Do What Drives You

Hey, good morning, everyone. Welcome back to the show. Today, I am going to talk about living a life of meaning and passion. I’ve changed a number of things in my business lately, and I’ve done quite a bit of travel, had a lot of chance to reflect on living a life of meaning, and just want to share those lessons with you.
Welcome to “Real Estate Investing Secrets.” We’re all looking for freedom and the opportunity to live better, more fulfilling lives, but most of us were trained our entire lives to work for someone else and chase their dreams. How can we use real estate investing as a vehicle to achieve financial freedom? My life is dedicated to answering your real estate investing questions and helping you build an investing business that allows you to change your life and the world around you, and to enable you to turn your dreams of financial freedom into a reality. My name is Mike Hambright from flipnerd.com. And your questions get answered here on the “Real Estate Investing Secrets” show.
What’s up, everybody? Hey, just wanted to share some lessons. I’ve been traveling quite a bit, and here we are. It’s already August, and I’ve done quite a bit of travel this summer and been super busy working behind the scenes, and late at night or whatever has to get done. Really, honestly, I’m launching a new business, but it’s not all that different from what I’ve done in the past. However, I think it’s going to revolutionize the industry. I’ll tell you a little bit about that. This isn’t meant to be pitchy. But really, I’ve just had a lot of chance to reflect on everything I’ve done over the past 11 years, and kind of living a life of meaning. And for those of you that know me, we’ve maybe had this conversation before, or some variation of it. And, you know, there’s a lot of hype on social media about real estate investing and the hustle, like all that stuff.
And I work as hard as anybody I know, but I’m not in this for the hustle, right? I think if you’re trying to do what Gary V says . . . I like a lot of Gary V stuff, but, like, working your face off that, that’s not what any of us signed up for. And there’s a guy that I know that has had a pretty decent level of success. And I saw him out, you know, recording a video, putting bandit signs up the other day, and it’s like, “Dude, that’s, like, a $5 an hour job.” So, if you’re celebrating the fact that you’re doing a $5 an hour job, there’s something wrong with you. Like, you got to reflect on what this is all for. Right?
So, as I kind of reflect back in the early days, I mean, don’t get me wrong, when we started our business, we were in survival mode, like, fired from Corporate America, had a new baby, had no insurance, like all that stuff and dwindling savings quickly because we were just burning it. We had no income coming in. We had to work hard for a long time. We’ve worked hard for years, right? But it’s a different kind of hard.
Like, I’ve been thinking a lot about what drives me. And everybody asks, “What is your why?” And I’ve had a hard time answering that, truthfully, for a while now. And I could say it’s for my family, and everything I do is for my family, but I don’t work this hard for my family. Like, they don’t need me to work this hard. I don’t have to work as hard as I used to anymore. And so, that really isn’t my driver. And if I say that, and if you’re saying that, and you don’t have to work as hard as you used to, then, you know, you need to reflect on that a little bit because that may really not be what’s driving you.
And it’s not money anymore, either. Now, don’t get me wrong, I love money, I love to make money. Everything I do has to ultimately make money, has to have a business case behind it, but it’s not about the money anymore. This is not about survival anymore, and we’re fortunate for that, but we work really hard to earn that.
And so, for me, if I reflect on it, and I’ve had a lot of time to, I’ve been listening to some Tony Robbins stuff, and it’s really about serving other people. It’s about living a life of meaning, but through serving other people one way or another. And I’ve done that for a long time in the coaching space. I do it now through Investor Fuel. Our Investor Fuel Mastermind is next week in San Diego, so we’re really pumped to have kind of about 150 people from all across the country out there. Next week, it’s going to be an amazing time.
But through the Mastermind, I’ve been able to help other people kind of act the roles an advisor and a connector to highly accomplished real estate investors. For new students, I’ve done this for a long time for helping people to get started. And the truth is, is I have coached a tremendous amount of successful people. But the reality is that there’s a lot of people that have failed in there too.
And that’s probably one of the things that’s been making me reflect on this a lot lately is, sometimes, you know, I’m just disappointed or don’t have as much joy in coaching new people, specifically, those that . . . You know, we have a blueprint, like, “Do this, this, this. Here’s exactly how to do it. Let’s meet every week. Let’s get together physically in a room every month.” We have something called Fly in Friday, where people fly in from all over the country. And we have a room full of people just answering their questions.
And those that take action, those that show up to those things are fantastic. It’s the ones that disappear and make excuses why they can’t get started, and all that, that I hate. And that, honestly, it’s part of the industry. It’s part of human psychology of people just throwing money at something, you know, buying a gym membership and never going, despite the fact that we say, “This is hard work. You got to show up, you got to work hard, you got to do these things, you got to follow the system.”
You know, life gets in the way sometimes, and sometimes people just, they don’t want it bad enough. And what I found over, you know, almost 10 years of coaching, people that have done thousands and thousands of deals, honestly, it’s that I can’t want it more than they want it. And so, I will say that I find absolute joy in folks that have come in and been able to leave their jobs, been able to achieve that financial freedom, which is offsetting their income. I love that stuff.
And so, one of the missing links that I’ve had for a long time, and I’ll just kind of share with you what we’ve been working on. One of the big things we’ve been working on and, of course, we’re always working on improving the things that we’re already doing is . . . You know, I’ve never really partnered with people in my real estate investing business, other than my wife, and I have lots of great friends and lots of members of our Investor Fuel Mastermind, that are partners. And I’ve toyed around a lot with partnering with people, the idea behind it, what is the value that I add? What would I need them to add? And it’s really been kind of tied into virtual investing going into markets and maybe lots of other markets.
And so, one of the missing links that I have known of for a long time, but was just difficult to kind of pull off, is handling the things that the average real estate investor is, one, not good at and doesn’t do it consistently and two, hates doing, right? A lot of the front end of the business of consistent lead generation, which is absolutely critical to this business, and really any small business, finding new customers and all the upfront administrative burden, that’s a pain in the butt, being on call to answer calls for people that just say, “Take me off the list or who the F are you,” or whatever?
And it’s a burden, just being on call. Like, it’s something that I had to live with for a long time before I used VAs and had a team to outsource that, before I could scale to that level. But when you’re small, you know, a lot of times, you can’t justify an admin up front to do all that. And then, of course, some of the really hard stuff to do that is a little less competitive, so you have a competitive advantage if you crack the code on it. And that is mass generating leads from hustle tactics like cold calling, text message marketing, driving for dollars, like all those things. It’s easy to order a bunch of mail, not easy, but relatively easy. What’s a pain in the butt is managing all the lists.
So anyway, you know, I’ve been working on this model for a while that really is for more experienced investors, those that have been doing deals, and we’re formally launching it. We have formally launched it. I have brought in some, we call them members, and we’re effectively partnering with them. So, we have an advertising agency where we generate leads for them. And we make their phone ring. We take all the calls up front. We do all the lead intake. We manage the CRM, all the systems, another thing that we’re a lot of real estate investors get hung up on is setting up systems and using them properly. And so, we manage and maintain all of that, all that front end, every single seller that calls and says, “Take me off the list or I’m just trying to save my realtor commission,” and all those things, like, our partners will never see that. So, we refer to them as members because it’s a co-op. But effectively, we run the front end of real estate investor businesses.
Now, we’re piloting this, literally, as we speak. Our lead generation, our advertising agency has already been working hard to get this going, but on August 1st, which is the time of recording this is tomorrow. We flip the switch and leads will start coming in for our member partners. Here in the Dallas-Fort Worth market, we have seven-member partners to start, and we’ll be adding some more. And we’re going to start growing this. I mean, honestly, the word of mouth has spread a little bit that we’re doing this. And so, we already have people all over the country that are inquiring about it. So, it’s super exciting.
I can call it a beta test, but I have absolutely 100% confidence that we will hit a couple of speed bumps and we’ll work through them, but this will work. We will have a partner named Jason, that some of you guys will meet eventually on the show. I’m going to start talking about this more and more. By the way, we call this whole thing The Investor Machine. I’ve used that brand in the past for some of my high-end kind of coaching programs, but we’ve recycled that brand. So, The Investor Machine, theinvestormachine.com, if you want to learn more about it.
But my partner, Jason, runs the agency side and I run a whole bunch of other components of the business. We don’t have to get into that. But my point is, you know, we have this dialed into where it will run with more precision than what any individual investor is able to do. And so, in terms of fulfillment, I mean, there will be money to be made, all that, no doubt, but it’s a way for us to help experienced real estate investors like nobody else is doing. Nobody does this.
There are advertising agencies that will order mail for you. There are agencies that will run your pay per click. There are contractors that will do your SEO, all that stuff. We bring it all together. We’re a full agency for every component. We literally hire driving for dollars. People in the markets that are driving around capturing addresses, we’re skip tracing them and text message marketing, and cold calling them. Nobody is doing that for other people, right?
And so, we know that we’re really onto something here and cooperatively, all of our members come together in a community to share ideas of what’s working now and things like that. So, pretty exciting because, you know, in the coaching space, everybody and their brother is a coach. So, I’m always up against, like, “Well, this guy I’ve never heard of that’s done four deals is charging less for his coaching program.”
Okay. And with masterminds, I love Investor Fuel more than anything that I’ve ever done, nothing is changing there. We have relentless focus on creating an amazing experience for people. And really, that is my second family. And so, this is a way for us, through The Investor Machine, to help real estate investors unlike anybody is doing right now. There’s no competition, other than people doing it themselves for the most part.
And the truth is, there will be competition, right? Somebody will try to crack the code on this. But the execution of this is very difficult, very difficult. It took the unique experience that I have, from building a national system in the past and building large communities of people, and running an agency that Jason has. And, you know, just finding the right mix of people to pull this off. And so, pretty excited about it.
What I’m going to do is I’m recording this right now, I’ll put it on Facebook Live. But also, this is a podcast, a show that we share on “The FlipNerd Real Estate Investing Secrets” channel. And in shows ahead, I’m going to document how this is working. Right? What do our lead generation efforts look like. Let’s do some case studies on first deals. Let’s talk to some of our members and see how they’re doing, all in an effort to try to help you in your business. And so, we’ll share what’s working and what’s not working, and keep you up to date. So, this is the most exciting thing that I’ve worked on in quite some time.
And I’m really excited to have . . . You know, I like to create, if you haven’t figured this out already, networks and communities of people, and some of it stems from . . . You know, I was talking to somebody else about this the other day, when you have a certain level of success, I’m not saying any of these things to brag, I’ve been very blessed. We’ve worked really hard to build our business. And what makes it hard now is, it’s hard for me to create, maybe this is me. My wife and I’ve been talking about this. We just did a really long road trip earlier this week, last, I guess Sunday. Back from Colorado, we drove to Texas, and we talked a lot about just, like, we don’t have a lot of friends to hang out with. I mean, that’s going to sound crazy to some of you that are listening right now.
I have thousands of acquaintances. I go to any sort of real estate event and people that I don’t know or don’t recognize, know who I am. That’s cool. And I like that. I appreciate everybody. And I have a huge, huge network and I’m very blessed for that. And I have lots of good friends that I would do anything for, but not enough of the type of friends that it’s like, our families are traveling together, we’re going to dinners together. We’re hanging out on the weekends together, all that stuff.
And I have lots of very good friends and we have friends in our neighborhood, but it’s just different, partly because I’m an entrepreneur, and many of them may still have jobs. You know, partly because if I say, for example, “We just got back from a week in Vail,” and they’re like, “Didn’t you just go to Europe the month before that for, like, a month?” Like, “Yeah.” “Didn’t you go snowmobiling in Yellowstone before that and ski trip before that?” And yeah, “I’m sorry.” So, sometimes I feel like just talking about my life and travel, especially travel, all the things that we do, a lot of people can’t relate to that unless they’re self-employed and they have a successful business that enables them to do that.
And so, sometimes it’s hard to jell well with people. And so, truthfully, one of the things that I’ve done, if you kind of look at all the networks I’ve created is these networks are loaded with my friends, people that I love and would do anything for, people that I trust, and would help in any way I can ever. And so, you know, absent of me having this amazing network of close friends here in my community, not that I don’t have any friends, by the way, I have lots of friends, but it’s just different, right?
Like, I jell well with people that get me and they get the entrepreneurial struggle. and they’ve been through it too. And we all have, you know, arrow wounds in our back and we can talk about how we’ve overcome that. There’s a different level of respect, when you’re around people like you, that have overcome some of the same obstacles, people that were willing to risk it all and constantly risk it all, for something bigger and better than what they have today.
And so, anyway, as part of The Investor Machine, I will help a lot of people through that struggle and we’ll help each other. I learn from everybody I work with, even if they have less experience than me for sure. And so, it will bond us in a way like Investor Fuel, or some of the other things that we’ve done.
So, you know, this is my signature, between Investor Fuel and The Investor Machine, I’m happier than a . . . Well, I was going to use a little off-color. I’m pretty happy with the way things are going. I love my life. And I started this by saying to live a life with meaning. If you don’t really know what your why is, and not to sounds kind of cheesy and cliché-ish there, figure it out. And it might be serving other people. It probably is not about serving just you, because that gets old.
And so, anyway, if you want to, if you’re watching this on Facebook or if you’re not, we’ll add a link in the show notes. Comment down below on what drives you to live a life of meaning. It could be giving back to your church, any charities you’re involved with or interest that you care passionately about. It could be helping other people. It could be all those things right?
But I feel like too many real estate investors on social media and in real life are very self-serving now. It could be a lot of them are, at the very beginning of their business, actually, that is probably true to some extent. And they’re in the hustle and grind of survival mode. But I will challenge those, if you’re listening to this is that will die off quickly. If you have any level of success, you’ll quickly realize that this cannot be about you. Truthfully, if you’re buying from other sellers, distressed sellers, you have to solve their problems. It can never be about you.
So, anyway, that’s all I’ve got for now. Thanks for joining me. Comment down below in the notes as to what drives you and motivates you. And back to the friend thing, if you’re ever in DFW or you’re going to any events that I’m going to be at, hit me up, I’d love to grab coffee or a beer with you. It’s hard for me to do that and just pull away in day-to-day life. But when I’m out at events, and out at like John Martinez’s Sales Academy, other things that you might see me at. Let’s definitely hook up while we’re there.
So, appreciate you a bunch. Have a great rest of the week. Stay tuned for more on The Investor Machine, in terms of how our experiment is kicking off here. And thanks for following along. Have a great day.
Thanks for listening to today’s show. There are three ways I can help you start or grow your real estate investing business. If you’re a new investor and just getting started, the FlipNerd Investor Coaching program is the most effective program in America. I’ve been coaching and mentoring new real estate investors for 10 years, and my students have literally purchased thousands and thousands of properties. Many of them started with little to no experience at all. Our program is a paint-by-numbers program, where we tell you exactly what to do week by week to make sure that you don’t get distracted on your way to results. We show you how to build a real business, not just create another job for yourself. New memberships are limited. You can learn more and apply or schedule a call with me and my team at flipnerd.com/coaching.
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