March 8, 2024 • 18 mins
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EPISODE DESCRIPTION
In this episode, Tom & Brandon share tips and tricks to making your first $100,000, because this is usually the hardest milestone to get to as an entrepreneur.
What was discussed: → How to set yourself up for success by doing an honest audit of your life. → The shifts you need to make in your priorities, mindset, and where your cashflow goes. → And how you can start getting leads no matter which business you're in.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:08):
Entrepreneur. It's Freedom Friday.
Today we're going to do a deep
dive into making your first$100,000.
The reason for this is we seeeveryone talking about making
their first million, but gettingto that first 100K is often the
hardest.
And then from there, you're just
really pouring gas in the fire.
So this is going to be a Freedom
Friday episode.
If you're looking for more
(00:29):
mortgage content, those are comingout on our Mortgage Mondays.
So let's get into it.
Yeah.
And just a quick side note too,although the title of this is to
make your first 100k, yes, that isfocused towards you if you are
looking for your first 100k inyour business.
But a lot of concepts we aretalking about here applies even if
you're at that 100K mark, ifyou're going to 200K, 300K, a lot
of this, we remind ourselves inour business to scale even further
(00:51):
as well.
So if you're sitting there
thinking, well, I'm already at100K, this episode will apply to
you as well.
100%.
So first things first, you need totake that hard look at yourself.
It's the look in the mirror.
It's not from a place of judgment,
but figure out exactly whereyou're at.
So write down every asset youhave.
Write down every liability youhave.
Write down the things you spendyour money on month to month.
Write down how much income you'reearning.
(01:12):
And don't judge yourself here.
Just lay it all out on a piece of
paper, on a whiteboard, whateveryou're using, a notes app, and
just get it all written down.
Yeah, and this is from a personal
side of things as well.
Before you're diving into the
business, whether you've started abusiness or not, we're taking it
slow here from the start wherewe're assuming you haven't picked
that business and you haven'tstarted seeing success with it.
(01:32):
Look at yourself from a personalperspective, what your goals are
in the future as well.
I know when I first started in the
mortgage business, I had a goalspecifically in mind for 100k,
which in our terms was 10 millionof funded volume that usually
equates to 100k in revenue.
So that was my goal right off the
bat.
And I defined that right away.
And then from there, it makes iteasier to really put into place
(01:54):
steps and plans on how to getthere.
So that's what I did personallyfrom a goal perspective.
Did you have anything you did froma goal perspective?
Or was more so like, hey, I'mgoing to write down everything, be
honest with myself with the thingsthat I'm doing right and wrong?
so I just I wrote everything out.
So I had that kind of picture of
who I was at that point.
And then I picked where I wanted
to go.
And then I just kind of reverse
(02:15):
engineered what does the personwho is there, what steps would
they take?And some of those thoughts I had
were accurate.
Other ones were just kind of
assumptions that were proved wronglater.
But at least it gives you adestination which to point the
ship.
the point of it is to really just
get your thoughts out and put iton to paper.
Exactly.
Once you have that on the personal
side of things, you want to getreally lean.
So if you're going out for drinkstwo nights a week, you're ordering
(02:38):
takeout all the time, whatever itmight be, cut some of that stuff
back, get as lean as you can onthe financial side.
And then that surplus is going tobe what you're pouring into your
investments, into your business,into growth.
You really want to reinvest intothe sides of yourself that are
going to grow towards becoming thekind of person that can earn the
100,000 or the kind of person whohas a business that's worth
(02:58):
100,000.
Yeah, and I know we just had an
episode with Angie Ross on theother week about the anti-budget.
And this kind of goes againstthat.
And for a reason, like I thinkthere is a time and place to
actually focus on your budget.
And this is the time when you're
about to enter a new businessventure, a new career path for
yourself.
You need to really get lean on
(03:18):
your personal expenses, cut outthe fat and just really be
prepared for it.
Save some money upfront if you can
and have a safety net as well.
If it's a line of credit or a
family member can bail you out,worst case scenario, it's a lot
easier to do it that way versusgoing to the bank for a business
loan, that's for sure.
Exactly.
And once you have this kind ofvision of yourself, you've trimmed
some of the fat, you're in aposition that's ready to work and
(03:40):
to start growing that business,start growing those efforts.
But it's really important that youpour your energy and effort into
the right vertical.
And that's number three is picking
the right vertical.
And I'll give you a perfect
example of this.
I had saved about $60,000 prior to
starting my farm and I reinvestedevery cent of the farm back into
growing it.
It was like over $100,000 and it
was the wrong vertical.
(04:01):
It was not moving the needle for
me.
As soon as I recognized that,
burned the boats and went all inon my mortgage business, I got to
100k quite quickly.
And then from there in a year and
a half, I've been able to morethan 4x that just by following
these principles.
this one's a tough one, because
you're not going to really know ifit's the right vertical until you
(04:22):
kind of dive in.
And with that being said, though,
there are steps you can takebefore diving in to make sure that
it is a profitable business.
I'm not saying restaurants aren't
a profitable business, but usuallythe margins are tighter versus
something like real estate or themortgage industry, something in
tech, like a tech startup, likeyou're going to have probably an
easier time because like a higherticket, like you get paid more
quite simply on transactions.
(04:43):
So I think picking the right
vertical is key.
Do your research upfront and ahead
of time.
I know personally for me, when I
decided I wanted to go intoentrepreneurship and start my own
business as a firefighter.
And at that point, I knew that I
wanted to start the business onthe side because I had time to do
it.
And I did some research upfront.
(05:03):
I was like, Hey, the mortgagebusiness sounds cool.
It's real estate.
It's something I enjoy doing.
And I know how much they get paidand they get paid well for what
they do.
So went ahead and I went into it
just from doing my researchupfront.
And I just got lucky the firsttime.
But if you don't get lucky thefirst time, don't worry about it.
And don't stop early as well.
If it's not working, it's easier
(05:23):
said than done.
Like the hardest part with
entrepreneurship is you don't knowwhen you're going to really hit
that breaking point to really goforward with your business and
start making money so that is thetoughest thing there but like i
said do that research up front andyou'll have an exactly and don't
be afraid though to pull the plugon something don't have a sunk
cost i'll see we talked about thisbefore too if you poured a ton of
time into something and it's notworking sometimes the best thing
(05:45):
is to let it go and that nextopportunity will come up and then
you can just go all in gunsblazing at that.
So number four, let's assumeyou've got the right vertical, you
know something's working, it'stime to build a bigger fire.
So think about everything as beinga log you're throwing on that
fire, improve your sales, improveyour marketing, improve your
communication, improve your socialmedia, all these pieces, that's
going to build a bigger fire.
And that's where you really need
(06:05):
to focus.
So while you're staying lean on
the personal side, those resourcesyou have, you want to be putting
in So what's an example that youdid like day one of getting the
mortgage industry?How did you figure out where
you're going to get those salesfrom?
And what did you really do to getthere?
so I figured out that realtorswere going to be my best referral
(06:27):
partner.
And kind of within our brokerage,
a lot of people were doing thisrealtor outreach at the same time.
And I noticed people were reallycelebrating like, if I had three
realtor meetings a week, and thatwould be considered a win.
And I just said, Okay, well, whatif I just did three realtor
meetings a day?Obviously that's going to shorten
the time horizon there.
And I went all in on that.
So I built a better presentation.
I did better communication with
(06:48):
them.
Anything I could do that kind of
gave me that slight edge overthose other people in the
brokerage, I poured all my energyand focus Yeah.
And to clarify, realtors are yourmain source of income because they
have clients to refer over to AndI did you.
the same thing to too.
realtors clarify, are your main
source of income because they haveclients to refer over to you.
And I did the same thing too.
I focused on realtors too.
(07:08):
And I just wanted to 10X theoutput that I was doing to get
more meetings because I knew themore meetings I'd have, the more
connections I'd make, the moreleads would come in that way.
So your main strategy was divingin on one source of leads and then
you just went all in on it.
I want to say I did the same, but
I didn't.
And I'm going to touch on that in
the next topic.
Yeah.
And before we go on to the nexttopic too, like let's touch a bit
on what we did to get those leads,because I think we can generalize
(07:29):
this for everyone listening.
It doesn't matter what industry
you're in.
Let's go through some of these
tips because it will apply to yourbusiness as well.
So in my eyes, getting leads is assimple, not as simple, but if you
break it down in its simplestform, it's just having
conversations.
The more conversations you're
having with people, the more leadsyou're going to generate.
So what would be the first thingyou would do going back to day
one, whether you did it or not?What are some of the things that
(07:50):
you've learned now that you woulddo back on day one to get those
leads coming in?Yeah, so 100% right.
A lot of people get turned off bythe idea of leads thinking that
that's incoming to them.
Really, it's conversations
outgoing.
The easiest way to get that going
is to start with someone who'swarm.
So say you reach out to everyoneon your contact list.
Hey, who's a realtor you used inthe past or you would use if you
(08:12):
were to buy or sell today.
They're going to respond.
Hopefully you then reach out andsay, hey, Tom recommended you and
says you're awesome.
I'm in the mortgage industry and
I'm just looking to grow mynetwork and share a bit of value
ads here.
Can we jump on a quick coffee call
meeting, whatever your next stepis?
And you have that warmintroduction there.
Once you have that base, I wouldthen say to take that and go to
that person and say, who's oneother realtor that you like
(08:34):
working with, or who covers yourbook of business when you're on
vacation, and you're getting thattriangle of trust now from someone
within the industry.
And then that kind of compounds
from there.
Yeah, I would do the same thing.
And how I would get there is buildup that list of people that are in
my phone.
So all of my contacts in there,
anyone on social media that areeither following me or I'm friends
(08:55):
with like on Facebook, Instagram,whatever platform you're on, like
just make a list, print them allout and then just start from A to
Z and go down the list and do it Xamount per day.
And that's what I would do.
I would start at 10 a day and then
scale up from there and then justkeep it.
Exactly.
And you can even do things if
you're like, I don't have a lot offriends.
(09:15):
I don't have all these people toreach out to.
And you're not like, maybe you'renew to an area and you only have
four buddies or not even fourbuddies.
Does anyone have four buddiesanymore?
Then it's a little bit trickier.
So then you have to figure out
what's another network you can tapinto.
So I'll give you an example.
It's like join a Facebook group
for dads or moms or dads,whatever, and say, Hey, who would
(09:37):
you use?Ask the same question, but just in
a different group, the leads aregoing to be a little more lukewarm
at that point, but it does givethat introduction that you can
have that conversation starterYeah.
And you're still in that warmcategory for leads too.
So it's all about making thattriangle of trust by doing that
method and mentioning the personthat has mentioned that other
person.
And the other vertical you can go
is cold by doing like paid ads,which I wouldn't recommend at this
point, because you're not even at100k.
(09:57):
Yeah, where's the funds comingfrom to pay for those ads.
So I don't even want to talk aboutthat.
And that's not even something thatwe do.
And I don't think we ever will.
Maybe as time goes on, we'll think
about it.
But we don't need to because we
have mastered the art of warmoutreach and partners that feed us
leads in our business.
So I wouldn't even touch cold
leads at that point.
Is there any other way that you
would do to start your businessand get leads coming in?
(10:18):
Once you have your first coupleleads coming in, you can then ask
that person, is there anyone elsein your network that you think
might be for our case, buying ahome, needing a new mortgage
coming up for renewal, you canstart to do some ask that way and
just kind of expand from there.
Really think about it from like an
onion from the inside going out,you're adding layer and layer upon
it, the bigger onion you can grow,the bigger it's going to be
(10:39):
Exactly.
All right, number five, pour gas
on the fire.
So what we mean by this is you got
to reinvest in your business andreally just don't get tempted to
improve your lifestyle.
So I know you have a personal
story with this, Yeah.
So last year around this time, I
was sitting with like over ahundred and something thousand in
my corporation account.
I had done really well on sales
and I had topped up all my RSP,TFSA, all the different accounts
(11:00):
investing were topped up.
I still had that nut of cash
there.
And I was like, part of me wants
to treat myself.
And I almost went out and bought a
new vehicle because I didn't havea car at the time.
So I was looking at like a newToyota Tacoma and I was like, this
is going to be sick.
But instead, I realized that's not
really in line with my principlesand where I want to go to get that
(11:22):
$100,000 to $500,000 to a millionand so on and so forth.
So what I did instead is I boughtmy friend's used 2011 Volkswagen
Jetta for $1,500, cost me HST,another $1,500.
So three grand all in.
And then I took that nut of cash
and I bought a cashflow generatingrental property.
And now it's just rinse and repeatdoing that.
Sweet, man.
Yeah, that's key.
(11:43):
And if you were to have boughtthat expensive truck or whatever
else you wanted, like that'sprobably one of the worst
investments you can make,especially at that stage from zero
to a hundred and just beyonddefinitely don't buy that fancy
car, man.
We see that all the time.
That's why I'm laughing.
We see that all the time with not
even just business owners, buteveryday people just financing
like ridiculous cars.
Yeah.
And this was not going to befinance.
It was buying cash.
(12:03):
But it's also a mindset of hedonic
adaptation, where if you upgradeyour life, every little bit of
income generation you get, you'renot actually saving more and
you're not growing your wealthgenerating that that way.
You're just improving your qualityof life.
So that requires to keep earningat that capacity and keep adding
more years and time to it, whichsure, we're not advocates for
retiring early necessarily, but weare advocates for having the
(12:25):
financial freedom to choose thetype of work that fulfills you.
what this podcast is all about,especially on the Fridays is
financial independence.
And to get there, a lot of the
times it's all about having thatcash that's being reinvested to
really get you to that FI number.
So why go out and buy all these
luxury things right off the bat?Unless you have the ability to do
(12:46):
it.
If you have a sustainable business
that's bringing in multiple sixfigures into the millions, then of
go treat But at this point in theyou shouldn't be doing course,
that.
yourself.
stage, I know that I'm doing ahard set rule there, but I'm
pretty biased on that.
From a business perspective, I
think this can go both ways.
And I'm a big fan of reinvesting
money in my business.
But I also do know that there is a
(13:09):
time and place to do it.
And there's also specific
activities that you should beinvesting in versus not.
So I'll give you a personalexample of me.
When I was starting in themortgage business, before I went
hard on building relationships andpartners, I thought YouTube was
the way to go.
And it's kind of ironic now,
because this is YouTube, we'reposting this on YouTube and we're
building a YouTube channel, butthat's because we have the money
(13:30):
to allocate towards a YouTubechannel.
When I first started, I did not.
And for viewers and listeners,
like starting a YouTube channelcan be absolutely free.
But if you want to do it proper,it costs money to do it.
And I was wasting a lot of moneydoing it.
And I had to stop after six monthsbecause I ran out of money.
And I was like, crap, I can't keepdoing this anymore.
(13:53):
Even though I'm having fun withit, it's going well, it's not
bringing in the leads I need toright now.
So I think picking the rightvertical and the right strategy to
pour your money back into yourbusiness is super key.
Yeah, exactly.
And you know what, hindsight's
2020 on that because once in awhile, your old videos does pop
off.
So it wasn't time wasted.
It made you better at your job.
And in recording those videos, you
got a lot more knowledgeable oncertain topics, but it wasn't the
(14:16):
right allocation.
Whereas now we have investments
that we make for our business thatwe find we get outsized returns
from what it costs us.
You had an example of a coaching
thing you just did recently.
And why don't you share a little
bit of that?Because I think it's had a big
impact on you.
Yeah.
So I'm in a coaching course orcoaching program for short form
content.
So not long form.
(14:36):
So it's all about Instagramspecifically.
And it's been doing really wellfor me.
I'm growing my following basethere, building on my social
presence, establishing our brand.
And I've had a lot of carryovers
to our business that I can sharewith Brandon.
So it was definitely worth myinvestment.
And even back to YouTube it wasn'ta complete waste of like you said,
too, money, because I learned howto speak on video, communicate
better.
And like you said, some of those
videos are still popping off,which is crazy to like me, two or
(14:58):
three years ago when I first didthem.
I just imagine if I didn't putthat money there and I just
focused on the other way ofbuilding leads I would have in,
had more money there and I justfocused on the other way of
building leads in, I would havehad more money faster and I would
have saved money from thatYouTube.
But I mean, like you said,hindsight 2020, you don't really
know until you try.
(15:19):
Exactly.
So to bring this all together, thelast point is to just let time do
its work.
And that's the power of
compounding.
So your investments are going to
compound year after year.
If you have things like investment
properties, you're going to havethe appreciation of the property,
hopefully, and then also theprincipal pay down of the loan
itself.
These things take a little bit of
time to work.
What you want to focus on is also
compounding yourself.
So we talked a lot about
(15:40):
reinvesting in yourself, but makesure yourself and your growth are
growing year after year.
So you're becoming that version of
yourself that can earn $100,000,that can earn $500,000.
And ultimately, the goal is tobecome millionaires plus.
And that's only going to happen byputting in the time, the effort,
and then just letting things waitand being continuous in the
effort.
Yeah, because if you're
reinvesting in your business tonot only like the assets on the
outside of the business, it's justgonna compound.
(16:02):
Like for me, I know when I made myfirst hire in my business, yes, it
was a hit right away and it was acost that I had to make, but in
doing so, it freed up more timefor me to pour more gas on the
fire.
And I was able to do that because
I had more time to do it, whichthen brings in more leads and more
money for the business.
So it really is the power of
compounding there.
And with every business comes
risk.
So I do want you to know that, the
(16:23):
listener and viewer of this, likenot everything is going to go
according to plan, but I think aslong as you follow these steps
here and you really focus on them,then you will see success and you
will get to that first 100K a lotfaster.
Exactly.
And if you're listening and you've
already made that first 100K, whatare a few things we missed?
Please share it in the comments.
Or if you're listening on Spotify
(16:45):
or a podcast platform, send us aDM on Instagram because we always
like to hear feedback on whatother people have done and how we
can share that with others.
So have a great week and we will
see you on Monday for MortgageMonday.
Cheers.
Exactly.
Entrepreneur. It's Freedom Friday.
Today we're going to do a deep
dive into making your first$100,000.
The reason for this is we seeeveryone talking about making
their first million, but gettingto that first 100K is often the
hardest.
And then from there, you're just
really pouring gas in the fire.
So this is going to be a Freedom
Friday episode.
If you're looking for more
(00:29):
mortgage content, those are comingout on our Mortgage Mondays.
So let's get into it.
Yeah.
And just a quick side note too,although the title of this is to
make your first 100k, yes, that isfocused towards you if you are
looking for your first 100k inyour business.
But a lot of concepts we aretalking about here applies even if
you're at that 100K mark, ifyou're going to 200K, 300K, a lot
of this, we remind ourselves inour business to scale even further
(00:51):
as well.
So if you're sitting there
thinking, well, I'm already at100K, this episode will apply to
you as well.
100%.
So first things first, you need totake that hard look at yourself.
It's the look in the mirror.
It's not from a place of judgment,
but figure out exactly whereyou're at.
So write down every asset youhave.
Write down every liability youhave.
Write down the things you spendyour money on month to month.
Write down how much income you'reearning.
(01:12):
And don't judge yourself here.
Just lay it all out on a piece of
paper, on a whiteboard, whateveryou're using, a notes app, and
just get it all written down.
Yeah, and this is from a personal
side of things as well.
Before you're diving into the
business, whether you've started abusiness or not, we're taking it
slow here from the start wherewe're assuming you haven't picked
that business and you haven'tstarted seeing success with it.
(01:32):
Look at yourself from a personalperspective, what your goals are
in the future as well.
I know when I first started in the
mortgage business, I had a goalspecifically in mind for 100k,
which in our terms was 10 millionof funded volume that usually
equates to 100k in revenue.
So that was my goal right off the
bat.
And I defined that right away.
And then from there, it makes iteasier to really put into place
(01:54):
steps and plans on how to getthere.
So that's what I did personallyfrom a goal perspective.
Did you have anything you did froma goal perspective?
Or was more so like, hey, I'mgoing to write down everything, be
honest with myself with the thingsthat I'm doing right and wrong?
so I just I wrote everything out.
So I had that kind of picture of
who I was at that point.
And then I picked where I wanted
to go.
And then I just kind of reverse
(02:15):
engineered what does the personwho is there, what steps would
they take?And some of those thoughts I had
were accurate.
Other ones were just kind of
assumptions that were proved wronglater.
But at least it gives you adestination which to point the
ship.
the point of it is to really just
get your thoughts out and put iton to paper.
Exactly.
Once you have that on the personal
side of things, you want to getreally lean.
So if you're going out for drinkstwo nights a week, you're ordering
(02:38):
takeout all the time, whatever itmight be, cut some of that stuff
back, get as lean as you can onthe financial side.
And then that surplus is going tobe what you're pouring into your
investments, into your business,into growth.
You really want to reinvest intothe sides of yourself that are
going to grow towards becoming thekind of person that can earn the
100,000 or the kind of person whohas a business that's worth
(02:58):
100,000.
Yeah, and I know we just had an
episode with Angie Ross on theother week about the anti-budget.
And this kind of goes againstthat.
And for a reason, like I thinkthere is a time and place to
actually focus on your budget.
And this is the time when you're
about to enter a new businessventure, a new career path for
yourself.
You need to really get lean on
(03:18):
your personal expenses, cut outthe fat and just really be
prepared for it.
Save some money upfront if you can
and have a safety net as well.
If it's a line of credit or a
family member can bail you out,worst case scenario, it's a lot
easier to do it that way versusgoing to the bank for a business
loan, that's for sure.
Exactly.
And once you have this kind ofvision of yourself, you've trimmed
some of the fat, you're in aposition that's ready to work and
(03:40):
to start growing that business,start growing those efforts.
But it's really important that youpour your energy and effort into
the right vertical.
And that's number three is picking
the right vertical.
And I'll give you a perfect
example of this.
I had saved about $60,000 prior to
starting my farm and I reinvestedevery cent of the farm back into
growing it.
It was like over $100,000 and it
was the wrong vertical.
(04:01):
It was not moving the needle for
me.
As soon as I recognized that,
burned the boats and went all inon my mortgage business, I got to
100k quite quickly.
And then from there in a year and
a half, I've been able to morethan 4x that just by following
these principles.
this one's a tough one, because
you're not going to really know ifit's the right vertical until you
(04:22):
kind of dive in.
And with that being said, though,
there are steps you can takebefore diving in to make sure that
it is a profitable business.
I'm not saying restaurants aren't
a profitable business, but usuallythe margins are tighter versus
something like real estate or themortgage industry, something in
tech, like a tech startup, likeyou're going to have probably an
easier time because like a higherticket, like you get paid more
quite simply on transactions.
(04:43):
So I think picking the right
vertical is key.
Do your research upfront and ahead
of time.
I know personally for me, when I
decided I wanted to go intoentrepreneurship and start my own
business as a firefighter.
And at that point, I knew that I
wanted to start the business onthe side because I had time to do
it.
And I did some research upfront.
(05:03):
I was like, Hey, the mortgagebusiness sounds cool.
It's real estate.
It's something I enjoy doing.
And I know how much they get paidand they get paid well for what
they do.
So went ahead and I went into it
just from doing my researchupfront.
And I just got lucky the firsttime.
But if you don't get lucky thefirst time, don't worry about it.
And don't stop early as well.
If it's not working, it's easier
(05:23):
said than done.
Like the hardest part with
entrepreneurship is you don't knowwhen you're going to really hit
that breaking point to really goforward with your business and
start making money so that is thetoughest thing there but like i
said do that research up front andyou'll have an exactly and don't
be afraid though to pull the plugon something don't have a sunk
cost i'll see we talked about thisbefore too if you poured a ton of
time into something and it's notworking sometimes the best thing
(05:45):
is to let it go and that nextopportunity will come up and then
you can just go all in gunsblazing at that.
So number four, let's assumeyou've got the right vertical, you
know something's working, it'stime to build a bigger fire.
So think about everything as beinga log you're throwing on that
fire, improve your sales, improveyour marketing, improve your
communication, improve your socialmedia, all these pieces, that's
going to build a bigger fire.
And that's where you really need
(06:05):
to focus.
So while you're staying lean on
the personal side, those resourcesyou have, you want to be putting
in So what's an example that youdid like day one of getting the
mortgage industry?How did you figure out where
you're going to get those salesfrom?
And what did you really do to getthere?
so I figured out that realtorswere going to be my best referral
(06:27):
partner.
And kind of within our brokerage,
a lot of people were doing thisrealtor outreach at the same time.
And I noticed people were reallycelebrating like, if I had three
realtor meetings a week, and thatwould be considered a win.
And I just said, Okay, well, whatif I just did three realtor
meetings a day?Obviously that's going to shorten
the time horizon there.
And I went all in on that.
So I built a better presentation.
I did better communication with
(06:48):
them.
Anything I could do that kind of
gave me that slight edge overthose other people in the
brokerage, I poured all my energyand focus Yeah.
And to clarify, realtors are yourmain source of income because they
have clients to refer over to AndI did you.
the same thing to too.
realtors clarify, are your main
source of income because they haveclients to refer over to you.
And I did the same thing too.
I focused on realtors too.
(07:08):
And I just wanted to 10X theoutput that I was doing to get
more meetings because I knew themore meetings I'd have, the more
connections I'd make, the moreleads would come in that way.
So your main strategy was divingin on one source of leads and then
you just went all in on it.
I want to say I did the same, but
I didn't.
And I'm going to touch on that in
the next topic.
Yeah.
And before we go on to the nexttopic too, like let's touch a bit
on what we did to get those leads,because I think we can generalize
(07:29):
this for everyone listening.
It doesn't matter what industry
you're in.
Let's go through some of these
tips because it will apply to yourbusiness as well.
So in my eyes, getting leads is assimple, not as simple, but if you
break it down in its simplestform, it's just having
conversations.
The more conversations you're
having with people, the more leadsyou're going to generate.
So what would be the first thingyou would do going back to day
one, whether you did it or not?What are some of the things that
(07:50):
you've learned now that you woulddo back on day one to get those
leads coming in?Yeah, so 100% right.
A lot of people get turned off bythe idea of leads thinking that
that's incoming to them.
Really, it's conversations
outgoing.
The easiest way to get that going
is to start with someone who'swarm.
So say you reach out to everyoneon your contact list.
Hey, who's a realtor you used inthe past or you would use if you
(08:12):
were to buy or sell today.
They're going to respond.
Hopefully you then reach out andsay, hey, Tom recommended you and
says you're awesome.
I'm in the mortgage industry and
I'm just looking to grow mynetwork and share a bit of value
ads here.
Can we jump on a quick coffee call
meeting, whatever your next stepis?
And you have that warmintroduction there.
Once you have that base, I wouldthen say to take that and go to
that person and say, who's oneother realtor that you like
(08:34):
working with, or who covers yourbook of business when you're on
vacation, and you're getting thattriangle of trust now from someone
within the industry.
And then that kind of compounds
from there.
Yeah, I would do the same thing.
And how I would get there is buildup that list of people that are in
my phone.
So all of my contacts in there,
anyone on social media that areeither following me or I'm friends
(08:55):
with like on Facebook, Instagram,whatever platform you're on, like
just make a list, print them allout and then just start from A to
Z and go down the list and do it Xamount per day.
And that's what I would do.
I would start at 10 a day and then
scale up from there and then justkeep it.
Exactly.
And you can even do things if
you're like, I don't have a lot offriends.
(09:15):
I don't have all these people toreach out to.
And you're not like, maybe you'renew to an area and you only have
four buddies or not even fourbuddies.
Does anyone have four buddiesanymore?
Then it's a little bit trickier.
So then you have to figure out
what's another network you can tapinto.
So I'll give you an example.
It's like join a Facebook group
for dads or moms or dads,whatever, and say, Hey, who would
(09:37):
you use?Ask the same question, but just in
a different group, the leads aregoing to be a little more lukewarm
at that point, but it does givethat introduction that you can
have that conversation starterYeah.
And you're still in that warmcategory for leads too.
So it's all about making thattriangle of trust by doing that
method and mentioning the personthat has mentioned that other
person.
And the other vertical you can go
is cold by doing like paid ads,which I wouldn't recommend at this
point, because you're not even at100k.
(09:57):
Yeah, where's the funds comingfrom to pay for those ads.
So I don't even want to talk aboutthat.
And that's not even something thatwe do.
And I don't think we ever will.
Maybe as time goes on, we'll think
about it.
But we don't need to because we
have mastered the art of warmoutreach and partners that feed us
leads in our business.
So I wouldn't even touch cold
leads at that point.
Is there any other way that you
would do to start your businessand get leads coming in?
(10:18):
Once you have your first coupleleads coming in, you can then ask
that person, is there anyone elsein your network that you think
might be for our case, buying ahome, needing a new mortgage
coming up for renewal, you canstart to do some ask that way and
just kind of expand from there.
Really think about it from like an
onion from the inside going out,you're adding layer and layer upon
it, the bigger onion you can grow,the bigger it's going to be
(10:39):
Exactly.
All right, number five, pour gas
on the fire.
So what we mean by this is you got
to reinvest in your business andreally just don't get tempted to
improve your lifestyle.
So I know you have a personal
story with this, Yeah.
So last year around this time, I
was sitting with like over ahundred and something thousand in
my corporation account.
I had done really well on sales
and I had topped up all my RSP,TFSA, all the different accounts
(11:00):
investing were topped up.
I still had that nut of cash
there.
And I was like, part of me wants
to treat myself.
And I almost went out and bought a
new vehicle because I didn't havea car at the time.
So I was looking at like a newToyota Tacoma and I was like, this
is going to be sick.
But instead, I realized that's not
really in line with my principlesand where I want to go to get that
(11:22):
$100,000 to $500,000 to a millionand so on and so forth.
So what I did instead is I boughtmy friend's used 2011 Volkswagen
Jetta for $1,500, cost me HST,another $1,500.
So three grand all in.
And then I took that nut of cash
and I bought a cashflow generatingrental property.
And now it's just rinse and repeatdoing that.
Sweet, man.
Yeah, that's key.
(11:43):
And if you were to have boughtthat expensive truck or whatever
else you wanted, like that'sprobably one of the worst
investments you can make,especially at that stage from zero
to a hundred and just beyonddefinitely don't buy that fancy
car, man.
We see that all the time.
That's why I'm laughing.
We see that all the time with not
even just business owners, buteveryday people just financing
like ridiculous cars.
Yeah.
And this was not going to befinance.
It was buying cash.
(12:03):
But it's also a mindset of hedonic
adaptation, where if you upgradeyour life, every little bit of
income generation you get, you'renot actually saving more and
you're not growing your wealthgenerating that that way.
You're just improving your qualityof life.
So that requires to keep earningat that capacity and keep adding
more years and time to it, whichsure, we're not advocates for
retiring early necessarily, but weare advocates for having the
(12:25):
financial freedom to choose thetype of work that fulfills you.
what this podcast is all about,especially on the Fridays is
financial independence.
And to get there, a lot of the
times it's all about having thatcash that's being reinvested to
really get you to that FI number.
So why go out and buy all these
luxury things right off the bat?Unless you have the ability to do
(12:46):
it.
If you have a sustainable business
that's bringing in multiple sixfigures into the millions, then of
go treat But at this point in theyou shouldn't be doing course,
that.
yourself.
stage, I know that I'm doing ahard set rule there, but I'm
pretty biased on that.
From a business perspective, I
think this can go both ways.
And I'm a big fan of reinvesting
money in my business.
But I also do know that there is a
(13:09):
time and place to do it.
And there's also specific
activities that you should beinvesting in versus not.
So I'll give you a personalexample of me.
When I was starting in themortgage business, before I went
hard on building relationships andpartners, I thought YouTube was
the way to go.
And it's kind of ironic now,
because this is YouTube, we'reposting this on YouTube and we're
building a YouTube channel, butthat's because we have the money
(13:30):
to allocate towards a YouTubechannel.
When I first started, I did not.
And for viewers and listeners,
like starting a YouTube channelcan be absolutely free.
But if you want to do it proper,it costs money to do it.
And I was wasting a lot of moneydoing it.
And I had to stop after six monthsbecause I ran out of money.
And I was like, crap, I can't keepdoing this anymore.
(13:53):
Even though I'm having fun withit, it's going well, it's not
bringing in the leads I need toright now.
So I think picking the rightvertical and the right strategy to
pour your money back into yourbusiness is super key.
Yeah, exactly.
And you know what, hindsight's
2020 on that because once in awhile, your old videos does pop
off.
So it wasn't time wasted.
It made you better at your job.
And in recording those videos, you
got a lot more knowledgeable oncertain topics, but it wasn't the
(14:16):
right allocation.
Whereas now we have investments
that we make for our business thatwe find we get outsized returns
from what it costs us.
You had an example of a coaching
thing you just did recently.
And why don't you share a little
bit of that?Because I think it's had a big
impact on you.
Yeah.
So I'm in a coaching course orcoaching program for short form
content.
So not long form.
(14:36):
So it's all about Instagramspecifically.
And it's been doing really wellfor me.
I'm growing my following basethere, building on my social
presence, establishing our brand.
And I've had a lot of carryovers
to our business that I can sharewith Brandon.
So it was definitely worth myinvestment.
And even back to YouTube it wasn'ta complete waste of like you said,
too, money, because I learned howto speak on video, communicate
better.
And like you said, some of those
videos are still popping off,which is crazy to like me, two or
(14:58):
three years ago when I first didthem.
I just imagine if I didn't putthat money there and I just
focused on the other way ofbuilding leads I would have in,
had more money there and I justfocused on the other way of
building leads in, I would havehad more money faster and I would
have saved money from thatYouTube.
But I mean, like you said,hindsight 2020, you don't really
know until you try.
(15:19):
Exactly.
So to bring this all together, thelast point is to just let time do
its work.
And that's the power of
compounding.
So your investments are going to
compound year after year.
If you have things like investment
properties, you're going to havethe appreciation of the property,
hopefully, and then also theprincipal pay down of the loan
itself.
These things take a little bit of
time to work.
What you want to focus on is also
compounding yourself.
So we talked a lot about
(15:40):
reinvesting in yourself, but makesure yourself and your growth are
growing year after year.
So you're becoming that version of
yourself that can earn $100,000,that can earn $500,000.
And ultimately, the goal is tobecome millionaires plus.
And that's only going to happen byputting in the time, the effort,
and then just letting things waitand being continuous in the
effort.
Yeah, because if you're
reinvesting in your business tonot only like the assets on the
outside of the business, it's justgonna compound.
(16:02):
Like for me, I know when I made myfirst hire in my business, yes, it
was a hit right away and it was acost that I had to make, but in
doing so, it freed up more timefor me to pour more gas on the
fire.
And I was able to do that because
I had more time to do it, whichthen brings in more leads and more
money for the business.
So it really is the power of
compounding there.
And with every business comes
risk.
So I do want you to know that, the
(16:23):
listener and viewer of this, likenot everything is going to go
according to plan, but I think aslong as you follow these steps
here and you really focus on them,then you will see success and you
will get to that first 100K a lotfaster.
Exactly.
And if you're listening and you've
already made that first 100K, whatare a few things we missed?
Please share it in the comments.
Or if you're listening on Spotify
(16:45):
or a podcast platform, send us aDM on Instagram because we always
like to hear feedback on whatother people have done and how we
can share that with others.
So have a great week and we will
see you on Monday for MortgageMonday.
Cheers.
Exactly.
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