Ups and Downs of Real Estate Investing

Mike:Hey, everybody. Welcome back to the show. Today we’re going to talk about something that all accomplished real estate investors really need to pay attention to. And that is building a business that can withstand the ups and downs of your life. Today, my friend and guest on the show is Jake Chase.
And he’s had some health issues and other issues happened in his life, the types of things that really honestly happen to many of us. Unless you can build a business that can withstand those issues, then you’re going to only have financial ups and downs in your life. So it’s going to be a great topic. That’s what we’re going to talking about today.
Professional real estate investors know that it’s not really about the real estate. In fact, real estate is just a vehicle to freedom. A group of over 100 of the nation’s leading real estate investors from across the country meet several times a year at the Investor Fuel Real Estate Mastermind to share ideas on how to strengthen each other’s businesses, but also to come together as friends, and build more fulfilling lives for all of those around us.
On today’s show, we’re going to continue our conversation of fueling our businesses and fueling our lives. I’m glad you’re here. Hey, Jake, welcome to the show.
Jake:Hi, thanks. Thanks for having me.
Mike:Yeah. Good to see you, buddy. And we’ll get into this a little bit, but I’ll say, honestly, good to see you. Because I know you were having some health, going through some health issues which you’re going to share with us today. Really good to see you healthy again.
Jake:Yeah, absolutely. It’s nice to have health, that’s all you got.
Mike:Yeah.
Jake:You know, as you’re going, as you go through it.
Mike:Yeah. And it’s going to be . . . you know, I think I just told you, I told you kind of a little bit of a joke, a little bit in jest, and I think hopefully people will appreciate this that are listening right now is, sometimes some of the best lessons we can learn are from others, like what happened to them because you don’t want these things to happen to you. And you had not to steal your thunder but you had some head trauma from a ski accident that really put you in a tailspin for probably what? Like six to nine months.
And so at least six months. And so, just to kind of tee up the type of stuff we’re going to talk about today. And I just want to tell everybody real fast. I am an Airbnb in San Antonio, Texas right now. If you can hear any background noise, if siren goes by or something like that, I apologize. This place is an old building and it’s not very soundproof. So, I apologize for any quality. And that’s the last thing I’ll say about that.
So, Jake, tell us a little bit about your background. And you and I have known each other for a number of years, but tell us about your background and kind of how you got started in real estate investing. You’ve been doing this for a long time.
Jake:I started when I was actually a teenager. I was in high school and I had a friend and he owned 200 units. And I just remember always wanting to be that guy. How did he do that? How did he start out? How did he find the ways to start buying these properties? And that was when I was just a teenager.
And then when I was 19, I built my first house with my dad. And that kind of started the whole diving into the construction and the real estate, and figuring out how to make that work. And I wanted to buy my first fourplex by the time I graduated college and that came and gone. And when you’re in college you don’t really kind of focus on stuff like that. You want to play and have fun.
I belonged to a fraternity. And then, but it wasn’t till after I graduated and got married that I started diving right into real estate. And I remember buying . . . I was working for Campbell Soup at the time. And I was making $37,000 a year ago. I had a company car. They were paying all these things for me. So I was kind of hooked into it. But I bought my first condo and I put about $8,000 into it and flipped it five weeks later and made $42,000. So I made my year’s wages in like five or six weeks of work that I was making all year long. So I was hooked at that point in time.
And so that . . . sorry about that. That started was back in 2001. When I did that, and since then it just changed and evolved. And I started construction company and started doing that. And then I realized I was babysitting there for a while. So then I just started becoming a full-time investor. And then since then, I bought tons and tons of houses.
I’ve been involved with over 1,000 transactions throughout the nation and with myself. And it’s funny how you go through the ups and downs. And so throughout life and everybody who was an investor in ’08 felt that really, really deeply, and some of us more than others, but you bounce back and you come through it.
And as you were talking about too, I had an accident just this last spring. And because of the systems that I had in place and the people I had in my life I was able to weather that because, at any moment in time business, life, things that just happen and the world can take you down in a heartbeat, had the right structure.
Mike:Yeah. Let’s go back a little bit. I know you . . . We don’t have to get into a lot of details, but these are the types of life things that happen to people, health issues, going through a divorce. There’s these issues that happen in our life and sometimes, and I don’t know your situation. I don’t expect you to share any details on that. But sometimes people lose, you know, they might lose half of what they’ve built when going through a divorce.
I mean a divorce is a terrible thing to happen but it happens to a lot of people. And financially, it can be devastating for a lot of people too. And it’s just when those . . . What I want people to get out of this show is to meet you, and then just think about how to build a business that can withstand life because life gets messy sometimes.
Jake:Yeah. And so many times, and I’ll get prideful sometimes as well, too. And we think that we can do things ourselves, but just like the Investor Fuel as well too, it’s like when you have, when you’re surrounded by a bunch of people that do what you do and think like you do, you become so much more successful than doing it by yourself.
And like you talked about back in ’08 when the market crashed and I got through it, I went through a divorce, I lost my business what I was doing then when I was scraping all the way down the bottom of the barrel. When I started speaking nationally on real estate and teaching from that point on time that kind of, retransformed where I was at. But you can get knocked down at any time.
And that was in ’08, and since then I made it all back plus some. But it’s amazing when you have a life event happen. And if you have the right things in place, then you can actually weather all of that. I always like that saying that no matter what it’s going to be okay. It might not like the way that I want it or show the way I want it to, but most the time things are going to be okay.
Mike:Yeah. So, what are some of the lessons that you’ve learned going through these life things as much as you’re willing to share about them, about, “Okay. Next time, I’m going to do this.” And one of the things that we talk a lot about at Investor Fuel is building a better life.
It’s not just, it’s not always about being the biggest investor. Some of the biggest investors that appear that way on social media for sure are not that profitable, or there’s more, there’s some asterisks next to whatever they’re saying. And I just think, a lot of people I think some of it is because we’re in an industry that is centered around frugality. Like be cheap, buy cheap, try to get stuff done cheap, like all this stuff.
So what ends up happening is, we cheap out on the quality of our, I’ll say systems, but also people like this just like, “I’ll just do it myself.” Or that person is not very good at it, but I’m going to have them do it anyway” We don’t say that but that’s what we do.
So we tend to be frugal on our entire infrastructure which means it’s very fragile. So thoughts on that after having gone through at least this last incident where you had some health issues and you just couldn’t work at all, like period?
Jake:Yeah. You know, so back in the beginning of the year when I crashed, I crashed skiing, and I had a brain bleed and they took me off the mountain. And I complain because I had this awesome helicopter ride and I don’t remember any of it, that I paid for. And I’m like, “Well, particularly remembered it,” but there’s about three days of my life I don’t.
Mike:We were skiing together. Of course, I was never . . .
Jake:It was a couple of weeks before.
Mike:I was never with you because you’re like a master skier and I’m like, basically on the non-mat. I wasn’t on the bunny hill but definitely not where you were even. And it just happened, that was out in Salt Lake City in February. Your accident happened . . .
Jake:Two weeks ahead. Yeah about two weeks later.
Mike:Two weeks later, okay.
Jake:Yeah, two or three weeks later. And I actually ski fast. I’ve skied fast speed fast since I was a kid and I probably go about 65 miles an hour. And to me, it was nothing like a big challenging thing. It was just something I was doing. I was on some new skis and caught an edge and it slammed me down.
But what I took from that, and it changed, it really did. Because for a lot of my life, I was like one more dollar, one more dollar, drive, drive, drive. And since then, the biggest thing and most of us as you get towards our ages and you get older and we have kids, we have families and I remember traveling so much. And then my daughters were growing up without me.
And since the beginning the year my oldest, she’s 15 now, she calls me almost every single day. We have the conversations about boys and how things are in our life, what’s going on. And she told me, dad. She goes, “You know, Dad, I never thought I’d have these conversations with you ever.” She goes when I was 10 and 12, there’s no way I can trust my dad to tell him anything. And she’s like, “I tell you almost everything now.”
And so that shifted for me because it went from, it’s all about business to incorporating family and also loved ones and my relationship with people. They weren’t so disposable. And it wasn’t about chasing the next deal and being this boss that was just grind, grind, grind, and my way or the highway.
And you become a little more gentle. But it’s funny because I slowed down. That’s what life taught me. And I slowed down and since I’ve slowed down that I actually sped up. And I couldn’t have lost everything again after that accident. I couldn’t drive for several weeks. In fact, was almost a month I couldn’t drive my dad, he flew in from Utah.
And I remember asking him because I still wasn’t all there, and I said, “Dad, are you here for vacation or did you come out to see?” And he goes, “No, I came out to see you?” And then a couple of hours later I did, “Did you come out to see me dad or did you come out on vacation?” So I kept definitely repeating that for a while.
Mike:I came out within my team and I talked to you a few different times, and we’re like, it’s kind of like when I talked to my grandmother, and she tells me the same thing every time. But she’s like in her late 80s. So I was like, “Jake just said the same thing to me like three times.”
Jake:And so I think I just told you once. And then people would tell me things all the time. And I wouldn’t remember. Or I’d make commitments, that’s the biggest thing, is I’m a man of my word. And when I say something I do it. And so, that was probably the biggest challenge for me is, because I would say something to somebody and I wouldn’t remember I told them.
And so, especially in work. When you’re out there trying to work and make this happen. At least, thank God my team was understanding and could really be in place there. And what it did is everything just really slowed down. It almost came to an end for us over the late spring and summer there, until my cognitive started working again.
It’s you amazing how long it took to get going. And back in August, the end of August, I got introduced to some testing and they did some things on my brain and I realized I wasn’t getting enough oxygen to repair things. But when I have that corrected it was like I woke up. It was like I was sitting lying in bed and all sudden I woke up, and I was ready to go.
And all sudden, my staff on my team, they’re like, “Wow. The old Jake’s back but a better Jake.” And so I don’t know if it was because I was more caring or what it was but all of a sudden, and all of a sudden it’s like the floodgates in September and now October have opened up for us, like deal . . . the deal flows are starting to go like crazy.
And mainly, we have systems in place, but it’s like, “Well, we need to have more efficient systems.” Because in business when you’re going and especially in real estate, we call it being a lumpy business, and I’ve experienced that I’ve been up and down. I’ve been up and I’ve been down.
And one thing that we’ve really honed in now too is taking that lumpiness and just really make it nice and stable. And I don’t know that is becoming up my age or just the experience that I’ve had because you get tired and lumpy after a while.
Mike:It’s a little bit of both. When you go through . . . you know, we all know people that went through a health crisis that they, yours was an accident like unavoidable. But I mean, unless you just didn’t go skiing, but then something else could happen. You get hit by a car accident or something.
Jake:Car accident.
Mike:Some people eat bad, they have weight issues, and then they get sick. They have a heart issue or they have cancer, other things that they presumably probably could have had a little more control over, so what’s going through that health issue, then all of a sudden they’re different. They’re like, it took that happening for them to take action, which is not a good thing and I’m guilty, we’re all guilty of kicking that can on the road.
Jake:Takes a crisis to make a change.
Mike:Yeah. But the question is, is in your business, how do you build a business that can weather those storms? And, my guess is, it was a combination of your team picking up the ball, just picking up things that they had to do, that they didn’t normally have to do.
Probably for me, my business tends to operate a little bit better when I’m awake because I’m not in there causing problems. Or breaking things that were fine before you know. So it’s probably a little bit of element of like, your team just focusing on basic fundamental blocking and tackling, which is a lot of what his business is really.
Jake:Absolutely.
Mike:Yeah. And so, give some guidance on, and I’m not . . . I’m not saying and it doesn’t sound like, it sounds like you’ve got wisdom from this that you’ll do differently if there is a next time. God forbid, hopefully, there’s no next time. But how do you . . . and the people that are listening right now, how do you give them some guidance on building a business, whether it’s through simplifying your business model, it could be through having the right people in place, systems, processes, all that stuff so that your business, if you’re away, maybe you’re on vacation, even. It doesn’t have to be with [inaudible 00:13:49]. Maybe you’re away for an extended period of time, and the business can still operate without you.
Jake:Yeah. So the biggest thing that I always tell people, and I’ve mentored hundreds of students over the years. And one thing I would say anybody that came to me and it’s funny because I’m mentoring a gal right now that started at the beginning of the year and it’s good that she’s been patient with me. But she’s bought seven or eight homes since the beginning of the year.
Where another gal came to me and she’s like, “Let me try it out myself first and then I’ll come and have you mentor me.” And she hasn’t bought anything. So the first thing I tell people if you want to get into something, get a mentor. I know you have an amazing program that you have that you teach people as they first come into real estate and mentor them as well, too.
And the thing that I realized too, is I can’t do this myself. And I always tell people, “If you go to buy a property that’s a fire damaged house and you’ve never done fire damage before, don’t do it. Go find somebody that’s done fire damage before, partner with them and then you’ll learn the process as you go through it.
And so when you’re setting this up, and you’ll gain experience. Whether you’re brand new and you don’t know anything, and you’re learning it, but what happens is as you go through time, and you get the experience, then you start having people that can start being, buying houses for you and that can actually be on the phones, making phone calls for you.
The number one thing in my life that has really saved my butt is having a really good assistant, or somebody in my office that watches me, watches out for me, takes care of me. Sometimes I don’t like it because I don’t like to be managed sometimes, but I need to be managed just as well.
But when you have something that’s up and running, and I’ve gone on countless vacations. In fact, the last couple of years, people sort of think and said, seems like you’re gone more than you are in your office working. But that changes. So it’s as you build a system in place that makes it happen and gives you the freedom to do what you want to do.
Mike:Yeah. And I think, for people, if anybody’s listening to this, a lot of the people that we interview on the show here, they’re all Investor Fuel members. So they’re people that are operating generally at a pretty good level. So, if you’re newer, one of the challenges is getting your business to the point to where you can pull yourself out of it.
Because when you’re new if you’re doing a deal. Even if you’re doing a deal or two a month, you can’t, you generally can’t afford any staff. Any money you’re making, you’re putting in your pocket or putting back into advertising. And so you just you have to have a business that is scaled up to make any of this work because you can’t have an assistant, you can’t have a salesperson, an acquisitions manager if you’re doing a deal or two a month most likely.
I mean, if you’re in Northern California where you’re at and the margins are really high, maybe. But my point is, is unless you have a business that’s profitable enough to outsource some of your tasks then you just have a job, in the event you get hurt or have some issue that pulls you away.
Jake:Yeah. I remember early on, I had this condo I lived in, and had a yellow window in the kitchen and it was dark. I was at the kitchen and the living room downstairs and two bedrooms upstairs. And it was dark and I hated it, but that was my office, and it was just me. I was waiting for phone call to ring. I tried making phone calls. I had a little notebook that I kept track because before the electronic CRMs came out and everything else like that. I was writing everything in the notebook and I put B if it was a good buyer, with a big square on it. And I managed it all myself but at the beginning I hustled. You have to hustle. And when you’re out there you’ve got to be putting yourself out there.
And the hardest thing is, is you will get in the way of you because when you’re out there talking to people, confidence is a big thing that you need to have. And so when you have the confidence, even if you don’t know everything right now, if you exude that confidence, you bring a level of comfortability with anybody you’re dealing with, and who’s coming to talk to you.
And that includes people that are selling their houses, and that’s where you get the biggest deals, is actually when you’re in the home at a kitchen table talking to somebody about their home. And we bought stuff on the MLS through realtors, and the deals are there but they’re just not as big as . . . there’s a few ready to do that as well too. And so that comes with time.
And so, like what you’re talking about, if you’re new getting into this and you’ve got to start somewhere, you’ve got to be your assistant, you’ve got to be a bookkeeper. You’ve got to be the salesperson that goes out there and talks, and you got to be a disposition manager and you’re trying to sell some way or the other.
Investment clubs are a fantastic venue to go to as well too because there’s people out there buying and selling homes all the time. A lot of them have programs they try and sell but you go to the ones that actually that they actually present properties. And then I always go and find out people in the room who bought five or more properties for that year at least. And those tell you the players out there, and then that’s where you start talking to people, and saying, “Hey, can I just show you. Can I just ask you a couple of questions? Can I take you out to lunch? I’ll buy you lunch. And can I just pick your brain?” Because any one of us who’ve been doing this for a while loves sitting down with somebody new coming into the business and taking over, “I’ll take a free lunch any day.”
And so, and you can call that and stuff because you owe [me 00:18:45] the last couple of months here. But anybody with knowledge loves to teach it. And I come from a place of abundance, and there’s tons of stuff out there that you can go out there.
Mike:For sure. Yeah. If you’re listening to this and you’re doing even a couple of deals a month consistently it’s not . . . units don’t really matter, ultimately. But I’m just kind of saying that the type of margins you would make in the average market off of two deals a month or less probably isn’t enough to build a team yet.
And so, that’s where a lot of people say they want to get in . . . They want freedom, they want financial freedom and freedom of your time. If you’re not making enough money to support a staff, then you don’t have the ability to enjoy your life. Enjoy your life.
I’m not saying that your life sucks, but you can’t just go take off for a week or go disappear. Or if you have a health issue and you’re forced not to work, you can’t whether those storms because there’s nobody else there to do the work that you’re doing.
Jake:Exactly. And it’s funny too that you say that. And you and I both know people in the Investor mastermind that started out doing one or two and within a year they were doing 100 homes plus. And it’s amazing that’s how fast it’ll grow, especially if you have the right people in place that you can go and talk to you.
“Hey, I’m going this direction.” “Oh well. I wouldn’t do that.” Here’s the roadblocks and the mistakes that you’ll make. And it’s amazing how fast it’ll change in your life by doing a little bit of work.
And so if you look at it that way, say, “Hey, I’m going to hustle as fast as I can for this next year and just work my butt off,” it’s amazing by which you can build just in a year, and then all of a sudden you have the [study 00:20:19], you need the staff. Because you can’t handle everything. You’ll grow out of it. You’ll need to add all that stuff into it.
Mike:Yeah, no doubt. And for those of you, we’re kind of on a tangent now of talking about growing ramping up, which is a good one. That’s what we talk a lot about in the Investor Fuel mastermind. But I think I think switch when you realize that one, I don’t have the freedom in my life that I want of time.
And two, when you start to look at people and systems and investments in your business, like the structure of your business as an investment instead of an expense. A lot of us are quick to spend a lot of our time doing something or to invest money in advertising which is critical to generate leads.
But we’re like, we hold back on people and stuff because we just . . . for some reason we’re just like afraid. It’s expensive sometimes but the question is, what will that cost you if you are not able to scale your business to a point to where you could step out for at least some short period of time.
Jake:Yeah. You know what’s funny about that as well, too. And I think you just said a word that I don’t know if everybody heard this or not but it’s called fear. We get it, we’re afraid that’s not going to work. If you throw out a bunch of money, or we throw out a bunch of time, that it won’t work because you don’t trust it yet.
It’s like when I remember teaching students, I’m like do your first house first and don’t do anything else because students will get excited and they’ll want to do a couple of them. “No, do your first one so you can see that you did it. And then you got to do number two because you don’t believe that you just did number one, so you’ve got to prove it to yourself. Then you do number three because now you have all the systems, you break out all the kinks. And if you screw up, you only screw up one house, not five in a row. And then you can go from there.”
But it’s like when I had a construction company there for a while, and I had 11 employees, this is right before the crash. And I [lied 00:22:05] . . . same thing, I lost everything. Now I went from all these employees who were doing tons of remodels a month. We were probably doing 6 to 10 remodels of different houses every month. And so it was just cranking up the business.
And then everything crashed and investing. I had all these homes that I had to try and get out from under that we have had out there at various stages of rehabs, and I’m short-selling this one over here, and I’ve been foreclosed on one of my hard money lenders, and I said, “You’re never going to do business with me again, are you?” And he goes, “No. You’ve made us another . . . a lot of money, and so we’re going to keep using you.”
And so that changed. Then I went through that divorce. And people don’t realize that when life kicks you down and knocks you in the teeth, you can get up. And in fact, you get up stronger. And you find people in your life that match you that can actually guide you in a different direction so you don’t have to go through that again.
And that’s probably been one of the biggest things for me is, I never want to go through what I went back in ’08 ever again in my life. And that power and that thing that came up for me that installed that knowledge in me, it just made me a better business person and a better person, just in life in general, that way I can do things differently.
And now since my accident this last year, it just really got me in line of smoothing things out. And we talked about being lumpy, I just realized too, as investors, we take the cream of the crop a lot of times. Who’s calling us, and who are we chasing. But the biggest thing especially if you’re by yourself, you’ve got to have a really solid backup system that you can go and do all your follow-ups.
Because if you’re not following up, you’re not chasing these leads that you’ve already come to you, you’re going to miss out on a lot of this stuff and that’s what stabilizes your business, is all of the follow-ups. The lumpy business comes because “Oh well. We got some luck this month and the right people called us to buy these homes,” but if you keep doing all the follow-ups.
And that’s why I had the little notebook. And that’s what made me really successful at the beginning is, I had this notebook that every time I’d go through every week and say, “Okay. Who’s my Bs?” We’ll just square around it and who do I go call? And that really just started growing my business incrementally. And that was just me.
Mike:Yeah. And as you grow, you start to not get to those things quickly enough. And that’s why that’s where systems that get people come into kind of.
Jake:Exactly. And it takes time. And so what happens is, is that people will come into your life to have a better system that you’re using or something different. You’re like, “Oh, let me try that.” Some things work and some things don’t. And the biggest thing for me that I’ve learned is that having the right people surround you, give you the right information that you need at the right time.
Mike:Yeah. No doubt, no doubt. You know we believe that. So, if you wouldn’t mind, Jake, I guess, if having the right people around you, you’re a member of our Investor Fuel mastermind. Would you mind kind of share a little bit of testimonial on what it’s been like since you joined?
You have a lot of experience and you came to . . . I don’t know what your expectations were when you join the group. I’m curious if you could give listeners a little bit of feedback if they’re not a member yet.
Jake:Yeah. And it’s kind of funny how I found Investor Fuel, really through you, Mike. And I belonged to another organization and just did some advertising for me and it changed and it wasn’t working the way it did. And so when I found you guys, it was amazing. And the systems that I found in place just really started scaling my business in a different direction. And my results just skyrocketed. And then I could track everything. I didn’t know exactly where things were at in my business before.
The thing that really stood out for me for Investor Fuel, because really, when I first came into the Investor Fuel, do these guys really care about me or they’re just here just because they’re running this mastermind.
But it was Stinson, I have to tell you, that was the really the cornerstone. And he came . . . I remember after my accident, he came to me and said, “You know, Jake,” he said, “I know you’re struggling right now. You’re not coming to meetings.” He goes, “But I look at you as one my good friends.” I was like, “Really?”
And so when he came to me, and he came to talk to me says, “No. I really care about your success and that’s what happened and evolved for Investor Fuel, is that not just you guys that run Investor Fuel but the men and women who are a part of that group really care about each other’s success.
And a lot of times as business owners we want to keep things to our vest and hide them, and no, here’s what I use, but we really have this abundant mindset that share with each other on that as well too. So, it’s amazing to me to be a part of the group that not one just has tools, but also they really care about my business, my success, and my health.
And I don’t know how many times Stinson called me because I don’t remember all those times, what conversations that I had with him. But I just remember it seemed like weekly he’d follow up with me, “Hey, how are you doing? Are you healing? How are things going?”
And I remember there for a while, a couple of times I talked to him and I was like, you’ve got to go hospital. I got to do all these testing, and I have something going on. I might be having a hard attack. I had all this anxiety there for a while. And he was just always there for me. And you guys seem to show up and be more than there. And when you’re building a business, and when you’re building it there, you don’t have to do this alone.
And that’s what Investor Fuel is for me is I don’t have to be alone trying to make this thing work, especially when life events are happening. And life events happen to all of us. And so Investor Fuel took my, not just my business. Like I said, after the accident, my business changed. The way I thought about it was not one more dollar on my dollar.
It’s like, how do I run the business and have integrity in it, but also this abundant mindset that I can give back and grow along the same way?” Like I said before, I slowed down to speed up, it’s really weird. I never knew that would happen. And so that’s where the Investor Fuel is for me.
And this is going to be my first meeting coming back to see you guys again after a little about three or four months now, so I’m excited to actually be back in and sit down with you guys, and see what the tools are out there and to really see all my friends and that’s what it’s all about is there [inaudible 00:27:57].
Mike:Absolutely. Jake, thanks for sharing. I appreciate it.
Jake:Absolutely. Absolutely.
Mike:I will say on the note of friends, I mean, we say that this is becoming kind of a cheesy cliché now, but entrepreneurship and I say real estate investing is really probably entrepreneurial businesses like ours, it’s lonely. You get out there and you’re doing stuff. And it’s like, it really helps to get around people like us that understand what we’re all going through because we’re all going through the same things.
Jake:Yeah. Absolutely.
Mike:Good and bad.
Jake:Well, you know it’s funny that you think that you’re the only one that experiences something and then you come and you tell people like, “Oh, I’ve been through that.” They’re like, “You have?” You know, like, “Yeah. This is how you get through it.” And then somebody will say something that’ll click and I’m like, “Oh, wow. That’s it. That’s all you do to get through that little challenge, whatever it is?”
And that’s what’s nice to have people put pieces in place that you wouldn’t even think of being alone like that. And being an entrepreneur is not easy.
Mike:Yeah. I think small businesses to where we’re these type-A personalities where we’re just like, a lot of us want to figure out on our own because we’re just natural problem solvers. But you tend to not have people in your life every day that are around you every day that are also problem solvers that you respect their opinion.
And so when we get the group together and you have a problem, you’re like, “Well, I had that, too. Here’s how I fixed it.” And you just, you almost don’t really hesitate to trust and believe that that that can work for me. And so it allows us to implement stuff way faster because like the impetus of this entire show, of learning from other people’s life issues and things like that, it’s the same thing.
It’s like business issues, somebody’s been through that, somebody’s dealing with it right now. “Oh, yeah, call this guy, he can help you with that.” Whatever it is we just iterate much faster because collectively we’ve been through so many things.
Jake:Yeah. That’s where it started out with the Investor Fuel. I didn’t have a lot of systems coming in because I had a system that did everything for me for the last six years. And things have changed. Things have changed in advertising, how things work. And so I just remember contacting you and contacting Stinson, and I go, “Call this guy. Oh, call that guy. Call this guy.”
And this is before I even attended any meeting, and before I came to any Investor Fuel event. So it was really nice for me to actually start seeing that happening beforehand as well too. And when people give you those little snippets of things, it really transforms your business and what’s coming up next for you.
Mike:Yeah, no doubt, no doubt. So, Jake, if folks want to learn more about you or get ahold of you, where could they go for that?
Jake:Absolutely. The easiest way is at homeiqpros.com, so that’s a little over here. So, at homeiqpros.com. You can reach out as well there and my staff here can get ahold of you.
Mike:Awesome, homeiqpros.com. We’ll add a link down below in the show notes too.
Jake:Yeah. There’s one on Facebook too. So facebook.com/HomeIQPros. We’re on Facebook as well.
Mike:We’ll find that. We’ll add all these links down below in the show notes. And awesome, buddy. Well, glad you’re healthy again. Looking forward to seeing you next week actually at Investor Fuel.
Jake:Pleasure, man. I really enjoy being here. Thanks, Mike, for having me.
Mike:Take care, buddy. Good to see you. Take care. Everybody, thanks for joining us for today’s show. Hope you got some value out of that. Life is going to happen to us but it’s just really a matter of how you prepare to withstand those issues. So, hope you got some value. If you did, we’d love it if you subscribe if you haven’t yet on iTunes, Stitcher, radio, Google Play, YouTube, everywhere and anywhere you could possibly listen to a podcast or watch a show we’re probably there.
So wherever you watching us right now, leave us positive review and subscribe if you haven’t. Of course, you can watch every show that we’ve done so far on flipnerd.com or investorfuel.com. Everybody have a great day and see you on the next show.
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