a lot of people who really don'thave good family lives, and it's because

(32:45):
they become a slave. Like theythey'll do anything to get the next promotion,
to impress their boss, whatever itis, to the to the at
the expense of their family, andso you know, end up they end
up having bad marriages. But yeah, it's tough to it's tough to practice
sometimes when when you can see ithaving an impact on your bottom line.
You know, sometimes you have tobe creative as as a boss and owner

(33:07):
or whatever leader, you have tobe creative to try to figure out how
to facilitate what people really want.And hey, the good news is they
don't really usually want money. Imean, they do need money to survive
and enough to be comfortable, butit's not the next raise. That's not
really what people want that Sometimes theywant autonomy. We see that now right
in the world, everyone BUTDDY wantsto work from home. They want a
time, they want to be challenged, they want to be valued, right,

(33:29):
they want to feel like they're doinggood in the world. Those things
are worth more than money to mostpeople nowadays, when in the eighties maybe
not so much. Maybe it wasabout the money. I don't know,
but I don't think it is anymore. Yeah, And another thing that you
know, so Lisa Bayou was talkingabout this and of course that I was
taking and something that she brought upthat I thought was really good, and

(33:50):
you mentioned this about personality is thecompany culture is the personality is being upfront
about your company culture. And Iactually commend her for this in that she
said, you know, our companyculture is if you're looking for a nine
to five, this isn't the rightplace. You know. She's a you
know, be ready for emails andphone calls from me at like seven o'clock,
eight o'clock at night. And Ithink that that's so important to be

(34:12):
upfront with your team too. Soit's like we go back to the sleep
thing, right, Like, there'sno right or wrong company culture, there's
no right or wrong company personality.It's really about are you being truthful with
your team? Are you letting themknow that, Hey, look, you
know we're we're a cutthroat company,and you know we want you out of
bed. When we say you're outof get out of bed, you know,
and we want you doing X,Y and Z, and we don't

(34:34):
care whether you can get your kidsoff the bus or not. Okay,
at least I know that going intothis, and maybe you know at the
time, I'm single and I'm young, and I'm ready to just go ahead.
And I mean to your point though, it's like how long? How
long can you do something like thatfor? But I just want to go
back to just making sure that youare upfront and honest about your company culture.
And I just want to add onemore thing to that, because I

(34:55):
do want to go into your backgroundin the auto industry in Michigan, because
I asked you about ET for areason, and I'm working on I'm always
hiring, you know, a dentten. We're always hiring, We're always
looking for new salespeople. And I'mmentoring a new salesperson and I was talking
to her about her schedule and thisdoesn't work for everybody, right, Like

(35:16):
I have somebody on a service end. This isn't going to work for her
because she needs to answer calls,she needs to service at certain times.
There is certain time blocking that we'vetalked about working on for her. But
I understand that in the sales world, and I'm saying this intentionally, in
a sales world, there's a littlebit more flexibility. So this doesn't always
work in every circumstance, but thisis the point that we're getting at.
And what you're talking about here isthat you know, she she's coming from

(35:38):
the service industry to where she dideverything at home. She did the laundry,
she created the meals, she gotthe kids off the bus, she
cleans the house, she does allof the stuff that someone who is has
the time to do it at homeworking from home, can do. And
so she's like, you know,this new job is going to be a
big change in our lives and Idon't know how we're going to be able

(35:59):
to do it. And she's stressingabout it, and so I said to
her, I said, hey,look, you know, what are some
of the things that you know,of course your husband can pick up great,
and then what are the things thatyou have to do? And she's
like, I got to do thelaundry, Like I'm not going to let
him mess that up. It's like, okay, cool, so you're doing
the laundry, I said, sowhen are you doing the laundry, and
you know, she's talking to me, looking at me like, oh,
it's my boss, and she's like, of course after hours, and I'm
like, no, no, seriously, when are you doing the laundry because

(36:22):
after hours, you could be atnetworking events. After hours, you know,
you're just cutting your teeth and sales. When I was cutting my teeth
and sales, I was at networkingevents almost three to four times a week,
and I could have been at fivetimes, but I wanted to see
my wife right. In fact,I was. I was networking so much
that I actually started I made likea pack to myself. Not that I

(36:43):
have an issue with this, butI made a pack to myself. I
was like, look, I'm nolonger drinking alcohol at networking events because I'd
be drinking every night of the week. And so I was like, that's
it. So that's it. Ionly drink club soda or Seltzer water at
networking events because of that. Youknow, that's how much I was networking.
So I said to her, Iwas like, look, you could
do the laundry during the day,you just need to block off the time
for it. So I'm not talkingabout time blocking here. So She's like,

(37:05):
really, can I really do that? I don't know how I can
do that. And I said,let's think about it this way and thinking
about this company culture here. Right, If if you don't do the laundry
for a week or two, right, all right, so there's some dirty
clothes and I'm missing a sock orsomething, right, that's fine. Right,
But after six months, if you'renot doing laundry for your family,
eventually your husband and your kids andeverybody in the house is going to be
like, you got to quit thisjob. Right. Eventually they're no longer

(37:30):
supporting your dreams and ambitions. Soyou have to find a way to have
that balance, to have that harmonybetween your job and your life and make
it work. And I think forme as an employer, that's important to
do for them. So I broughtup Eric Thomas because you were sharing your
story, your backstory on growing upin Michigan and the time, the punch

(37:53):
clock and everything. And I rememberin his book he spoke a lot about
that, and he talked about howhard it was to break out of that
cycle. And I know that somany of our business leaders, and I
reference business leaders people that are maybeworking in a in a in a corporation
or trying to climb the to theC suite. And then our business leaders
and all the different entrepreneurs out therein business and community leaders out there,

(38:16):
they may come from a background similarto this of like hey, you know,
what are you doing? Why?Why are you trying to step outside
of the mold. The mold isperfect, Like look at us, we
have we have enough money to putmeals on a table, close on your
back once once a year, vacationand a house and a roof over your
head. Why are you trying todo something different? And I'm interested in

(38:38):
how you were able to break thatmold. Yeah, so I don't know
if you know who Geno Wickman is, the eoske right, Yeah. I
interviewed him one time and I said, I use the analogy because he was
talking about entrepreneurs and I asked himif he thought entrepreneurs were made or if

(38:58):
they were born? Uh, Andso my my theory is sometimes entrepreneurs are
born entrepreneurs. But it's a lotlike here, we hear these like piano
prodigies, these kids that are fourand you set them in front of piano
and they start playing like you know, like a like a seasoned vet.
It's like they're a prodigy. Ifeel like a little bit like that.

(39:22):
I was stuck in a world thatI didn't belong in. I was a
I was a square peg in around hole. I was I was a
friction point for my boss a lotof times because I had a lot of
opinions and I thought things should bedone the way I thought they should be
done, and I just didn't fitthe mold. But I didn't know what
I didn't know what was wrong.I just knew something was wrong, and

(39:43):
I was miserable like a lot ofpeople. This doesn't make me unique.
A lot of people are miserable intheir job, right. It just it
was like when I when I startedmy real estate company and did my first
deal and saw sort of saw thelight. This is an Eric Thomas thing,
right. He said, if someoneis holding your head underwater, all

(40:05):
you can think about is oxygen.All you can think about is that.
And I felt like when I didmy first deal and made money and saw
the path, it was as ifI had been holding my breath my whole
life, and I finally broke thesurface of the water and just took in
a deep breath of oxygen for thefirst time. It was just like I

(40:25):
had been freed, right, Likethat's the best way I can describe it.
It was like, oh my god, there's a whole world that I
haven't been exposed to until now.And so for me, the pain of
working every day and that five yearsthat I talked about where I didn't take
action, I'll be honest, like, okay, so let me go back
a little bit more, because thisis good for context. I was raised

(40:47):
by a marine. My dad wasa Vietnam Vet. He saw active duty
in the military during Vietnam, theMarines, who you know, Uh,
he was on the front line.So as it that way, like he
didn't sit in an office somewhere,or he wasn't stationed in you know,
the Swiss Alps somewhere. He washe was in. He was in the

(41:08):
fighting. And so I was raisedby that guy. And there was a
couple of things that weren't There werea lot that wasn't tolerated growing up.
One thing that wasn't tolerated was fear. You absolutely could not not do something
because you were afraid. And duringthose five years as an adult, now
I'm not living at home, right, I started procrastinating and paralysis, analysis

(41:29):
and all this stuff. But whatI finally realized was, after like four
and a half years, is Iwasn't taking action because I was afraid and
I wasn't raised like that. AndI started hearing my dad's voice in my
head, and I became so disgustedwith myself and the excuses that I was
making that I had a hard timefacing myself. I just really had self

(41:52):
loathing because I was not doing somethingI knew I wanted to do it,
and I was paralyzed with fear.And for me, it wasn't fear of
losing money. It wasn't even necessarilyfear of failure. I think there's a
lot of different fears that people have. One of them is fear of loss

(42:15):
of reputation. And it wasn't likeI was some guy that everyone knew.
But I didn't want to be humiliatedby failure. I didn't because most people
who are not entrepreneurs or business ownersor whatever, especially in the automotive industry,
they mock people who step outside ofthat world. Like you said,

(42:35):
right, this is what we do, this is normal. And I didn't
want to tell people that I wasgoing to do something and then fail at
it because I knew the rest ofmy career I would be mocked for it.
And that was what was holding meback. And it wasn't until that
self loathing, that whole hearing mydad's voice, the military guy, the
marine in me say, and Isaid, what a like? I am

(42:57):
so miserable with my fear that paralyzingme. That's making me more miserable than
just screwing up and messing it up. And so I went out and did
it. And you know, thefirst deal I did wasn't perfect, but
I made money. Matter of fact, I made more money than I had
ever seen at one time in mylife, and it was only fifteen thousand.
I made fifteen thousand dollars on myfirst deal. Right. My wife
grew up poor, I grew upmiddle class, but I had never had

(43:21):
fifteen thousand dollars go into my accountfor anything at any time, and so
it was it was huge for me. But I hedged my bet. Here's
why I didn't quit my job rightaway. First of all, but even
before I did that first deal,I didn't tell anybody. My wife and
I kept our business one hundred percentsecret from everybody, including our kids.
We would tell them we were goingout to dinner doing this when we were

(43:43):
going to houses to check progress andto see, you know, what's going
on. The way that everyone foundout that I was doing real estate in
my life, my friends, myfamily, my kids, my coworkers.
Is the local newspaper, and Imean the Detroit News, not like a
town, a little town, butliterally the biggest newspaper in southeast Michigan called
me one time and they actually reachedout on Facebook and they said, Hey,

(44:07):
we're doing an article on entrepreneurs.We'd love to interview you. Are
you interested? And I said sure. They came out, took pictures of
us, interviewed us at one ofour houses, and I really thought this
was going to be a tiny paragraphon page G of some whatever, like
no one's ever going to see.Who cares. Sunday edition of the newspaper,
the largest circulation of the of theweek, front page, full color,

(44:30):
half page picture of my wife andI as house flippers. My phone
started ringing my friends, my family. It was actually kind of a really
bad thing because we felt horrible likeour friends and family didn't even know,
and we're in the paper for doingsomething that they didn't even know we were
doing. Right, That's how afraidI was of failing. Before I knew

(44:51):
I could do it. I didn'twant anyone to know. But I got
sort of outed, like in thenewspaper, like as about as big as
it could be for someone who wasn'treally famous. And you know, I
went to work and people at workstarted saying, because we were going through
layoffs at my nine to five atthe time, and people started saying,
he should get laid off, likehe's got another job, he has other
income, he should be laid off. Like. I was really fearing for

(45:13):
my job at that point. Itwas really crazy time in my life.
Luckily, the HR person and Iwas working for international company. This wasn't
a small local mom and pop shop. I was working for an international,
billion dollar company. And they calledme into HR and I was like,
this is it. I'm getting axed, and the head of HR lady said,
first of all, your job issafe, so just relax. I

(45:35):
brought you up here because I wantedto know how you're doing it. I'm
very interested in what you're doing,would love to do it too. And
I was like, this is awesome. And there were people who never forgave
me for not getting fired, Likethere were people who really thought I should
have got fired, and they juststopped talking to me like they were resentful.
So it was it was a weirdtime, but it was all fear.
Man, it was all fear,like paralyzing fear of failure and having

(45:58):
to face people and knowing that Ifailed. I couldn't. I couldn't stand
it because also failure wasn't super toleratedin my house either, right, So
I have this innate fear of afailure and and so I said, it
was what helped me back. Butthe reason it drives me is I was
taught to not give up. Iwas taught to not give into fear.

(46:19):
I was taught to take risks inlife. Usually when I was a kid.
That was in the form of physicalrisks, you know, like if
you're afraid to go on a youknow, like on a roller coaster,
Like you're going on that roller coaster, right, If you're afraid to dive
into a pool, You're diving inthe pool. It's mostly physical, but
that translated in my in my mind, translated to money too. I have
a very high risk tolerance. Whenit comes to money, I am very

(46:39):
willing to put money on the lineand take an educated risk. I have
no fear of that at all.So that that upbringing and that discipline and
that you know, I'm not youknow, fear is not tolerated kind of
an attitude. It sort of pushesme now, you know. And and
the thought of going back to thatnine to five is more painful than me

(47:00):
pushing forward and starting businesses and growingmy businesses. I never want to go
back to that life because I've comeup from the surface. Right I was
underwater, couldn't breathe. I've comeover the surface. I don't want my
head pushed under the water again.And to me, that's working for somebody
else, working a nine to fiveor whatever. To me, that equates
to having your head under the water. I just can't do it again.

(47:21):
I can certainly relate, as youcan imagine, with everything going on in
my life with starting an insurance company, and I remember that feeling same thing
of working in the nine to fiveinsurance agency and just being like I got
to get out of here. Ican't go on like this any longer.
You mentioned about your risk tolerance andyou know, I remember reading in your

(47:46):
bio about you having this this risktolerance that you just mentioned, where you're
like, look, I'll push allmy chips in middle of the table.
I got no issues with that.But then your partner, in more ways
than one, does not have thesame risk tolerance. And I'm sure so
many others experiences. I mean,my wife doesn't have the same risk tolerance

(48:07):
that I do either. You know, I'm like, let's go, let's
do it. You know, Ithink she calls it oppositional defiance. You
and I call it as risk takers. My wife was a teacher, by
the waysitioned there. You go,yep, yeah, so that's what she
calls it. So I I'm veryinterested in how you're able to and of

(48:31):
course your two hour coffees help withthis, I'm sure, but how you're
able and this may happen with partnerstoo. You might bring in financial partners
and they're not as they don't havethe same risk tolerance. But how are
you able to find that balance oflike where you're an all in kind of
person and your partner may not be. Well, I'll skip to the I'll
give you the end of the storyand then I'll get you how we got

(48:52):
there. She's not my business partneranymore. Okay, The way we got
there is we started off doing thistogether and it was great, and we
kind of divided and conquered. Andshe has much higher level of detail and
she's more detail owner. So shewas handling, you know, and getting
the insurance and all the documents andgoing to closing and all that stuff that
I really don't love. I wasin charge of getting finding properties and dealing

(49:13):
with contractors and all that. Well. We started having some success early on,
like especially in our local community.We were having uncommon success for the
few people in our community, right, and so I started to feel a
little bit like I couldn't fail.Like I really started to get this god
complex, like I'm doing this andI'm succeeding. I think I could almost

(49:35):
do any business and have this similarsuccess, which is stupid, but I
so I did. I sort ofveered out of real estate and started going
down a path of a different industry. And you know, long story short,
I lost thirty thousand dollars in avery short period of time, and
I sort of like it was thereality check I needed. It was a
slap in the face, a littlebit of you know, take me down

(49:57):
a couple of pegs. But formy wife, it was like devastating,
Right, I can lose thirty thousanddollars and not lose sleep. It was
devastating for her. And it didn'tlike wreck us. We didn't like go
like have to file for bankruptcy.But there's a lot of money. And
so she said, listen, let'sfor six months. Let's just stop all
of this business stuff for six months. I need a break. I need

(50:21):
this to stop. It's too stressful. I was still working for somebody.
I said, okay. It wasn'treally a question, it was sort of
a mandate. I said, okay, I get it. And so six
months to the day, I'm like, been six months, what are we
going to do? And she's like, you know what, you I don't
want to do it. You doit. I believe in you, I
trust you. I know you're goingto be awesome at this. I totally

(50:44):
will will support you. I willcheer you on. I just need to
not be in at day to daybecause the stress of the day to day,
the rollercoaster of that life, it'sjust not me. I just can't.
I'm not happy when I'm doing it. And I said, I totally
get that, and she said,but I'm not going to stop you.
In fact, I will be yourbiggest supporter. I love it, and
I know you're gonna be great.Just don't I don't need all the details

(51:06):
that's gonna stress me out. Andwhen we were together doing that, she
was sort of the to use aracing term, she was sort of the
governor of our business. Right.She was the restrictor plate that didn't let
me go as fast as I wantedto go, but it also kept me
safe. And so for the timethat she was in the business, we
probably avoided a lot of rookie mistakesthat would have been very costly because she
kept slowing the process down. Whileonce she stepped out, there was no

(51:31):
restrictor plate and I just floored it. And and honestly, that's when my
business took off. I really waswhen I took off, you know,
And any business that really has shortlike a like a burst of success,
there's some there's some luck involved withanything. But it was me taking much
more dramatic action that I had takenin the past, and within a short

(51:54):
period of time, I quit myjob. My side hustle became my main
focus. I doubled and tripled mycorporate income like that. And in fact,
my wife is really conservative. Sowhen I said, hey, I
want to quit my job, here'smy plan, because I know you don't
want me just to quit, likethat's not a good plan for you,
it would have been for me,by the way. I could have just

(52:14):
quit and said I'll figure this thingout. But I said, if I
can save one year's salary put inthe bank, that gives me at least
nine months to try this thing beforeI have to take the rest of the
year to try to get a jobagain and go back to it. But
if I can save one year's salaryin cash in the bank, can I
you care? Like, is itgonna be okay? Are we gonna have
a problem? Can I just quitand then give me nine months? She's

(52:37):
like, have you put a yearsalary in the bank? In the bank,
I don't care. You have ayear to do this. Right.
Within three months, I had doubledthat, right like, I had made
another year's salary. So I neverlooked back. But my business took off
fast, and I started taking somerisks and being a little bit more aggressive
than what I was doing. Shedidn't want to know. I didn't tell
her, and I took the risksand it paid off. But I learned

(53:00):
in the beginning when we had sortof this partnership that was where she was
the break and I was the gas. It really did allow me to learn
without taking crazy risks and losing money. And I just took that experience and
applied it, and you know,a lot of things happened, but I
was one of those. I wasone of those success stories where people go,
wow, that happened. That wasan overnight success. The fact of

(53:20):
the matter is I was in realestate for four or five years trying to
figure things out and growing slowly beforeshe stepped out, and then within twelve
months, I ballooned to over sevenfigures in profit within twelve months, Like
I was like a two hundred thousanddollars to use an industry a real estate
industry term. I was on atwo hundred thousand dollars run rate, like
that was my pace. I wason to make two hundred thousand. I

(53:40):
made over a million dollars twelve monthslater because of just having a little bit
more freedom to do what I wantedto do, joining a mastermind, putting
myself in rooms of people that weremuch farther down the road than me,
and being able to ask really goodquestions of those people. It all.
And I that the book I referencedearlier I wrote, it's not a like

(54:02):
how to invest in real estate,It's how I grew from like a solopreneer
side gig to a seven figure profitbusiness. Like That's how I did it.
And it was company culture, itwas hiring properly, it was you
know, partnerships, all those thingsthat you do at the next level.
Once you kind of get your feetwet in business, how do you make
it a legit business? Right?And now that company makes over seven figures

(54:24):
still and I work about an hourand a half a week in it.
That's my time commitment to it,and which is the goal. That was
my goal always. I never wantedto have a company that made me work
as much as I did in corporateworld. I want that time, a
freedom of time. But I don'tthink anybody is ever truly free until they're
financially free, Like you are free. We live in a free country,

(54:45):
but you don't feel as free ifyou don't have the money to pay your
bills, and you don't have themoney to support your family, and you
don't have the money to have thattime like. You can't have the time
freedom unless you have financial freedom.So I created the financial freedom, which,
by the way, to get there, I had to work my butt
off. I was working hard toget there. But once you start getting
there, you start hiring building teamsof people who are better than you anyway

(55:07):
at certain specific things. Right,you build that team so you can step
out. Now, if I wereto step in and take over positions in
my company, we would have anegative effect because I'm not as good as
the people I put in all thosepositions. And then you make them raving
fans of you and your business.And you've got something now, Right now,
You've got a business that runs withoutyou, of people who love being

(55:29):
there, who love you. It'sa beautiful thing. That's what we're trying
to do here. Awesome, Iactually was. I got so many questions
for you to unpack in terms ofall of this. The first question that
I was thinking about while you werespeaking about this was about what made you
different, And you soon jumped rightinto some of the things that made you

(55:51):
different. The one that stood outto me was joining a mastermind. So
I have a feeling that you'll probablytake us a little bit further back beyond
the Mastermind, But I kind ofwant to start with the foundational question of
what made you different in the beginning. So, I mean, obviously you
talk about you know, your wifestepping out and hidden gas pedal. There's
so many others house flippers, let'scall them right out there, that hit

(56:14):
the gas pedal but quickly burn out. What was it about your strategy that
made it different? So, yeah, it's a good question. I think
what I've helped so many people buildtheir business, and I'll be honest,
anybody who gets into the business oftrying to help other people replicate their success

(56:35):
can be frustrated because you can just, again, to use a real estate
metaphor, I can give someone allthe tools, all the lumber, the
power tools, and the plans tobuild a house. Two people, same
plans, same tools, same opportunity. One will build a beautiful house and
the other one will blame the toolsand never do anything right. And so
what made me different? To answeryour question is, again, I'll give

(56:59):
my dad some props for this,we excuses. I mean, I can't
even tell you what an excuse wouldget for my head. And so I
wasn't in the business of making excuses. And so when I joined a mastermind,
there was somebody in that mastermind whowas who was leading it, who
I knew had the success he claimedto have. And unfortunately that's a factor

(57:22):
of following certain people. Not everyone'sone hundred percent honest about what they're doing,
right. But I knew for afact he had the business he claimed
to have, and so I askedhim questions. At the time, he
was about four years beyond where Iwas in his business. In other words,
four years earlier. He was kindof where I was, and he

(57:43):
grew from there. And I said, his name's Andy, still a close
friend of mine. I said,Andy, what did you do in your
business four years ago over the lastfour years to get where you are?
And he said, I'll tell you, and he kind of started breaking down
what he did, and I saidtwo number one. When he told me,
I didn't say I didn't use thephrase yeah. But because there's a

(58:07):
lot of yah butters out there,you tell them, you give it,
they ask you for advice, yougive it to them and they go,
yeah, but that doesn't work onmy market. Yeah but you have Yeah,
but they're yeah, butters, they'renever going to succeed. So I
didn't yeah butt him. And alsoI said, Andy, if you were
able to do what you just saidover the last four years good and bad,
right, he told me, thisis what I did that worked,

(58:28):
this is what I did that didn'twork, right, which is super valuable.
And I said, if you hadto if you did that over the
last four years, not knowing whatyou were, you know, not having
a crystal ball, you were justtrying and trial and error. And now
I know the path, like Iknow the blueprint. Can't I shouldn't I
be able to condense that timeframe,Like it shouldn't take me four years if

(58:49):
you had to figure it out andit took you four years. And he
said, yeah, yeah, youshould be able to do it in less
than four years. I did itin a year because there was a field
in front of me and there wereland mines. He had to find them
by walking on them. Right.He gave me a map that said,
if you take this path, thisis what works. You can avoid the
land mines and get there faster,and it's exactly what I did. And

(59:13):
so what made me different was I'mnot afraid to take risks and I am
coachable. By God, that isthe number one thing that keeps people back.
They're not coachable. They're glasses thatare full. You can't pour into
them because they're full. They don'tlisten. They think they already know.
I was humble enough. And againI have confidence and I take actions and

(59:34):
I take risks. But I'm alsoI was humbled as a kid. I
was not taught to be bragging.And you know that's another thing. He
doesn't tolerate someone having unearned ego,right, And so I'm very coachable to
this day, I'm very coachable.If I encounter somebody that I admire and
I believe they have something to offerme, I am so coachable. I

(59:57):
will one hundred percent listen and applywhat they say. A lot of people
aren't like that. They make excuses. They blame the tools. You give
them the tools, and they blamethe tools. The other person uses the
tools, and they don't use asan excuse. The mastermind that I walked
into really only had one person withreal knowledge, and there was a room

(01:00:17):
full of other people like me thatneeded knowledge from him. There was no
Facebook group, there were no videocourses. This group offered nothing except access
to a successful person. And thatgroup of original twenty five people, about
half of them actually went on tohave great success, and the other ones
blame the tools and they went away. Now that mastermind has video courses,

(01:00:44):
Facebook groups, meetups, has everythingin the world, and I still see
people blame the tools and they don'thave success. Right, So it's not
the number of things. It's notlike you need a million things to be
successful. You just need to findsomebody or some resource that you believe has
the knowledge and actually apply it,like take massive I took massive action too.

(01:01:05):
By the way, when I wouldmake profits, all those profits would
go back into marketing, and thenI would get more profits, more deals
would come, and I would putmore into marketing. I mean, if
I had to like summarize the probablythe one or two things that really made
all the difference for me growing mybusiness. Number one was reinvesting in the
company. I didn't sell a houseand then go buy a boat and go

(01:01:27):
on vacation and buy a cool car. I put it back into the business
like as much as I could possiblyput in. I put back in the
business. And then I learned howto hire, I learned how to lead,
and I started tracking. My KPIslike, we didn't talk about that
at all, But it's very hardto build a business if you don't know
your numbers. You have to knowat least basic numbers, right. It's
a lot like flying a plane.You can get a plane off the ground

(01:01:51):
without looking at the instrument panel.You can, but once you're up in
the clouds or up in the skyat altitude, you lose your instrument panel.
You're gonna hit something, You're gonnayou're gonna be going down. You
won't even know it. You couldbe going down, right. I flew
a plane. I'm not a pilot, but I have a friend who's a
pilot, and he let me takecontrol, and he took his hands off
and said go you do what youdo. And at one point he goes

(01:02:14):
your nose diving a little bit,like you're going that you were losing altitude
and I didn't know it. Ihad no idea. I said, I
am. He's like, yeah,we're going down right now. So you
have to know your numbers in abusiness or you're gonna hit the ground,
you're gonna hit a building, you'regonna hit it, You're gonna hit something,
right, you have to know what'sgoing on. I didn't check my
numbers when I was starting off.Money was coming in, money was going

(01:02:35):
out. It seems successful, right, But until you start tracking. You
don't know the healthier business until youtrack those numbers. So I learned how
to track numbers. I learned howto hire people, company culture, massive
action, reinvest in the company.Those are the things that got me there
in twelve months. You know,it wasn't it wasn't anything but that.
It's but but some of that stuffdisciplined. Some of it is just you
know, being coachable, you know, taking advice and actually executing on it.

(01:03:00):
A lot of people don't have that, and so I'm very coachable.
Here here goes. So here's probablythe best way to describe me. The
best combination of things that I haveis I'm willing to take massive action and
I'm extremely coachable. Like that's thesecret. Yeah, And I think that
that's great advice for anybody who's listeninghere is that, like, you know,
if you are considering quitting your joband starting a career as an entrepreneur.

(01:03:22):
I think that those are two hugenecessities in it In it all,
I also want to also make surethat we understand the investments that are made,
because there's a lot of numbers outthere, and masterminds aren't cheap,
and so people are like, well, that's crazy, Like why would you
pay that? Do you remember whatthe cost was for your mastermind? Yeah?

(01:03:44):
It was, Okay, I'll tellyou, But let me tell you
this beforehand, I had never paidfor a mastermind prior to this, and
my philosophy was, we are inthe information age right now. There is
nothing I will learn in a mastermindthat I can't figure out on my own.
Right. I was dead wrong.I was dead wrong. But yes,
to answer your question, was twentyfive thousand dollars for the year for

(01:04:04):
one year, and at that timein my business, I was doing more
what's called wholesaling in real estate,and so a typical wholesale transaction would net
somewhere in the twelve thousand dollars rangeat the time for me in my business.
So the way I looked at itwas, if I can surround myself
with successful, smart people who Ican ask questions to for a whole year.

(01:04:29):
Will that not get me two moredeals than I would have gotten all
on my own over the next twelvemonths. And if the answers yes,
it's a no brainer. If theanswer is no, then I shouldn't do
it. And it was easy.I said yes because I knew who was
running it. I knew what hisbusiness looked like. I knew he was
doing the business he claimed to bedoing. And I thought, there's if
I can't do an extra by theway, if I can't do an extra

(01:04:50):
two deals in twelve months with accessto this guy, that's on me.
That's my fault, right, Andso I took the plunge. And you
know, I literally went from doingtwo hundred thousand dollars revenue to doing over
a million dollars in profits in twelvemonths. So was it worth it?
Yeah? Obviously I several ten xor whatever. My my my business.

(01:05:11):
So it was an old brainer forme, and I think it's it's an
old brainer for anybody who's coachable andwilling to take action. So yeah,
and you did your you did yourresearch or due diligence in terms of like
figuring out the ROI on it.It brings me back to your story into
getting started in real estate. Youyou and your wife when you were partners
at the time, went to areal estate investment investment conference of sorts and

(01:05:35):
ended up spending more than you hadthought of. I think it was like
twenty nine hundred bucks or something likethat, right, yeah, and you're
like exactly right, right, You'relike, what are we going to do?
We're going to do this day?And you did it. And in
that case, what was interesting inwhat you wrote about this was that,
like you felt that you didn't receiveany anything worth the twenty nine hundred bucks,

(01:05:56):
yet it motivated you to do whatyou're doing. Obviously to day,
I'm interested in that thought process.And the reason why is because when I'm
reading that and I'm thinking about it, I'm like, well, then it
did its job, right, Like, you know, is it about the
tools and the tools shop? Oris it about you becoming the carpenter?
Yeah, it's such a great question, and I'm super passionate about this.
And unfortunately for a lot of peoplewho hear me talk what I'm about to

(01:06:19):
tell you, it becomes an eyeroll for them. Right, They don't
they don't want to hear it.But going back to that twenty one hundred
dollars real quick, the best partabout that was the stuff we got was
not great, but it instilled abelief in us. And by the way,
when you're married to someone who grewup poor and you spend almost three

(01:06:42):
thousand dollars on something, it willnot be tolerated that you don't utilize that
information, right, So honest,I'll be honest that there were times after
we went to that, I'd belike sitting around. She'd go, what
are you doing? I thought youwere going to start doing this for that,
And I was like, you're totallyright, right. She just was
calling me out when I didn't whenI did hold up my end. But
what I'm going to talk about thatI said is sometimes an eye roller.

(01:07:03):
It instilled a belief in us thatwe could do it. And you know,
I talked about coachable and massive action, but it kind of goes back
to belief. I think what stopsmost people from being successful is all in
their head. It's completely the waythey look at things, the way that
they view themselves, the way theyview the world. Whether or not they

(01:07:24):
most people don't don't find this successthey want because they don't truly believe it's
possible. They really don't. Theysay they do, and they'll say the
right things, but they don't.They don't believe it. Believe it,
and you have to believe it believeit. I've asked folks that are successful,
and I'm in the same category,but I've asked the question because just
knowing what I think is fine,but I kind of want to I like

(01:07:46):
to know what other successful people think. And I've asked friends of mine in
my industry, if I took itall away from you tomorrow, do you
feel like you could build it backagain, And the answer is always yes,
because they already knew how to doit, Like they totally believe they
can do it because they've done itright. That's the ultimate belief. Sometimes
you have to try to have thatbelief before you do it, that's very

(01:08:10):
important, but once you do it, the belief is ultimate. Right.
And so people say to me before, like if this happened in your business,
do you think you could overcome it? Yes, I have one hundred
percent clarity on what I can doand what's possible, and so I don't
have any belief problems anymore, andI think people fails when they don't have
the belief. I spoke to BrandonTurner, who used to be the host

(01:08:33):
of the Bigger Pockets podcast. Heand I are kind of close, and
we were talking one time, andhe said, all these books and shows
and YouTube channels about how to doreal estate and how to buy and find
deals and talk to sellers. Hesaid, all of that doesn't matter.
It's all about mindset one hundred percent. But when you say the word mindset,

(01:08:56):
it's been so overused in our worldnow people go, oh boy,
here we go, more mindset fluff. I'm really sorry, but your mindset
is one hundred percent in control ofyour success, in my opinion, one
hundred percent. That's why I cangive two people tools and the blueprints and
all the lumber to build a house. One will build a house and one

(01:09:16):
will not. Because they had abad mindset. They just didn't believe it.
They were excuse oriented. All theywanted to do was tell everyone why
it can't be done. That's allthey're interested in. And there's a lot
of people who that's all they're reallyinterested in is telling you why it can't
be done. Then they feel betterabout not doing it. I did it.
I did it for five years.I didn't necessarily talk about why I

(01:09:38):
couldn't be done, but I toldmyself why I shouldn't start yet. I'm
not quite ready. I haven't learnedenough. And by the way, I
didn't talk about this. But duringthat five years, the one critical mistake
I made was not telling anybody whatI wanted to do. Because if you
don't have anybody or anything holding youaccountable, and it's all in your head,
right, Like if you say,tomorrow, Michael, I want to
start working out five days a week, but you don't tell anybody, and

(01:10:01):
after a week or two you haven'tworked out, there's no one to call
you out. There's no one tohold you to task, there's no one
to go, Hey, I thoughtyou're gonna work out. You don't tell
your wife that. She's not goingto give you any hard time. But
if you say, honey, I'mgoing to start working out five days a
week, I'm dedicated and I'm doingit. A week later, she didn't
see ever work out. What isshe going to do? I mean,
I don't care, but I thoughtyou were going to work out, right,

(01:10:24):
it will happen and so it's harderto not do the things you want
to do when you just keep itall inside. I kept it all inside,
and it rotted inside of me,like it literally rotted, and it
started just eating away at me untilI couldn't take it anymore, and I
went out there and did it.And my biggest regret in life is not
starting sooner. Right. When's thebest time to plant a tree ten years

(01:10:45):
ago? When's the next best timetoday? Today? Right? So it's
so funny. I'm actually experiencing someof the stuff that you're talking about,
and it brings to mind the questionthis is going to be a question for
you in a second. I justwant to kind of frame it up for
you, the idea of fear ofsuccess. And you know, to your
point though, in terms of likemaking sure that you know when you're taking

(01:11:08):
massive action, that you're letting peopleknow. Right now, I'm in the
process of looking at acquiring other agencies. So I'm not in the process right
now of acquiring one, but Iwant to acquire other agencies. And you
know, that sat in my mindfor a while. So in my business
plan, I talk about all ofthis, and my team knows that I

(01:11:28):
want to acquire agencies, but itkind of like fell off, right,
it fell off the radar. Iacquired one, and it fell off the
radar, and we just went backto business as usual. And then more
recently I was like, no,I want to do it. I want
to acquire more agencies, insurance agenciesthat this is that we're talking about,
and we'll start talking about it alittle bit more and I bring it up
to my accountant team, and myaccountant team says, okay, what are

(01:11:51):
you looking at? And so Iput out a number there and they're like,
okay, cool. They put mein touch with somebody. So what
I'm sharing here for audience is likethis is real life for me in that
by putting it out there, opportunitystarted opening up, and you know,
the opportunity then opens up and Ibecome part of this networking group and I
start sharing like yeah, I wantto acquire an agency. And so I

(01:12:14):
finally get a meeting with somebody whois like, let's talk about this,
let's talk this through, and Isaid, you know, I'm looking to
acquire an agency. And at thetime I had said to him, I
said, you know, I'm lookingto acquire something that's about just about a
million in revenue. And he goes, that's cool. He goes, you
know, how are you going tofund it? I said, well,
yeah, I'd like to get investorsinvolved in all this other stuff. And
he goes, he goes, letme tell you something. He goes,
if you're looking to get investors involved, a million in revenue is not going

(01:12:35):
to excite them. And I except, really, and said, what are
am I talking about here? Hegoes, You're going to need to look
at like three to five million ata minimum in terms of like to get
them excited. And so I said, thank you for you know, we
had a longer conversation. Thank you. And now I went back to the
drawing board and I started looking atit. And I remember I had the
opportunity to be at the event thatGrant Cardon put on and I remember John,

(01:13:00):
I forget his last name, butfrom Shark Tank on stage with with
with Grant, and Grant asked themwhat was your biggest regret and very similar
to what you said not starting longago, and John said, I didn't
dream big enough. And so thisguy tells me you got to go three
to five minimum minimum, and I'mlike, all right, well, then
I guess I gotta double that,I gotta dream bigger. But where I'm

(01:13:20):
going with all of this is that'swhen I was just like, I got
to start telling people if I'm goingto make this real, you know,
just to look at the little bitof momentum that I got in terms of
like guidance by making it real.So I started telling people, and I've
been emailing. I sent off threeemails right before we jump on this this
podcast together to a couple other peoplein the industry of like, hey,

(01:13:41):
look, I'm looking to acquire.I'm looking to acquire, and now here
I am for the first time,we're actually saying it on this podcast here.
But that's what makes it real.And now let's get into this fear
of success. As this starts percolatingin my body and in my mind,
I'm like, you know, I'mwriting it out, I'm journaling it,
talking about it. I'm starting togo to bed the last couple of weeks

(01:14:02):
with a different feeling. I'm like, well, wait a second, because
I'm with you on this whole beliefthing is that like if we believe it,
we can achieve it, and whichthat sounds really corny, but it
just came out and flowed. Butyou know it's true. Like I'm going
to bed like, wow, youknow this is going to happen. These
things are going to happen. Andjust for your background knowledge in terms of

(01:14:23):
going into the sphere of success,thing is that at Denten, my my
whole goal and vision is that wewe grow a beautiful, large agency,
but it's really so that we couldimpact our communities in a positive way and
in giving back to our communities andcreating self sustained communities to help uplift people
out of poverty. That's that's mymission at Denten and so that's why I

(01:14:45):
do this. So now I'm goingto bed thinking of all of this stuff
and not to the point of paralyzation, but anxiety starts starts creeping in and
I'm able to identify that anxiety becauseI am I'm part of masterminds and coaching
as well as fear of success.And I can only imagine that you've dealt

(01:15:08):
with this and have coached on this. I'm very interested on your thoughts on
this. Yeah, So I don'treally I don't like it. I don't
like the term fear of success.Here's going If you could snap your fingers
and have the agencies creating the threeto five million dollars tomorrow and it's running
well and successful, you would snapyour fingers. You're not afraid of it.

(01:15:30):
I feel like it's more insecurity,self doubt, self worth. Those
are the things that are that aretaking it down, you know, because
everyone will snap their fingers and winthe lottery, yay, right, no
one. No one would go,oh my god, I'm too afraid of
it. I'm afraid of having themoney. No, they're not. They
don't feel like they're worth it.They don't feel like they can do it,

(01:15:53):
like they have a low self esteem, and it's and it's hurting them.
And I'm not saying you have alow self esteem if you don't make
three or five million dollars. I'msaying your self esteem or your self worth
or those are the things that arethat are working on you. In my
opinion, nobody's I don't believe anyone'safraid of success. They don't think they're
worth it, they don't think theycan do it, they don't think they

(01:16:14):
deserve it. Maybe that's what we'retalking about here, is like you know,
what do you subconsciously feel like youdeserve. Listen, I was raised
middle class. We weren't poor,we were not rich, and I was
taught a certain way of looking atmoney that was matter of fact. I
wasn't even allowed to talk about moneygrowing up. I didn't know. I

(01:16:35):
still don't know how much my dadmade when I was growing up, I
didn't know how much my mom made. We were severely discouraged from talking about
money. And so you don't havea healthy view of money or what you
deserve or what you are capable ofwhen you live in that environment. I
think a lot of us live inthat environment, certainly in the Midwest,
and so it's not I just don'tIf I said you could snap your fingers

(01:16:59):
and be as successful as you wantwith no real issues, everyone would snap
their fingers. So it can't befear of success. What is it.
Well, I just wasn't raised tobelieve that I could achieve that kind of
thing, Like, I just don'tknow that I'm worth it. Right,
A lot of people go, well, no one, no one needs to
make a million dollars. That's that'sridiculous. Nobody needs that kind of money.

(01:17:20):
You look at athletes who are gettingfifty million dollar contracts, they go,
nobody needs that, right, It'sit's the manifestation, it's the it's
it's actually that thought process comes outof people and they don't even know it.
Right, What do you mean thatathlete isn't worth making fifty million dollars?
Certainly they are if they're creating aproduct that the industry and the market
says is worth it, it's worthit. Right. But I know people

(01:17:44):
who look at me that I grewup around who didn't have a lot,
and they think, ah, hishouse is too big, or his you
know whatever. Right, he shouldn'tbe able to want to vacation whenever he
wants that. I don't deserve it. I came from that mindset, and
so I fight it all the time. I fight all the time. There's
definitely an effect on my success thatcomes from something deep inside of me that's

(01:18:08):
pulling on me, saying, youdon't, you don't need any more,
You just you don't deserve that muchsuccess. And I think people fight with
that all the time. I justdon't think, you know, I just
don't love the term fear of success. It sounds absurd to me. It
has to be something else. You'renot afraid of success, you're certainly afraid
of failure. But I think sometimesit's people don't feel they deserve it.

(01:18:30):
They don't deserve it. Yeah,and I think that that's true. I
think that that's definitely true. AndI'm going to speak firsthand experience here because
I brought it up in terms ofan opinion like or a thought like that.
I think that that's true. AndI think it's also the work,
right, it's not really understanding thework and not knowing whether capable of and

(01:18:51):
you kind of touched on all ofthat and everything that you just said there
is like, you know, Iknow the work for my agency. Now
I don't know what the work isfor a five ten million dollar agency,
and that is scary to some extent. But you know, we go back
to and you mentioned this earlier withyour team, is you've got to hire
right, You got to hire theright people around you in order to help.

(01:19:13):
And my coach talks about that withme too. She's like, yeah,
but you know, you're going tohave more people around you and making
sure you surround yourself to the rightpeople that can help take on some of
the different things that you need todo in the business. So I think
that's a really great way to frameit the way that you did and kind
of removing it as fear of success, but really understanding what are the underlying

(01:19:34):
things that are happening. And Ihighly recommend, and I know you do
coaching as well, so I'm happythat this comes up. I highly recommend
anybody who's in any field, anyindustry, anywhere, looking to grow and
looking to do anything in their liveshire a coach because these are the kind
of things that we work on together, like this is I'm currently working on
this with my coach and getting newperspectives, and I know that you probably

(01:19:56):
do this with your clients. Anotherthing that comes up, and all of
this in terms of that, I'mgonna use air quotes on this for you
because I don't want to. Idon't want to trigger your your you again
on fear of success. But anotherthing that comes up is is the pain
to move, the pain to takeaction, And you've brought it up a
few times in this and I thinkthat that's another big thing in this right

(01:20:17):
because like you're right, if it'son my fingers, yeah, boom,
it's there. But like if it'sif it's like some work and I have
to do this and I have toput myself out there and I and I
have the fear of of like whatyou said earlier about fear of loss of
reputation and all this other stuff comesin. It's like, well, I
am comfortable right now and there's notenough pain moving us. So I love

(01:20:41):
that that you brought that up.Yeah, you know, you know what
the biggest rdle or the biggest thingthat will will take down a prize fighter,
championship boxer for example, success andthey become comfortable and they don't want
to put in the work anymore becausethey don't have to. They're hungry anymore,
they don't feel like they have tofight to live anymore. Right,

(01:21:01):
And so it happens all the time, and it happens us too, Right.
I talked about self worth and allthis, you know, feeling bad
about yourself. You're You're totally right. The other component is you're just too
comfortable. Does the work in therisk doesn't feel worth it since eh,
things are going pretty well, youknow, So I get the same thing,
like you know, I my podcastis called Just Start Real Estate,

(01:21:24):
but it's not about any business.It's not just about the getting started phase.
Getting started can apply to you rightnow you have a successful business,
you want to grow. There isa point, there is that hurdle that
everyone has to sort of get through, that friction point of getting started,
even if getting started means getting startedon your goal to grow, right Like,

(01:21:45):
it's not just about the beginning level. It's like when we get to
a point and maybe you're maybe aperson's goal is to get to a million
dollars in revenue, and you getthere, right then you go, well,
I want to get to three million. Now, well you hit your
goal. What's motivating you to getto three million? Right? You have
to figure out what that is andactually start executing. Because I know for
me, when I was running atwo hundred thousand dollars real estate investing company,

(01:22:06):
to get over a million and plus, that my business had to change
dramatically because it's not becoming me goingout and finding deals and negotiating prices and
finding contractors and hiring and all thatstuff. Everything that got me to a
quarter of a million dollar year companywas not at all what got me to

(01:22:26):
being over a million dollars Because Ihad to go from being an operator to
being a leader and a manager andan HR person. I had to deal
with personalities and so my business nowit's more profitable and I work way less,
but my role is dramatically different.If I jump, like I said,
if I jump into any of theoperations things that happen, I'm going

(01:22:47):
to hurt us in some way becauseAI haven't done it for years, and
b I hired people who are specialistsat that. And so what got you
to where you are will not getyou to the next space. I guarantee
your business is going to have adifferent look and feel when you scale up.
And that's not bad, it's justit's the work. And if you're

(01:23:08):
having a level of success, ifyou're a prize fighter that has become world
champion and got a twenty million dollarfight and you want it, are you
as motivated before the twenty million dollarfight when you were relatively poor as you
are now? Like, No,you're just not. And so it's very
difficult to get yourself up with noalarm and no real financial stress to go

(01:23:29):
out and do something like that.And that's where you just have to you
know, you have to find thereason to do it. You have to.
Maybe it's your kids, Like,Hey, yeah, I do love
the business I have and it isI do have a situation where I love
what I'm doing and it's not hardand I can just do this forever.
What do I want to leave formy kids? What do I want You
named your company after your daughters,Like, what do I want this company
to represent? How many more peopledo I want to help? And what

(01:23:50):
will that mean for my legacy formy kids and what I give them?
Like, those are some of thereasons you start building your head to go
out and do that. It can'tit's not the same reasons you started in
the beginning, right, they wereprobably more financially driven and more of a
need. Now you have to findreasons beyond yourself to do it, and
that's what some people struggle with.Yeah, I love that you brought that

(01:24:11):
up, too, because it's notalways about the money and the purpose like
that. That's so important. Thelegacy. I mean, when I when
I came up with this name,it was the question was to me about
you know what, what kind oflegacy, kind of brand do you want
to build? And that's where thename came up. Where it was just
like, oh, legacy, mydaughter's you know it was it was a
no brainer. And and I justalso want to mention, you know,
you got to interview Gino Wickman andobviously living living the book traction and fantastic

(01:24:38):
book and everything he does. Therea couple of the phrases that you use
remind me of Tony Robbins. Andso I'm interested in some of the mentors,
some of the people in your lifethat you know helped you also,
you know, outside of obviously themastermind that also helped you have a different
perspective, a different view of yourpath and your journey ahead. Yeah,

(01:25:00):
one of them you mentioned in mybio Jocko Willink. Jocko Willink wrote the
book Extreme Ownership, which I highlyrecommend for everybody should read. It should
be mandatory reading in school. Irecommend you encourage your kids to read it.
And what it is in a nutshellis you take responsibility for everything.

(01:25:23):
Extreme Ownership is the exact opposite ofpointing fingers and making excuses. You take
responsibility even if you don't truly feellike it's your fault. You figure out
how you could have made that situationbetter. You know, the application in
work is you know, something goeswrong, and a lot of companies that'd

(01:25:43):
be like, well, John orJoe didn't do this, and Sally,
she should have sent me an email. I didn't. I didn't, I
didn't know. You know this kindof attitude when you have a company,
and one of my core values inmy company is extreme ownership. When you
have a company where something goes wrongand somebody raises their hand and says that's
on me that I could have Ishould have stopped that, and somebody else

(01:26:04):
goes, naw, I think thatwas more me. I probably should have
saw that coming before it ever becamea problem. Somebody goes, no,
it's me, it's me to me, right, you have in a culture
where people step up and take responsibilityand refuse to let somebody else take the
fall man, that company can doanything. And by the way, if
the leader of that company, youme whoever, says you know what,

(01:26:27):
guys, this is on me becauseI should have had a process in place.
I should have prepared you guys,that's on me. I'm the leader.
And everybody's like, no, no, no, I should have done
it. Right. Come on,Like, what a great culture, what
a great environment. What a greatattitude to have, because in most cases
there is shared blame. There isthings that you could have even if it
wasn't directly your fault or your deal. How could you have made that situation

(01:26:53):
not happen so bad or at all? Right? And when you have people
thinking like that, how could Ihave made that not happen? How could
I have avoided that? For thecompany, and everybody thinks that way,
Wow, you are You're totally unstoppable. You can't stop that company. And
by the way, if you raisekids and they have that mentality, life
doesn't happen to me. I amnot a victim of my surroundings or my

(01:27:16):
circumstances. I am not a victim. I have control. It's my responsibility
to make sure that things happen forme that are good. Right. I
used to tell my kids before Ieven knew about Jocko Willing life, if
you're a you're a You're in araft, right, and life is a
river if you don't row. Ifyou in other words, if you don't

(01:27:38):
do anything to get what you want, the river will just take you.
And the river will almost never takeyou somewhere you want to go. Almost
never. You have to row you'reresponsible, and if you don't, life
will absolutely make decisions for you.You don't have to make decisions if you
don't want to, but if youdon't, life will make the decisions.

(01:27:58):
And nobody is happy at the endof the day with the decisions that life
made for them when they gave noeffort. It just never works out.
So I think extreme ownership is areally important concept. I think kids should
be taught it, even if youhave to use inception, even if you
have to sneak it into their intoyour teachings and your advice to them,
Like if they do nothing but growup with the idea that I am responsible

(01:28:25):
for my success and failure, youwill have a much much more productive,
happy person that you raise. Ilove the idea of inception one of my
favorite movies, and I try todo it to myself before going to bed
every night, thinking about different thingsto dream about, and this certainly plays
a big role in it. It'sfunny you bring up Jocko's book, because

(01:28:46):
what I wanted to also ask youabout was you shared a stage with him,
and you shared a stage with somerather large names in the real estate
industry, but just generally speaking,and as as somebody who aspires to grow
to become a professional speaker to thatto that level, to that degree,
I'm very interested in how you wereable to create those opportunities for yourself as

(01:29:09):
well. The most so, Ispeak at an event every year called flip
Hacking Live. It's put on bya company that I am one of the
owners of called seven Figure Flipping,and that was the mastermind that I joined.
By the way, years ago,I became an owner, but at
that mastermind at that event, notthe mastermind, but at the event that
we do. It's a public eventanyone can go called flip Hacking Live.

(01:29:31):
Happens in October every year. Webring people to these events that speak right.
So that's how I was able toshare the stage and spend time with
some of these people. So thetwo most interesting Jocko we invited to the
event one time and he came aday early and did some training with his
team with our company, and wehad dinner that night with him, and

(01:29:51):
I was lucky enough to sit nextto him at dinner that night. That
guy is absolutely man. You wantto talk about Navy seal, right,
He's a Navy seals, Navy sealman. That guy is and the guy
that you see on his podcast andyou see on videos and things, he's
that guy twenty four to seven.He never it's not it's not a personality

(01:30:11):
that he turns on and off.He is that guy. And one of
his one of his team, oneof the people that works with him.
I said, have you ever seenJocko get silly or just giggly or just
like, you know, kind ofjust silly, And he said, no,
Jack goes all business all the time, like he's no joke. They
call him. They they lovingly callhim a silver bag guerrilla, like he's

(01:30:36):
just a big dude that's nothing buttestosterone and like motivation, like he is
at all the time. The otherguy, he wasn't at urt, he
wasn't at the event flip Hagging Live. But so I'm a big fan of
Gary Vaynerchuk, very much a fanof him and his teachings, and I
have a podcast, right, andso I listened to him and he's like,

(01:30:57):
you know, he he'll talk sometimesabout you should just start emailing people
that you want to just take at, right, And so I sent him
a message on social media. Isaid, Hey, Gary, bigfan,
listen to you love everything. Hey, I've got this podcast. I would
love to have you on as aguest. I'll make it work for you.
It can be short, it canbe any time you want. I
will show up whenever you want.No response. A couple of days later,

(01:31:20):
maybe a week at the most later, I get an email from Vayner
Media saying, Hey, we're puttingon an event called twenty twenty one.
I think that's what it was,called twenty twenty one, and we would
like you to speak at it now. I had never reached out to Vayner
Media. I didn't know about theevent. The only possible way they I

(01:31:42):
was on their radar. My podcastis not big enough for them to have
found me that way. Probably theonly way they could have ever known about
me is if Gary had said,hey, reach out to this guy and
have him speak at our event.Because my guess is knowing Gary, knowing
how he operates, he got thething on social media, said who is
this guy? Looked me up,went to my website, went to my
podcast. I told him I hada podcast. Obviously, went to my

(01:32:05):
podcast, probably listened to a littlebit and said he sounds like he can
talk, he's a real estate investor. Let's get him at the event.
And next thing I know, Iam in the Miami Dolphins football Stadium in
front of thousands of people speaking ata Gary Vaynerchuk event. And the only
possible way that happened is because Ireached out to him and so I was

(01:32:27):
able to speak at agent. It'scalled Agent twenty twenty one, and I
think this was back in two thousand. I see eighteen nineteen twenty two,
Yeah, twenty eighteen, because theyhad four of them, and that's why
I was called Agent twenty twenty one. They had him eighteen nineteen twenty and
twenty one with a four years.They did it, and I spoke at
the first one and it was justfrom a random social media DM where I

(01:32:47):
said, Hey, I'd love tohave you on my show. That's it.
That's really awesome. It's funny.I actually remember because I used to
follow him pretty a lot. Iused to follow him a lot, and
I remember he always said that like, reach out, reach out, reach
out, reach out, and soI did. I reached out to him,
but at the time I was inmy beginning phases, I was like,

(01:33:08):
I didn't start the podcast, yetI really didn't take any action yet.
I was just more of like inthat like learning phase of like okay,
and I remember I would watch allof his talks. I would watch
and listen to all of his talksand everything he had to say. I
started like really digging into it.And that's when I really started my journey
on this marketing and all that otherstuff. Because Tony Robbins was also kind

(01:33:28):
of like simultaneous. That was moreof like the personal development side for me,
but Gary Vee was more of likethe Now I do an Instagram live
every day, Now I do thepodcast, I do all of these different
things. And it was really becauseof him. And I remember I sent
him a message as well, andI actually have an email. I think
it's it's in my drafts. Idon't think I ever even sent it to
him, but I had started thisemail. I know this. I don't

(01:33:51):
know if I sent it or ifit's in my draft. I'll have to
go back and look at it.But of like, hey, Gary,
I've been watching I've been following you, and here are the different things things
that I'm doing. And I startedlisting like these are the things that I'm
starting and things that I'm doing,and it was like because like he was
talking about this accountability I remember,and because he was talking about like everybody
says they're going to do something andthey don't do it, and I was

(01:34:11):
like, I'm going to show himthat I'm doing it. So it's so
funny. I'm like, you know, you're inspiring me now to like go
back and like email him again andbe like, dude, like this is
like, look at what I've donesince twenty seventeen or eighteen, which is
when I started my journey in allof this. So that's that's really really
cool that you were able to createthat opportunity for you. Another person for
me that I started following and payingattention to on social and creating YouTube videos

(01:34:36):
and all the other stuff and startedreally mirroring his work was Ryan Surhan And
so that's another big one for me, and I had him on my vision
board in order to meet by twentytwenty three, and I was able to
expedite that. I spoke about itin another podcast, but I was able
to expedite that and meet him actuallysooner. I got to meet him at
an event. It was really cool. Got a picture with him, but

(01:34:57):
you also got to share a stagewith him as well, which is share
a stage with them. At Agenttwenty twenty one, he was there,
Okay, cool so, and thatin eighteen was when he was really starting
his YouTube channel and everything and justgearing upsets. That's really yeah, exactly,
Yeah he was. I mean hewas a personality for sure. He
was a featured guest there, butyeah, yeah, he was just sort
of starting out a YouTube really neat. So you you know, as we're

(01:35:18):
starting to like wind this whole thingdown and bring it all full circle,
you spoke about the prize Fighter,and I thought that was really interesting because
we speak about we see the prizefighter. We see them. They're they're
hungry, like you said, they'rethey're working as hard as they can in
order to get to the level ofachievement that they want to get to.

(01:35:40):
And when when that purpose goes away, then you know, failure has an
opportunity to enter. And I knowthat you have a mantra that you live
by, and so I'm trying notto blow it up quite yet, but
I know you have a mantra thatyou live by and by by a prize
fighter, and I'd love for youto share that with our audience and what
it means to you. Yeah,so if you just for a moment,

(01:36:04):
allow yourself to strip away the personalside of the person and just take a
look at his athletic body of work. I'm a huge fan of my tyson.
He's a flawed person for sure,but he had a saying that resonates
with me. It's in my headconstantly, to the point that I put

(01:36:27):
it on my wall, and it'severybody has a plan until they get punched
in the face. And I reallybelieve most people have a real desire and
and a motivation to some level,and even sometimes get started right, but
something goes wrong, something personal,something business wise, something money wise,

(01:36:50):
and they retreat back into their safeplace and they go, well, that's
enough of that, right. Itried it, it didn't work, and
I'm licking my wounds and and that'sover with. I'm just gonna be a
good boy and sit here and dowhat I'm supposed to do from now on.
And I love that saying because everybody, you know, you've probably seen
this a million times. Right,somebody goes, oh, I'm gonna do

(01:37:12):
this, gonna be great, anda year later you ask them, it's
like, ah, yeah, itdidn't work out right because something went wrong.
There was some hiccup in their plan, and instead of fixing it and
going forward, they retreated into asafe place. And so life will punch
you in the face, no doubtabout it. I've had my share of
devastating things happened to me and aroundme in my life that could even should

(01:37:35):
have stopped me, and I justdon't let it because once you get punched
in the face, you actually Firstof all, everybody has a plan and
that's fine. And when you getpunched in the face, you have one
or two options. You retreat backinto your safe place, or you retool
the plan. I retool plans.I don't scrap my plans. I retool

(01:37:57):
them, I assess what happened,I make a new plan, and I
move forward. And then when lifepunches me again, I retool, I
reassess, I redo my plan,and I move forward again. That's the
difference. And to think that you'regoing to come up with an idea and
execute it and it's going to beflawless and there will never be any friction
is absolutely absurd. There will onehundred percent be friction. So I just

(01:38:19):
love the saying. I just loveit. Life will punch you in the
face, right, what do youdo now? And it's so true.
I mean I've experienced it myself,and you know, you go back to
putting your head underwater, as youhad mentioned earlier, and it's just like
I remember, you know, Ihad this beautiful business plan for DN ten
and it was gorgeous. I mean, everybody loved it. I mean I
even had people tell me like,this is the most robust best business plan

(01:38:43):
I've read for any agent that's enteredinto this carrier, you know. And
I'm trying not to put names outthere, but into this one segment,
that whole plan blew up men.And I remember the thought of like do
I sell? Do I do this? Do I do that? And back
to your feeling of underwater. It'slike when I thought about the thought of

(01:39:04):
selling and getting out, and Iwas like, but then what would I
do? Like this is my dream, this is my passion. It's like
I'm going to go back and geta job. I was like, I'm
going to put my head back underwater. I was like, no way.
So it's all about retooling and totallydid that. And going back to Mike
Tyson, And it's interesting that yousaid that about his personal life, Like
if you just look at him asa fighter, but I would even look

(01:39:25):
at his personal life and say thatthis guy got punched in the face and
his personal life and also retooled andchanged. I think he I believe he's
changed so many's perception of him bythe way that he's honest and transparent and
speaks to his flaws, speaks abouthis flaws to everybody and finds different ways

(01:39:46):
to make them his advantages, whichI think is really great. And of
course we're not speaking I want tomake sure that we're also very clear here.
It's like whatever he does, notfrom a moral perspective, is not
what we're talking about, but atleast from what we can see in media.
Like I don't know him personally.I don't think you do. I
don't know you know some pretty coolpeople. I don't know him personally,

(01:40:06):
but I get it what he didis so you know, heinous to some
folks that they can't get past it. I get that. But if you
just again, like you said,like, just forget what he did for
a minute. He obviously did something. He went to jail and it was
horrible, and he didn't just recedeinto the and get into back like he
he reset, He got back intofighting and then he has a career.

(01:40:29):
Now that's he's as popular now ashe almost ever was. Right, like
everyone knows who he is, Likehe's overcoming awful lot, and he's done
some stupid things. But I justthink, you know, from there's never
been a person who you know,I think a lot of people they fail
in life before they ever get started, because they cite themselves out. And

(01:40:53):
there was just never a human beingon earth that could win a fight before
the fight, like people deathly afraidof him, and you could tell they
didn't think they could beat him beforethe bell even rang in the first round.
And I think that's a metaphor forlife. I think a lot of
people, to them, life isMike Tyson, and they're scared to death.

(01:41:13):
They don't believe they can win inlife, and they don't. They
just don't believe they can do it. They already psyched themselves out before they
ever try. And that was that'sthe metaphor. That's what Mike Tyson did
for a number of years in theeighties, he beat people before he ever
laid a hand on him. Theyjust just didn't believe they could win,
right, And I think that's thatis psychologically that is so amazing to me.

(01:41:36):
I'm just I'm blown away by someonewith that kind of power of you
know, first of all, hehad a ton of belief, but he
made other people lose their belief.That's just that's insane to me, and
a tremendous work ethic. And itgoes back to you know, with you
and everything that you've done, andbeing very clear that it's not an overnight

(01:41:57):
success. You spent five years inthe trenches, working, working on yourself,
working through everything, and on theoutside it looks like an overnight success.
Sure the news article, you know, front page and everything, but
it was years of hard work thatyou put into it. You know,
this will of course be in theshow notes of how people can can reach
out to you and contact you,but if you could share it for our

(01:42:17):
audio listeners best ways to reach youand uh and of course which websites to
visit for you. Yeah, well, first of all, you can go
to Mike Simmons dot com. That'sprobably the best place I'll have the most
up to date things that I'm workingon or excited about. You can.
I hate saying this, but youcan email me at Mike at Mike Simmons

(01:42:39):
dot com. That sounds horrible.It's always uncomfortable to say that, like
Mike at Mike Simmons, Like howmany? How much? I'm Michael at
Michael Lisposito, inc. Okay,Well good, then it doesn't sound weird
to you. I've always had otheremail addresses, but I've recently started using
Mike at Mike Simmons dot com.And it's like, okay, I was
going to have it be me atMike Simmons dot com, and I'm like,
forget it. I'm doing Mike.But anyway you can reach me there.

(01:43:00):
On Facebook, you can find meMike s as in. My middle
name is S Mike S. Simmons. By the way, fun fact,
my middle name is Scott. Iam Michael Scott oh Man funny after the
office. My brother loves telling peoplethat his brother's name is Michael Scott.
So it's Mike S. Simmons atFacebook. I'm on there quite a bit,
so you can reach me those places. That's probably the best awesome,

(01:43:24):
awesome, It's it's been a realpleasure having you on the show today.
It's it's been a lot of funspeaking with you, and I'm sure we
have some more episodes to record togetherin the future. Absolutely, Mal it
was a good time. Thanks forhaving me. Thank you for listening to
The Michael Esposito Show. For shownotes, video clips, and more episodes,
go to Michael Esposito Inc. Dotcom backslash podcast. Thank you again

(01:43:45):
to our sponsor d ten Insurance Serviceshelping businesses get the right insurance for all
their insurance needs. Visit dent tendot io to get a quote that's d
E N t N dot io andremember, when you buy an insurance policy
from Danten, you're giving back ona global scale. This episode was produced

(01:44:06):
by Uncle Mike at the iHeart Studiosin Poughkeepsie. Special thanks to Lara Rodrian
for the opportunity and my team atMichael Esposito in Hello all, my entrepreneurs
and business leaders, and welcome toThe Michael Esposito Show.

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