Show Summary
Pete Asmus joins to talk about how to move beyond excuses, and how to create a mindset for success. We discuss how to build and nurture long term relationships that become the foundation for your success, and how to position yourself for success by providing value to others. This message can change your life…don’t miss this show!
Highlights of this show
- Meet Pete Asmus, investor, author, speaker, radio host, and more!
- Learn the importance of taking action to make your dreams happen.
- Join the conversation on how you can become the person you wish you could meet, and attract more opportunity than ever.
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Listen to the Audio Version of this Episode
FlipNerd Show Transcript:
Mike: Hey, everyone. It’s Mike Hambright with FlipNerd.com. Thanks for joining us for this episode of the Expert Interview show, where I interview leaders and entrepreneurs from across the real estate investing industry. This is our second show of 2016, so welcome back to the New Year.
And if you’re actually seeing this for the first time, welcome for the first time. And if you’re a member of FlipNerd.com or you’ve been watching or listening for a while, welcome back. We’re happy to have you here with us.
Again, just the second show of 2016. This is episode number 286. I, really up until these past couple of episodes, never really talked much about the episode numbers. But it’s something that we’re proud of here. So I’m going to start talking about it a lot more.
Inherent in that number 286 is that we have 285 other great shows that you can go watch, of course after you watch this one with Pete, because this is going to be the best one ever.
Pete: Ever.
Mike: But I’d like to note a few changes. I had noted this in the last episode, as we started the new year here, and I want to say it this time for the last time, is that we have a little bit different format, if you’ve been watching or listening for a while, and that is that we’re going to focus a lot more on taking action and it’s something that Pete is extremely passionate about.
So I know that he is in the right place today. In fact, if you’re watching us here, if you’re listening, you can’t see the tattoo, but if you’re watching this . . .
Pete: It says “Go make something happen.”
Mike: It says “Go make something happen.” So Pete believes in it so much that he’s got a tattoo on his arm about taking action.
Pete: That’s right.
Mike: So we split the show up into two parts. The first part is to get to know our guest a little bit, and with Pete, we’re going to talk about kind of a mindset for success, which is just a great thing that you could talk about any time.
The second part is really, we actually called it “Taking Action” where Pete is going to share with us today how to take action, here’s something that we’re talking about and go do something about it. It’s something that’s really critical in this industry because there are a lot of looky-loos, if you will, and so don’t be one of those. We want you to be successful in this business.
The second thing I want to mention is that we’ve gone to one episode per week instead of two, so there’ll be less shows this year. But we’re going to do our very best to improve the quality and really talk a lot about taking action and stuff that you can go do something with actually.
Pete: Actionable information, right? AI.
Mike: That’s right. And the third thing, the last thing I want to mention is that even though we’re going from two to one episode per week, if you haven’t already checked it out, we have a new show that we launched a couple months ago called REI Classroom. And we actually publish two short shows, which are really lessons a day, two a day. That’s 40 a month that we publish, two a day, Monday through Friday.
Pete: Are you kidding me?
Mike: And if you are not already watching or listening, check out the REI Classroom by visiting FlipNerd.com/classroom or look for REI Classroom in iTunes or whatever podcast network that you listen to, because we’ve got them everywhere.
For today’s show, that was a mouthful, I’m joined by the one and only . . .
Pete: Hold on, you’re pushing out two episodes a day?
Mike: Yes, Pete.
Pete: That equal between 10 and 15 minutes on lessons.
Mike: Pete, I saw that you had a tattoo on your arm that said “Go make something happen” and I did it.
Pete: Me? I can’t even imagine the amount of work that goes into putting that together. I mean I remember doing 5-minute videos every day with my daughters and editing them down and it would take me half a day to do. I mean I can’t believe that you’re doing two of them. But man, if I had a hat, I’d take it off to you.
Mike: I will say this, we’ve got a process down that we’re comfortable with, and it all comes down to having just really awesome guests. I’ve never been on the REI Classroom myself.
So we actually have a process now where we record guests that we’ve had on the show before generally. So high-quality guests that have great information to share, usually they’re people that are at the top of their game and so lots of great content there on the REI Classroom.
Today though I’m joined by the one and only, Pete Asmus. Pete, how are you, my friend?
Pete: If I was any better, my name would be Mike Hambright. I think that defines kind of how good I’m doing right now.
Mike: Awesome. Hey, I’m so glad to see you again and thanks for coming back. As I mentioned, I actually mentioned this in the last show if you didn’t hear it is that we’re probably going to have a tendency to have . . . you’re going to see some familiar faces on this show.
We’re going to have guests on that we’ve had on in the past, not always, we’ll have some new folks. But when you’ve done 300 episodes, you start to come across people that you want to work with again on one, and actually Pete is going to talk about building up long-term relationships that you can rely on over and over again in the Taking Action part of the show.
But also quite frankly, we have people that just have great content and rather than go always try to find new people, we’re like, “Hey, we’ve interviewed Pete before, but we did not find out everything that is Pete Asmus and everything that he can share with us in 30 minutes and across the whole year. So we need to have Pete back.”
Pete: That’s right. I agree with that. When I looked, it was April 12th was when I was on your show last year. So it literally has been I think like nine months since I’ve been on. So I’m excited.
Mike: Nine lonely months.
Pete: It has, I’ve been waiting by my phone for it to ring again, going, “Hey, you want to be on the show,” and it’s just ah, it’s been so . . . but I’m here now so I’m extremely excited about that whole thing.
Mike: Hey, happy to have you back. So Pete, tell us for folks that don’t know you, tell us a little bit about you. What makes you tick, my friend?
Pete: Well, I was going to say I’m unique. I think that everybody is unique, but I think my wife would really think and argue that I think a lot differently than other people.
I had a lot of things happen when I was growing up. I was homeless. I lived on the streets and I’ve really kind of fought through all of that. One of the things that you can’t make me afraid of is being homeless. I’ve had everything ripped away. So that bottom wasn’t there for me.
But when it came to really creating wealth, I knew that my grandma had done real estate. My dad had done real estate and so I wanted to acquire and own real estate and I started getting into it a little over ten years ago. I started in mobile homes and then rolled over into real properties, and really I always wanted to be successful.
I always wanted to make it. I wanted to be rich. It was all wants. And the reality is, until you take something out of the want and into the do, until you take it out of the want and into the need, out of the want and into the must have, it just sits over there. It’s just an idea. It’s a great thing if some day, it would be great if it was convenient, and that’s really the biggest thing.
In the last issue that we did, I had our pastor write an article on convenient versus convicted, and it just . . . man, I’m getting goosebumps right now because I wrote this article with him, because he was like really freaking out to do it and I said, “Look, I’ll write a skeleton. You just add on another 200 words to this thing and it will be great.”
And so we did that but what it really talked about was the difference between an employee and an entrepreneur almost. I mean it was a difference between somebody that would do something, if they were paid to do it, if it made sense, if it was convenient, and somebody that was doing something because there was just no other way to do it. I mean they couldn’t think of another way.
I can’t imagine Mike Hambright not owning FlipNerd. I can’t imagine Mike Hambright not being an entrepreneur, not being a home investor, not having years and years of success in real estate because that’s what Mike’s DNA is.
You working at McDonald’s just isn’t going to happen. We’re not going to see you at 60 being a greeter at Walmart, and not that there’s anything wrong with that. But that’s not you.
Mike: Yeah.
Pete: And I think that DNA is within people. I’m sorry, go ahead and talk.
Mike: Yeah, one thing that is interesting Pete is that and I’m not taking anything away from anybody that does anything else. I’m not trying to talk bad about anybody, but what you just said was interesting because this is one of the things that I think is interesting about an entrepreneur, and I’m not trying to pat myself on the back or say anything but . . .
Pete: You are awesome, I agree.
Mike: I am awesome. End of sentence. That’s not what I was going to say. What I was going to say is, the interesting thing about entrepreneurs is after you’ve tasted success, after you’ve had that, you could have everything taken away and be back in a month. So there’s not many people that when you get to that point where you know I need to take action. I have an idea and I need to go execute it, otherwise I’m going to be a greeter at Walmart and again, not taking anything way from, if anybody who is listening is a greeter at Walmart.
Pete: That’s great.
Mike: And in fact if you are, let’s . . .
Pete: Maybe you should call in right now . . .
Mike: . . . help you figure out how to take more action so you don’t have to do that.
Pete: You know what, one of the coolest moments in my, honestly in this whole career has been, I mean since 18 to now, and I think I said a little bit of this in the first interview with you, but I’ve got a cool ending for it now. Was in the beginning, a year ago I think when I was talking to you, I remember listening to, in the very beginning when I was 18, listening to if you help enough people get what they want, you’re going to get what you want . . . Ziglar, right? Zig Ziglar.
And I heard somebody else talking about that recently and they talked about that same exact quote. And I remember when I was young, it was always, “Man, I don’t know anything. How can I help anybody else get what they want when I really don’t feel like I have a skill set. I don’t have anything. I can’t create it.”
And then through all this time and all this effort and all this work and all these failures, I mean failure after failure after failure after failure, I was able to stack all of those up and create success. I was able to create a product and that was the first time I became an entrepreneur was when I created a product, because I think that’s the difference.
A lot of people think they’re an entrepreneur but they’re a wholesaler. And yes, you have your own type of business but you don’t really have a product yet. When you create your own product like our turnkey system, it’s a product now.
So I can make five of these and sell them and I’m going to make X number of dollars on each one, and as long as my product is really high in quality, as long as my product comes in under what other people’s do, I’m going to run the market. I’m going to be able to control it because I’m making less money but I’m going to get a lot more volume and with that volume comes referrals.
FlipNerd, you’ve gone from I don’t even remember what it was, a year ago. Do you remember what you guys were at as far as a year ago?
Mike: We had not launched the site a year ago.
Pete: Yeah, that’s what I’m talking about, 50,000 members now?
Mike: I think like April or May with zero members.
Pete: So 50,000 . . .
Mike: Actually we had like ten test accounts. We were like, “Hey we’ve got ten members.” Well yeah, my wife’s got through and I’ve got a couple.
Pete: Right, yeah. They’re all ghost accounts. But see that’s the idea. By FlipNerd taking action, by you getting involved, by you creating a product, you are able to go out and as that product was good and people saw that it was quality, it exploded. It expanded. Fifty thousand in less than a year, that’s huge. Nobody grows that fast by accident. You grow that way by design, by having a great product, I’m sorry, go ahead.
Mike: Yeah thanks Pete. No, and I don’t want to make this show about me. You and I know what . . .
Pete: [Inaudible 00:11:08].
Mike: You and I know we’re awesome. Let’s not rub it into everybody’s face. Okay, but I think your point is well taken and I think I know in the Taking Action part of the show, second part of the show, we’re going to talk about building relationships and things that will . . . kind of building a foundation for your success.
And a lot of that is kind of what we’ve done here and what you’re doing with a lot of things is building that platform and a network from which to kind of serve others. And so I think let’s talk a little bit more about that and we can talk about specifically how others can do those things.
In terms of, I want to hear more about your story, about just the mindset . . . because I think a lot of people are in that situation where they think that “Well, I don’t have anything to give.” And you and I both know, probably the biggest thing that people could give if they don’t have, let’s just say relevant experience, industry experience, is hustle, because there’s so many that don’t have it.
There’s so many that are thinking about they’re going to get to it forever and ever and sometimes just having that hustle is, I mean that’s one of your biggest assets, right?
Pete: It’s huge. So mindset to me is everything. The questions that you ask yourself, I wrote a book called “The Question Factor,” and really the first quote I have in it is amazing to me because it was all about the questions we ask ourselves, tell us what we think we’re capable of.
Look, if I say to you, “Mike, I’ve got a deal. It’s a million dollars but it will net you ten,” and I mean let’s just pretend for a second that that’s a legitimate deal. You would ask the first question, “Where am I going to get the million dollars?” But most of the people would say, “I don’t have a million dollars.” They don’t ask the question, “Where can I get it?” They don’t start to look. They just go, “I don’t have it,” and change the subject.
Mike: Here’s why I can’t do it.
Pete: Yeah, and they just give themselves all the stacks to back up why they aren’t good at it, why they can’t do it. And now, you’re not become a liar so you prove yourself right.
Mike: Right, you won.
Pete: It’s just crazy.
Mike: And lost.
Pete: Yeah, so with mindset, for me it’s all about making sure that you understand that anything is possible, that you can do anything, just not everything.
Mike: Yeah.
Pete: We’re going to be talking about leveraging and relationships in the next half, but really what that comes down to is putting together a team around you that can support your ideas and lift them to the next level.
Now you don’t have to be an idea person. You could just be the person that maybe gets things done, but your idea is you want something bigger. You need to be around other people that want something bigger so you can all have a value add play.
We’re writing a book right now called “The Velocity of Money: How to Raise a Capital in any Market” and in fact I might be interviewing you for one of our chapters in that. And the reason that we’re writing that book is because there’s a lot of people right now that are brand new in real estate. They want to get involved. They want to do something but they don’t have any of the foundations.
They don’t have money. They don’t have the knowledge of the product. They don’t have deals. They don’t have any of that stuff. So in this book what we’re going to show them how to do, is how to set up, how to leverage and how to raise money by utilizing people that are doing it.
So for instance, I can come out and help them raise money for maybe a project we’re doing but they’re going to make that overwrite off of it and it gets them involved and gets them in. Does that make sense?
Mike: Yeah, absolutely, awesome. Pete, why don’t you maybe just take a minute, I want to move into the other segment here, Taking Action in just a minute. But talk a little bit about, I think one thing that keeps people from taking action, again a lot of people, and I do this and there’s certain areas in my life where I do this, and in real estate, and in some of the things I do in my business, I’m on it usually. But stuff like . . .
Pete: I’m so excited about this interview.
Mike: I need to get to the gym or something like that is like, I’m going to get it and so whatever. I’m calling myself out here. But the reality is that some people, they find a way to make excuses in some area of their life. So specifically where I think a lot of people get into trouble in this regard of getting into real estate investing is that they have a job.
“So I want to start trying to do something part-time and then I’m going to hopefully eventually quit and be a full-time real estate investor.” The problem is it’s tough to get going in real estate investing on a part-time basis. Plenty of people have done it but it’s hard. It’s even harder if you’re just trying to ease into it because you have this mindset of, “Well, I’ve got this cushy paycheck or something that is at least reliable,” and you . . .
Pete: Comfortability.
Mike: . . . you find yourself doing stuff on evenings and weekends, and some people have family, and there’s always reasons. But maybe just take a minute to talk about how you bridge that gap if you have a job and you want to do something else.
Pete: Pain. It’s pain. It’s the craziest thing but it has everything to do with pain. We move away from pain. If you don’t want to do something, make it hurtful. Make it painful. You want to quit smoking, start associating really bad things and nasty things with smoking. Make it painful.
That’s one of the biggest things. If there’s one key that I really have understood and learned, it’s making decisions quickly and it’s almost like a red light, green light, does this get me closer to my goal? Look, if you really want to go after it and you want to do it, you start living your life in like the game Red Light, Green Light, when we were a kid, right?
Mike: Yeah.
Pete: Somebody said red light, you stop. Somebody said green light, you were moving. This is the same type of thing but with decision making. It’s red light, green light. Look, does it get you closer to real estate investing, yes or no? No, don’t do it. I’m going to watch, I want to go to the football game. Does it get you closer to real estate investing? No. Don’t do it.
As you get bigger, you’ll start to get creative, “Well I’m going to invite a friend that could be a potential investor to one of these games.” Hey, in that case, go for it, right? But always be networking.
Look, if you’re going to do anything, there’s no reason you can’t do something with somebody that you enjoy being around and somebody that could potentially be an investor, somebody you can potentially do business with. I mean I definitely have some friends that don’t invite me over to social events sometimes because they’re like, “Look, all you talk about is business.”
And they’re right. I mean they are because the moment I meet somebody, if they’re brand new, the first thing I’m going to do is “Hey Mike, what do you do?” And you’re going to say what you do. Great. If you could do anything in the world, what would you want to do? And that’s when I’m going to find out because I want to find what your hot button is.
Look, if you say, “I would want to go and dance naked in Africa,” that’s not something I’m interested in. We probably don’t have a whole lot in common.
Mike: We can’t help that person out.
Pete: Right, I can’t. But if you said, “Man, I want to get more. I want to own my own business,” like I’m just looking for different things that I can basically hone in on and go, “I can help you with that,” because my thing is all about adding value to those around me.
Mike: Awesome. So Pete, I know you’re going to share some Taking Action tips with us here today. We’re going to talk about building repeat customers, kind of building your foundation for success in your business. Take us there my friend.
Pete: Okay. So everybody always talks about the key to success, the key. There’s a million keys. It’s like golf. There’s like 50,000 things that you have to do correct. But one of the biggest things that you definitely have to do correct is building relationships.
There isn’t any company out there that’s one person. Not one. I mean even when you’re talking about music and people that are individual singers, they still have a group of people behind them producing the music, to market the music. I mean there’s teams involved. So to think that you can get where you want to go by yourself is crazy.
Now here’s the other part, you don’t want to have to shift teams every year, do you? I mean when we look at getting to know people, when you look at building a really solid foundation with somebody, it takes time. And if you take a year to develop a relationship and then blow those people out and take another year and blow those people out and take another year and blow . . . in five years, you’re going to still be starting all over again.
When somebody else that really focused on their brand, on their word, on following through, they’re going to be five times ahead of you because their relationships are going to be so solid. Does that make sense?
Mike: Absolutely. Yeah, a lot of times and especially in real estate, is you spend so much effort getting to that point to where you could do business with somebody. Right?
Pete: Right.
Mike: So if you can narrow down having to build that over and over and over again, every time you do something, irregardless of what you do, in real estate or really anything, you can kind of take away that period of building the relationship and building up that level of trust and then you just transact over and over and over again. So it’s lot more efficient and a lot more fruitful.
Pete: Well think about this, what about the people that spent all the time, energy and effort to acquire an investor, right?
Mike: Yeah.
Pete: You’re bringing him into your system and then you don’t follow through, you don’t communicate with them and you blow them out, right? So really you spent all that time and effort to bring somebody in to not have them as a repeat customer. That’s crazy to me. That’s crazy.
Mike: Yeah, it’s interesting. I see this a lot. I’ve talked about this a million times to my wife and internally here of just contractors, like somebody that we go use, they don’t know how many houses we’ve done or that we do. We do quite a bit of volume and I represent people that do a ton of volume, almost a thousand houses a year.
But people, they come in and they like do a one off and they never say, “Can we work together again?” Or “Hey, well I haven’t heard from you in a while. Do you have any business or anything we can talk about?”
Literally, it’s like 90% of contractors are that way. They never ask for the next job or if you go dark for a little while, nobody ever calls and says, “Hey, I notice we haven’t talked in a while. Is there something we did wrong or do you have any other opportunities we can talk about?” It’s really crazy how few people do that.
Pete: A lot of times people are focused on right now. The goal to make money is thinking right now. The goal to be wealthy is to think later on, right? That’s why cash flow is really about wealth and flipping is about, I guess if you wanted to say it, being rich, because you can make money right now. You can have a ton of money right now in your hands, but being wealthy means that you still have it coming in, in ten years. That’s where the cash flow comes in.
And so for me, when you talk about building relationships and long-term relationships, people that buy cash flow properties don’t buy just one or two. They end up buying a lot over time, right?
Mike: Yeah, absolutely.
Pete: So it’s cultivating that relationship and I think that’s one of the biggest keys is, truly treating other people the way that you want to be treated, and I know a lot of people say that but when it comes down to it, they don’t. They don’t follow through. You know what I mean? They’re not communicating. You should over communicate. When you’re talking about communicating with an investor, you should over communicate, not under communicate. Over communicate.
Mike: Right. I’ll give this example, and maybe you can share some examples too Pete of building up relationships with people, and I’ll give you an example here. For those that are watching the video, you’ll see this and if you’re just listening, I’m going to just tell you what we’re doing here.
When I speak in front of groups that I’m coaching or involved with one way or another, I talk about networking, the power and ability to network. In fact I wrote an article in your magazine about the thing and I have, what I can see here, I don’t know if you can see this, I have a stack of business cards that are sitting on my desk here.
Pete: Okay.
Mike: And I give the story of hey, how many of you think you’re good at networking? Go to REI club events or other networking groups. I basically say, “Hey, raise your hand. Everybody raise your hand and don’t put your hand down until something I said doesn’t makes sense anymore.”
Pete: Okay.
Mike: Go to networking, you meet a bunch of people, you get a bunch of business cards, stick them in your pocket, come back to your home or your office, wrap a rubber band around that pile of business cards, throw it in the drawer and never to be seen again. It’s like the abyss.
And I used to do that too, and I think a lot of people say, “Hey, I’m good at networking,” but what they’re saying . . .
Pete: Look at how many cards I have.
Mike: They’re good at going out and actually shaking hands and meeting people. Of course one of the challenges with those networking events is, if you go out and you meet 50 people and everybody meets 50 people, how do you stand out? Now Pete, your personality, you’re such a good looking guy that you stand out. People don’t forget that.
Pete: I would agree with that.
Mike: But you know what I’m saying. You’ve got the sole patch going on. You’ve got a shaved head, all that stuff and you’re very good at remembering people too. But some think that that is networking is the act if I shook their hand and I met them, and I would argue that it’s the follow up. It’s building a relationship over time.
Pete: You met 200 people is what you did and in fact it’s so ineffective, it’s not even funny because if I grab that list of cards right now and I would open them up and go, “Tell me anything about all these people,” you may remember a few of them. But man, if you’re holding 50 cards, there’s no way unless you do a few things, there’s no way you remember things. So here’s one of the things that you need to do.
Mike: Yeah, give the tips.
Pete: I hardly ever bring cards with me. I don’t bring them. Why do I need a business card? What’s the point of a business card? I’m asking you, what’s the point of the business card?
Mike: Yeah, I think mainly I would say, one, people feel this obligation to, well, “Here’s my business card. Do you have a business card?” But two, is just to obviously have the contact information from somebody.
Pete: The contact information, right?
Mike: Yeah.
Pete: Now let’s say I give you my information and you’re all excited about who I am and I’m excited about who you are, and then you meet 50 other people, goes in a rubberband. Do you remember me? Do you remember any of those aspects? No and now you lose the card. So now if you do remember me, you’re like, “Where is that one card?” And you can’t find it. I don’t do that.
Mike: It’s got a rubber band around it.
Pete: I take my phone and I go to contacts and I go and I hand my phone to them and I say, “Here you go, if you want my information then go ahead and put your information in my phone. I’ll text you right now with my name, my phone number, my email. So that way we have a record of everything,” and then I add them once they put themselves in my phone, in Notes, I make a note about them. And it’s really simple.
And then when I go back through my phone, I can now know as I’m going through, I can see the notes on them and I retain them a lot better. The other thing is using a thing from Infusionsoft that you could take the card and you just go, and you take a snap, a picture of it.
Mike: Snap, yeah.
Pete: And it throws it into your data.
Mike: And there’s some other tools out there for that. I haven’t really used but I know there’s some other tools out there for taking a picture of business cards and popping them into basically an autoresponder, which is pretty cool.
Pete: Yeah.
Mike: I would say whether you do that or whether you even do it manually is, and I agree with you, is one thing that when I meet somebody that truly I know there’s something there that I want to follow up with this person, is I take a little note on the back of the business card. Here’s what it’s about or whatever, because that’s one of the things I’ve always told people, follow up.
In the real estate business for example is, when you meet somebody, let’s say a seller. We deal a lot with direct sellers in my business is, don’t just say “The ARV was this, repairs were that.”
Take notes about the person. The grandmother was sick or they were really a big Cowboys fan. Those things, because when you follow up with people over time and you know they’re a Cowboys fan from two years ago and you say, “Hey man, I know you’re a huge Cowboys fan. You must be pretty disappointed right now.”
Pete: Right.
Mike: And they’re like, “Oh, I can’t believe you remember,” but you make these connections with people and that’s how you stand out is, you’re not only memorable but they can’t believe you remembered them, right? You’ve touched a nerve there.
Pete: And they do business with people they know, like and trust.
Mike: Yeah, absolutely.
Pete: If you talk about them, people will really like being talked about. It’s kind of crazy. The other thing that I do is when I go to a networking event, I don’t focus on trying to meet 50 people. I just don’t. Even when I went to the REI Expo, I wasn’t trying to meet 500 people. My goal there was three people. I looked for three quality contacts that I’m going to build a relationship with and move forward with.
And if you go to one event a month and you were able to build three people out of each of those events, you’re going to have more business and more follow up than you have any idea what to do with, and it’s going to be quality versus quantity.
Mike: Yeah, talk about that because I think so many people focus on quantity. They want to just meet mass people, especially this day and age of the internet and shows like this. It’s like how do I touch the broadest amount of people possible?
Pete: Well shows like this are awesome because what they allow you to do is, I mean everybody gets to know Mike. It’s prolong exposure. I mean this is a phenomenal way.
Mike: Sure, but I’m saying it’s easy for people to just try to have, we’re friends on Facebook. You have all his friends. It’s funny when you go out and look at people that are your friends. You’re like, I don’t know.
Pete: I don’t know them.
Mike: It’s so easy to become friends or like somebody or something on social media or whatever. You just need some old school networking skills in your toolbox, right?
Pete: Yeah, because you need to actually talk. I mean there was a point when I kept avoiding phone calls, like I hated people. I hated talking to people on the phone. I just didn’t want to do it. I was doing radio shows and I was doing this. So I ended up funneling everything to other people. Well the problem with that is I didn’t know what was going on anymore. I lost control of the data.
And so now I have it where anything that you do, the last thing it does is kick you into my schedule, hey, would you like to set up an appointment with me? And I make all of these calls and since I’ve started doing that, because of the personal touch with all of the investors, I’ve just gotten a huge influx of not only deals but money and all kinds of opportunities right now.
Mike: Sure. Talk about maybe things you can do, and I’ve got a couple of . . . this is little bit of a softball that I know I can participate in this conversation, things you can do to stay top of mind to larger groups of people. And the one we’re talking about, the one-on-one relationships, the smaller groups and sometimes there are things you can do in larger audiences to kind of stay top of mind.
Let’s just say, if somebody is looking to lend money, if somebody has a deal that they might be interested in, how you kind of stay top of mind to where when they come across that thing that you ultimately want, that you’re top of mind instead of the sea of other people that they meet.
Pete: That’s going to really be on content that you deliver, by them seeing a value in who you are. So one of the things that I love about FlipNerd is that everything you deliver is . . .
Mike: I’ve got to tell everybody, I did not pay Pete to keep giving . . .
Pete: No, no, I’m just saying it’s just real . . .
Mike: Pete, what do you want? What is it that you want Pete?
Pete: Look, they’re listening to your show. I mean they obviously think that you’re great. So I’m just validating what they already know. I can say me and one of the great things about my . . . Now I don’t remember what I was going to say. What did you ask me? What was your question?
Mike: Talking about how to be memorable. How to position yourself as top of mind when somebody has something that you may want.
Pete: Adding value. The more value you add to people, the more they’re going to think about you. I found that when you put money in people’s pockets, they end up really liking you a lot. It’s just crazy how that works. But the same thing happens with knowledge. That helps them acquire money.
So adding value consistently to people. Look, I’ll send our emails and I’ll say, “Hey look, we have this for right now. You work with this company too. We have zero percent financing that I got hooked up with.” So always trying to find value adds that you could add to other people that you know that they need.
And not something that you’re looking at just trying to make money off of, but truly adding a value to them, whether you make money or not. Because as you do that, people are going to notice that and they’re going to start coming and they’re going to reciprocate. You just do. You do something for me, I automatically want to do something for you.
Mike: Yeah, one of the things I found is just by bringing people together, I’ve always been . . . I won’t tell any stories from high school or college, but I’ve always been the guy that likes to throw the party. So I like to bring people together.
Pete: I love that.
Mike: But even in the real estate space I like to bring people together. I don’t have a REIA club. I guess I have a big club online here, but for example, I just put in place a monthly happy hour in my market here but I have a bunch of people that I coach. I have some friends.
Pete: Yeah, the happy hours. I mean the people drink all the time in Texas I bet.
Mike: Yeah, yeah. But I mean a monthly happy hour where we get together because I will say, you’ll understand this that I don’t have a tremendous amount of free time. I have family things and I have a bunch of businesses and I’m always starting something new. But all the time people are like, “Hey, we should get together. We should get together.” And I’m like, “Well, let’s just all get together. Let’s just have a happy hour” and you show up or you don’t.
But it’s a way for me to socialize and get a chance to talk to a broad array of people and it’s a chance for me to connect people that I think have some reason to be connected. And of course if I’m the instigator of all that then ultimately that pays dividends to.
Pete: It absolutely does and even if it doesn’t pay any dividends right now, people realize, “Man, last time I went to his event, I got this. Last time I went to his event . . .” you know what I mean? And so you do an event. They want to go and that’s it. It all comes down to providing value.
Mike: Sure, anybody can do that and that was meant to be a tip. Anybody could do that. You could, with Meetup and Facebook groups and all these things that are out there, you can be that person. Now don’t start a Facebook group that you make 500 people that you admin for and the next thing you’ve got 20,000 members and it’s just full of spam and porn and everything else.
Pete: Yeah.
Mike: Really do one that’s effective that people get to actually get some benefit out of.
Pete: Absolutely. Even doing a podcast. I mean anybody can do a podcast now. It’s so easy just to record a show and then throw it out there.
Mike: Even a monkey like me.
Pete: No, that’s not what I meant.
Mike: Pete, come on.
Pete: But if they’re developing a database, that a podcast is a lot easier than a newsletter maybe, for them to produce. Now if they’re better at writing than speaking, then maybe they do the newsletter. But again, if you want to grow your relationships, if you want to grow your opportunities, you’re going to want to build a database and provide value to that database consistently.
Mike: Yeah, and we have some big improvements coming in this regard. I’ve never actually plugged this before but I’ll even say, I believe in this so much that we have actually inside of FlipNerd, I don’t know if you know it exists Pete, is we have something called Journals, FlipNerd Journals.
So people can build their own blogs, blogging platform inside of FlipNerd and we have . . .
Pete: That’s awesome.
Mike: And we have a lot of traffic on the site so you can share, you can actually put videos, you can put whatever you want. So people can kind of basically create awareness of themselves across our own platform and people that are doing well, we put them on our newsletter that goes out there with 50,000 people now. And so there are platforms out there to kind of build your brand and add value by sharing great information and that comes back around.
Pete: Absolutely, well I think you guys are number two on iTunes or something for real estate. I can’t remember but I remember seeing it. You’re not brand new anymore at this point. You’re almost like a kind of a [inaudible 00:33:18], which is a great thing.
Mike: We’re going into our teenage years.
Pete: Yeah, that’s a great thing.
Mike: I appreciate the lessons here. Is there anything else you want to add about taking action? You’re big on taking action, that folks can do that are kind of actionable, that they can listen to this and say, “That’s a great idea.” I think we just shared a couple of things, but it’s a great idea, I need to go do this. Any kind of final words of wisdom here?
Pete: Yeah. Stop procrastinating. If you want to do something, you want to do it because you want the reward. Do you want the reward later or now? Everybody wants it now. We all want the reward now. But what we’re not willing to do a lot of times is putting the work now to get the reward later. And the reality is, if you want to change your life, if you want to get definite results, any of that, start now.
Monday doesn’t matter. Beginning of the month doesn’t matter. Tomorrow doesn’t matter. What matters is right now because until you make that flip in your mind that no matter what, you’re going to get that result, you’re going to always have an excuse that will prevent you from getting there.
Mike: Awesome Pete. Thanks for sharing.
Pete: That was a good quote right there.
Mike: Yeah. Hey man, tell us how folks can get a hold of you, how they can learn more about you? I know you’ve got, I didn’t mention this upfront, but you’ve got a real estate investor magazine that’s Investor Quarterly, right?
Pete: Yeah, Investor Quarterly, yeah, I have that. We have a website called The Turnkey Investor and then you can always, if you want to get a hold of me, you can either text me at (951) 505-8303. You can email me at [email protected] or you can book an appointment at any time at BookPete.com.
Mike: Man, I can’t write that fast.
Pete: That’s pretty easy, right, BookPete.com, boom.
Mike: That is easy. I think you should have said that one upfront. I could have written that faster.
Pete: Okay. So just go to BookPete.com because it has my website and it has my phone numbers.
Mike: We’ll get links for all the stuff on the show notes here for those of you that are interested. So Pete, hey thanks for joining us and thanks for sharing your words of wisdom. And Pete likes to say it too, what do you like to say Pete?
Pete: Go make something happen. Tell me when you’re going to cut because I’ve got one more special surprise before you do it.
Mike: Oh I haven’t cut yet.
Pete: I know, that’s why I’m saying before you do, don’t cut before . . .
Mike: Oh okay. Hey everybody, we’re not going to cut this part out. This is like a blooper. Go ahead. What else you got?
Pete: I’m good. I’m good.
Mike: All right man.
Pete: I got a little bit of a slip. You can cut that out actually.
Mike: That’s some energy to burn off there, Pete.
Pete: Yeah, have a good day man.
Mike: Awesome, but take care Pete. Appreciate you.
Pete: Bye.
Mike: Are you a member of FlipNerd.com, the most robust real estate investing platform in existence where you can find off-market wholesale deals and great vendors, literally in your market? You can get access to advice from experts and learn about local clubs and events right in your backyard.
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And if you’re actually seeing this for the first time, welcome for the first time. And if you’re a member of FlipNerd.com or you’ve been watching or listening for a while, welcome back. We’re happy to have you here with us.
Again, just the second show of 2016. This is episode number 286. I, really up until these past couple of episodes, never really talked much about the episode numbers. But it’s something that we’re proud of here. So I’m going to start talking about it a lot more.
Inherent in that number 286 is that we have 285 other great shows that you can go watch, of course after you watch this one with Pete, because this is going to be the best one ever.
Pete: Ever.
Mike: But I’d like to note a few changes. I had noted this in the last episode, as we started the new year here, and I want to say it this time for the last time, is that we have a little bit different format, if you’ve been watching or listening for a while, and that is that we’re going to focus a lot more on taking action and it’s something that Pete is extremely passionate about.
So I know that he is in the right place today. In fact, if you’re watching us here, if you’re listening, you can’t see the tattoo, but if you’re watching this . . .
Pete: It says “Go make something happen.”
Mike: It says “Go make something happen.” So Pete believes in it so much that he’s got a tattoo on his arm about taking action.
Pete: That’s right.
Mike: So we split the show up into two parts. The first part is to get to know our guest a little bit, and with Pete, we’re going to talk about kind of a mindset for success, which is just a great thing that you could talk about any time.
The second part is really, we actually called it “Taking Action” where Pete is going to share with us today how to take action, here’s something that we’re talking about and go do something about it. It’s something that’s really critical in this industry because there are a lot of looky-loos, if you will, and so don’t be one of those. We want you to be successful in this business.
The second thing I want to mention is that we’ve gone to one episode per week instead of two, so there’ll be less shows this year. But we’re going to do our very best to improve the quality and really talk a lot about taking action and stuff that you can go do something with actually.
Pete: Actionable information, right? AI.
Mike: That’s right. And the third thing, the last thing I want to mention is that even though we’re going from two to one episode per week, if you haven’t already checked it out, we have a new show that we launched a couple months ago called REI Classroom. And we actually publish two short shows, which are really lessons a day, two a day. That’s 40 a month that we publish, two a day, Monday through Friday.
Pete: Are you kidding me?
Mike: And if you are not already watching or listening, check out the REI Classroom by visiting FlipNerd.com/classroom or look for REI Classroom in iTunes or whatever podcast network that you listen to, because we’ve got them everywhere.
For today’s show, that was a mouthful, I’m joined by the one and only . . .
Pete: Hold on, you’re pushing out two episodes a day?
Mike: Yes, Pete.
Pete: That equal between 10 and 15 minutes on lessons.
Mike: Pete, I saw that you had a tattoo on your arm that said “Go make something happen” and I did it.
Pete: Me? I can’t even imagine the amount of work that goes into putting that together. I mean I remember doing 5-minute videos every day with my daughters and editing them down and it would take me half a day to do. I mean I can’t believe that you’re doing two of them. But man, if I had a hat, I’d take it off to you.
Mike: I will say this, we’ve got a process down that we’re comfortable with, and it all comes down to having just really awesome guests. I’ve never been on the REI Classroom myself.
So we actually have a process now where we record guests that we’ve had on the show before generally. So high-quality guests that have great information to share, usually they’re people that are at the top of their game and so lots of great content there on the REI Classroom.
Today though I’m joined by the one and only, Pete Asmus. Pete, how are you, my friend?
Pete: If I was any better, my name would be Mike Hambright. I think that defines kind of how good I’m doing right now.
Mike: Awesome. Hey, I’m so glad to see you again and thanks for coming back. As I mentioned, I actually mentioned this in the last show if you didn’t hear it is that we’re probably going to have a tendency to have . . . you’re going to see some familiar faces on this show.
We’re going to have guests on that we’ve had on in the past, not always, we’ll have some new folks. But when you’ve done 300 episodes, you start to come across people that you want to work with again on one, and actually Pete is going to talk about building up long-term relationships that you can rely on over and over again in the Taking Action part of the show.
But also quite frankly, we have people that just have great content and rather than go always try to find new people, we’re like, “Hey, we’ve interviewed Pete before, but we did not find out everything that is Pete Asmus and everything that he can share with us in 30 minutes and across the whole year. So we need to have Pete back.”
Pete: That’s right. I agree with that. When I looked, it was April 12th was when I was on your show last year. So it literally has been I think like nine months since I’ve been on. So I’m excited.
Mike: Nine lonely months.
Pete: It has, I’ve been waiting by my phone for it to ring again, going, “Hey, you want to be on the show,” and it’s just ah, it’s been so . . . but I’m here now so I’m extremely excited about that whole thing.
Mike: Hey, happy to have you back. So Pete, tell us for folks that don’t know you, tell us a little bit about you. What makes you tick, my friend?
Pete: Well, I was going to say I’m unique. I think that everybody is unique, but I think my wife would really think and argue that I think a lot differently than other people.
I had a lot of things happen when I was growing up. I was homeless. I lived on the streets and I’ve really kind of fought through all of that. One of the things that you can’t make me afraid of is being homeless. I’ve had everything ripped away. So that bottom wasn’t there for me.
But when it came to really creating wealth, I knew that my grandma had done real estate. My dad had done real estate and so I wanted to acquire and own real estate and I started getting into it a little over ten years ago. I started in mobile homes and then rolled over into real properties, and really I always wanted to be successful.
I always wanted to make it. I wanted to be rich. It was all wants. And the reality is, until you take something out of the want and into the do, until you take it out of the want and into the need, out of the want and into the must have, it just sits over there. It’s just an idea. It’s a great thing if some day, it would be great if it was convenient, and that’s really the biggest thing.
In the last issue that we did, I had our pastor write an article on convenient versus convicted, and it just . . . man, I’m getting goosebumps right now because I wrote this article with him, because he was like really freaking out to do it and I said, “Look, I’ll write a skeleton. You just add on another 200 words to this thing and it will be great.”
And so we did that but what it really talked about was the difference between an employee and an entrepreneur almost. I mean it was a difference between somebody that would do something, if they were paid to do it, if it made sense, if it was convenient, and somebody that was doing something because there was just no other way to do it. I mean they couldn’t think of another way.
I can’t imagine Mike Hambright not owning FlipNerd. I can’t imagine Mike Hambright not being an entrepreneur, not being a home investor, not having years and years of success in real estate because that’s what Mike’s DNA is.
You working at McDonald’s just isn’t going to happen. We’re not going to see you at 60 being a greeter at Walmart, and not that there’s anything wrong with that. But that’s not you.
Mike: Yeah.
Pete: And I think that DNA is within people. I’m sorry, go ahead and talk.
Mike: Yeah, one thing that is interesting Pete is that and I’m not taking anything away from anybody that does anything else. I’m not trying to talk bad about anybody, but what you just said was interesting because this is one of the things that I think is interesting about an entrepreneur, and I’m not trying to pat myself on the back or say anything but . . .
Pete: You are awesome, I agree.
Mike: I am awesome. End of sentence. That’s not what I was going to say. What I was going to say is, the interesting thing about entrepreneurs is after you’ve tasted success, after you’ve had that, you could have everything taken away and be back in a month. So there’s not many people that when you get to that point where you know I need to take action. I have an idea and I need to go execute it, otherwise I’m going to be a greeter at Walmart and again, not taking anything way from, if anybody who is listening is a greeter at Walmart.
Pete: That’s great.
Mike: And in fact if you are, let’s . . .
Pete: Maybe you should call in right now . . .
Mike: . . . help you figure out how to take more action so you don’t have to do that.
Pete: You know what, one of the coolest moments in my, honestly in this whole career has been, I mean since 18 to now, and I think I said a little bit of this in the first interview with you, but I’ve got a cool ending for it now. Was in the beginning, a year ago I think when I was talking to you, I remember listening to, in the very beginning when I was 18, listening to if you help enough people get what they want, you’re going to get what you want . . . Ziglar, right? Zig Ziglar.
And I heard somebody else talking about that recently and they talked about that same exact quote. And I remember when I was young, it was always, “Man, I don’t know anything. How can I help anybody else get what they want when I really don’t feel like I have a skill set. I don’t have anything. I can’t create it.”
And then through all this time and all this effort and all this work and all these failures, I mean failure after failure after failure after failure, I was able to stack all of those up and create success. I was able to create a product and that was the first time I became an entrepreneur was when I created a product, because I think that’s the difference.
A lot of people think they’re an entrepreneur but they’re a wholesaler. And yes, you have your own type of business but you don’t really have a product yet. When you create your own product like our turnkey system, it’s a product now.
So I can make five of these and sell them and I’m going to make X number of dollars on each one, and as long as my product is really high in quality, as long as my product comes in under what other people’s do, I’m going to run the market. I’m going to be able to control it because I’m making less money but I’m going to get a lot more volume and with that volume comes referrals.
FlipNerd, you’ve gone from I don’t even remember what it was, a year ago. Do you remember what you guys were at as far as a year ago?
Mike: We had not launched the site a year ago.
Pete: Yeah, that’s what I’m talking about, 50,000 members now?
Mike: I think like April or May with zero members.
Pete: So 50,000 . . .
Mike: Actually we had like ten test accounts. We were like, “Hey we’ve got ten members.” Well yeah, my wife’s got through and I’ve got a couple.
Pete: Right, yeah. They’re all ghost accounts. But see that’s the idea. By FlipNerd taking action, by you getting involved, by you creating a product, you are able to go out and as that product was good and people saw that it was quality, it exploded. It expanded. Fifty thousand in less than a year, that’s huge. Nobody grows that fast by accident. You grow that way by design, by having a great product, I’m sorry, go ahead.
Mike: Yeah thanks Pete. No, and I don’t want to make this show about me. You and I know what . . .
Pete: [Inaudible 00:11:08].
Mike: You and I know we’re awesome. Let’s not rub it into everybody’s face. Okay, but I think your point is well taken and I think I know in the Taking Action part of the show, second part of the show, we’re going to talk about building relationships and things that will . . . kind of building a foundation for your success.
And a lot of that is kind of what we’ve done here and what you’re doing with a lot of things is building that platform and a network from which to kind of serve others. And so I think let’s talk a little bit more about that and we can talk about specifically how others can do those things.
In terms of, I want to hear more about your story, about just the mindset . . . because I think a lot of people are in that situation where they think that “Well, I don’t have anything to give.” And you and I both know, probably the biggest thing that people could give if they don’t have, let’s just say relevant experience, industry experience, is hustle, because there’s so many that don’t have it.
There’s so many that are thinking about they’re going to get to it forever and ever and sometimes just having that hustle is, I mean that’s one of your biggest assets, right?
Pete: It’s huge. So mindset to me is everything. The questions that you ask yourself, I wrote a book called “The Question Factor,” and really the first quote I have in it is amazing to me because it was all about the questions we ask ourselves, tell us what we think we’re capable of.
Look, if I say to you, “Mike, I’ve got a deal. It’s a million dollars but it will net you ten,” and I mean let’s just pretend for a second that that’s a legitimate deal. You would ask the first question, “Where am I going to get the million dollars?” But most of the people would say, “I don’t have a million dollars.” They don’t ask the question, “Where can I get it?” They don’t start to look. They just go, “I don’t have it,” and change the subject.
Mike: Here’s why I can’t do it.
Pete: Yeah, and they just give themselves all the stacks to back up why they aren’t good at it, why they can’t do it. And now, you’re not become a liar so you prove yourself right.
Mike: Right, you won.
Pete: It’s just crazy.
Mike: And lost.
Pete: Yeah, so with mindset, for me it’s all about making sure that you understand that anything is possible, that you can do anything, just not everything.
Mike: Yeah.
Pete: We’re going to be talking about leveraging and relationships in the next half, but really what that comes down to is putting together a team around you that can support your ideas and lift them to the next level.
Now you don’t have to be an idea person. You could just be the person that maybe gets things done, but your idea is you want something bigger. You need to be around other people that want something bigger so you can all have a value add play.
We’re writing a book right now called “The Velocity of Money: How to Raise a Capital in any Market” and in fact I might be interviewing you for one of our chapters in that. And the reason that we’re writing that book is because there’s a lot of people right now that are brand new in real estate. They want to get involved. They want to do something but they don’t have any of the foundations.
They don’t have money. They don’t have the knowledge of the product. They don’t have deals. They don’t have any of that stuff. So in this book what we’re going to show them how to do, is how to set up, how to leverage and how to raise money by utilizing people that are doing it.
So for instance, I can come out and help them raise money for maybe a project we’re doing but they’re going to make that overwrite off of it and it gets them involved and gets them in. Does that make sense?
Mike: Yeah, absolutely, awesome. Pete, why don’t you maybe just take a minute, I want to move into the other segment here, Taking Action in just a minute. But talk a little bit about, I think one thing that keeps people from taking action, again a lot of people, and I do this and there’s certain areas in my life where I do this, and in real estate, and in some of the things I do in my business, I’m on it usually. But stuff like . . .
Pete: I’m so excited about this interview.
Mike: I need to get to the gym or something like that is like, I’m going to get it and so whatever. I’m calling myself out here. But the reality is that some people, they find a way to make excuses in some area of their life. So specifically where I think a lot of people get into trouble in this regard of getting into real estate investing is that they have a job.
“So I want to start trying to do something part-time and then I’m going to hopefully eventually quit and be a full-time real estate investor.” The problem is it’s tough to get going in real estate investing on a part-time basis. Plenty of people have done it but it’s hard. It’s even harder if you’re just trying to ease into it because you have this mindset of, “Well, I’ve got this cushy paycheck or something that is at least reliable,” and you . . .
Pete: Comfortability.
Mike: . . . you find yourself doing stuff on evenings and weekends, and some people have family, and there’s always reasons. But maybe just take a minute to talk about how you bridge that gap if you have a job and you want to do something else.
Pete: Pain. It’s pain. It’s the craziest thing but it has everything to do with pain. We move away from pain. If you don’t want to do something, make it hurtful. Make it painful. You want to quit smoking, start associating really bad things and nasty things with smoking. Make it painful.
That’s one of the biggest things. If there’s one key that I really have understood and learned, it’s making decisions quickly and it’s almost like a red light, green light, does this get me closer to my goal? Look, if you really want to go after it and you want to do it, you start living your life in like the game Red Light, Green Light, when we were a kid, right?
Mike: Yeah.
Pete: Somebody said red light, you stop. Somebody said green light, you were moving. This is the same type of thing but with decision making. It’s red light, green light. Look, does it get you closer to real estate investing, yes or no? No, don’t do it. I’m going to watch, I want to go to the football game. Does it get you closer to real estate investing? No. Don’t do it.
As you get bigger, you’ll start to get creative, “Well I’m going to invite a friend that could be a potential investor to one of these games.” Hey, in that case, go for it, right? But always be networking.
Look, if you’re going to do anything, there’s no reason you can’t do something with somebody that you enjoy being around and somebody that could potentially be an investor, somebody you can potentially do business with. I mean I definitely have some friends that don’t invite me over to social events sometimes because they’re like, “Look, all you talk about is business.”
And they’re right. I mean they are because the moment I meet somebody, if they’re brand new, the first thing I’m going to do is “Hey Mike, what do you do?” And you’re going to say what you do. Great. If you could do anything in the world, what would you want to do? And that’s when I’m going to find out because I want to find what your hot button is.
Look, if you say, “I would want to go and dance naked in Africa,” that’s not something I’m interested in. We probably don’t have a whole lot in common.
Mike: We can’t help that person out.
Pete: Right, I can’t. But if you said, “Man, I want to get more. I want to own my own business,” like I’m just looking for different things that I can basically hone in on and go, “I can help you with that,” because my thing is all about adding value to those around me.
Mike: Awesome. So Pete, I know you’re going to share some Taking Action tips with us here today. We’re going to talk about building repeat customers, kind of building your foundation for success in your business. Take us there my friend.
Pete: Okay. So everybody always talks about the key to success, the key. There’s a million keys. It’s like golf. There’s like 50,000 things that you have to do correct. But one of the biggest things that you definitely have to do correct is building relationships.
There isn’t any company out there that’s one person. Not one. I mean even when you’re talking about music and people that are individual singers, they still have a group of people behind them producing the music, to market the music. I mean there’s teams involved. So to think that you can get where you want to go by yourself is crazy.
Now here’s the other part, you don’t want to have to shift teams every year, do you? I mean when we look at getting to know people, when you look at building a really solid foundation with somebody, it takes time. And if you take a year to develop a relationship and then blow those people out and take another year and blow those people out and take another year and blow . . . in five years, you’re going to still be starting all over again.
When somebody else that really focused on their brand, on their word, on following through, they’re going to be five times ahead of you because their relationships are going to be so solid. Does that make sense?
Mike: Absolutely. Yeah, a lot of times and especially in real estate, is you spend so much effort getting to that point to where you could do business with somebody. Right?
Pete: Right.
Mike: So if you can narrow down having to build that over and over and over again, every time you do something, irregardless of what you do, in real estate or really anything, you can kind of take away that period of building the relationship and building up that level of trust and then you just transact over and over and over again. So it’s lot more efficient and a lot more fruitful.
Pete: Well think about this, what about the people that spent all the time, energy and effort to acquire an investor, right?
Mike: Yeah.
Pete: You’re bringing him into your system and then you don’t follow through, you don’t communicate with them and you blow them out, right? So really you spent all that time and effort to bring somebody in to not have them as a repeat customer. That’s crazy to me. That’s crazy.
Mike: Yeah, it’s interesting. I see this a lot. I’ve talked about this a million times to my wife and internally here of just contractors, like somebody that we go use, they don’t know how many houses we’ve done or that we do. We do quite a bit of volume and I represent people that do a ton of volume, almost a thousand houses a year.
But people, they come in and they like do a one off and they never say, “Can we work together again?” Or “Hey, well I haven’t heard from you in a while. Do you have any business or anything we can talk about?”
Literally, it’s like 90% of contractors are that way. They never ask for the next job or if you go dark for a little while, nobody ever calls and says, “Hey, I notice we haven’t talked in a while. Is there something we did wrong or do you have any other opportunities we can talk about?” It’s really crazy how few people do that.
Pete: A lot of times people are focused on right now. The goal to make money is thinking right now. The goal to be wealthy is to think later on, right? That’s why cash flow is really about wealth and flipping is about, I guess if you wanted to say it, being rich, because you can make money right now. You can have a ton of money right now in your hands, but being wealthy means that you still have it coming in, in ten years. That’s where the cash flow comes in.
And so for me, when you talk about building relationships and long-term relationships, people that buy cash flow properties don’t buy just one or two. They end up buying a lot over time, right?
Mike: Yeah, absolutely.
Pete: So it’s cultivating that relationship and I think that’s one of the biggest keys is, truly treating other people the way that you want to be treated, and I know a lot of people say that but when it comes down to it, they don’t. They don’t follow through. You know what I mean? They’re not communicating. You should over communicate. When you’re talking about communicating with an investor, you should over communicate, not under communicate. Over communicate.
Mike: Right. I’ll give this example, and maybe you can share some examples too Pete of building up relationships with people, and I’ll give you an example here. For those that are watching the video, you’ll see this and if you’re just listening, I’m going to just tell you what we’re doing here.
When I speak in front of groups that I’m coaching or involved with one way or another, I talk about networking, the power and ability to network. In fact I wrote an article in your magazine about the thing and I have, what I can see here, I don’t know if you can see this, I have a stack of business cards that are sitting on my desk here.
Pete: Okay.
Mike: And I give the story of hey, how many of you think you’re good at networking? Go to REI club events or other networking groups. I basically say, “Hey, raise your hand. Everybody raise your hand and don’t put your hand down until something I said doesn’t makes sense anymore.”
Pete: Okay.
Mike: Go to networking, you meet a bunch of people, you get a bunch of business cards, stick them in your pocket, come back to your home or your office, wrap a rubber band around that pile of business cards, throw it in the drawer and never to be seen again. It’s like the abyss.
And I used to do that too, and I think a lot of people say, “Hey, I’m good at networking,” but what they’re saying . . .
Pete: Look at how many cards I have.
Mike: They’re good at going out and actually shaking hands and meeting people. Of course one of the challenges with those networking events is, if you go out and you meet 50 people and everybody meets 50 people, how do you stand out? Now Pete, your personality, you’re such a good looking guy that you stand out. People don’t forget that.
Pete: I would agree with that.
Mike: But you know what I’m saying. You’ve got the sole patch going on. You’ve got a shaved head, all that stuff and you’re very good at remembering people too. But some think that that is networking is the act if I shook their hand and I met them, and I would argue that it’s the follow up. It’s building a relationship over time.
Pete: You met 200 people is what you did and in fact it’s so ineffective, it’s not even funny because if I grab that list of cards right now and I would open them up and go, “Tell me anything about all these people,” you may remember a few of them. But man, if you’re holding 50 cards, there’s no way unless you do a few things, there’s no way you remember things. So here’s one of the things that you need to do.
Mike: Yeah, give the tips.
Pete: I hardly ever bring cards with me. I don’t bring them. Why do I need a business card? What’s the point of a business card? I’m asking you, what’s the point of the business card?
Mike: Yeah, I think mainly I would say, one, people feel this obligation to, well, “Here’s my business card. Do you have a business card?” But two, is just to obviously have the contact information from somebody.
Pete: The contact information, right?
Mike: Yeah.
Pete: Now let’s say I give you my information and you’re all excited about who I am and I’m excited about who you are, and then you meet 50 other people, goes in a rubberband. Do you remember me? Do you remember any of those aspects? No and now you lose the card. So now if you do remember me, you’re like, “Where is that one card?” And you can’t find it. I don’t do that.
Mike: It’s got a rubber band around it.
Pete: I take my phone and I go to contacts and I go and I hand my phone to them and I say, “Here you go, if you want my information then go ahead and put your information in my phone. I’ll text you right now with my name, my phone number, my email. So that way we have a record of everything,” and then I add them once they put themselves in my phone, in Notes, I make a note about them. And it’s really simple.
And then when I go back through my phone, I can now know as I’m going through, I can see the notes on them and I retain them a lot better. The other thing is using a thing from Infusionsoft that you could take the card and you just go, and you take a snap, a picture of it.
Mike: Snap, yeah.
Pete: And it throws it into your data.
Mike: And there’s some other tools out there for that. I haven’t really used but I know there’s some other tools out there for taking a picture of business cards and popping them into basically an autoresponder, which is pretty cool.
Pete: Yeah.
Mike: I would say whether you do that or whether you even do it manually is, and I agree with you, is one thing that when I meet somebody that truly I know there’s something there that I want to follow up with this person, is I take a little note on the back of the business card. Here’s what it’s about or whatever, because that’s one of the things I’ve always told people, follow up.
In the real estate business for example is, when you meet somebody, let’s say a seller. We deal a lot with direct sellers in my business is, don’t just say “The ARV was this, repairs were that.”
Take notes about the person. The grandmother was sick or they were really a big Cowboys fan. Those things, because when you follow up with people over time and you know they’re a Cowboys fan from two years ago and you say, “Hey man, I know you’re a huge Cowboys fan. You must be pretty disappointed right now.”
Pete: Right.
Mike: And they’re like, “Oh, I can’t believe you remember,” but you make these connections with people and that’s how you stand out is, you’re not only memorable but they can’t believe you remembered them, right? You’ve touched a nerve there.
Pete: And they do business with people they know, like and trust.
Mike: Yeah, absolutely.
Pete: If you talk about them, people will really like being talked about. It’s kind of crazy. The other thing that I do is when I go to a networking event, I don’t focus on trying to meet 50 people. I just don’t. Even when I went to the REI Expo, I wasn’t trying to meet 500 people. My goal there was three people. I looked for three quality contacts that I’m going to build a relationship with and move forward with.
And if you go to one event a month and you were able to build three people out of each of those events, you’re going to have more business and more follow up than you have any idea what to do with, and it’s going to be quality versus quantity.
Mike: Yeah, talk about that because I think so many people focus on quantity. They want to just meet mass people, especially this day and age of the internet and shows like this. It’s like how do I touch the broadest amount of people possible?
Pete: Well shows like this are awesome because what they allow you to do is, I mean everybody gets to know Mike. It’s prolong exposure. I mean this is a phenomenal way.
Mike: Sure, but I’m saying it’s easy for people to just try to have, we’re friends on Facebook. You have all his friends. It’s funny when you go out and look at people that are your friends. You’re like, I don’t know.
Pete: I don’t know them.
Mike: It’s so easy to become friends or like somebody or something on social media or whatever. You just need some old school networking skills in your toolbox, right?
Pete: Yeah, because you need to actually talk. I mean there was a point when I kept avoiding phone calls, like I hated people. I hated talking to people on the phone. I just didn’t want to do it. I was doing radio shows and I was doing this. So I ended up funneling everything to other people. Well the problem with that is I didn’t know what was going on anymore. I lost control of the data.
And so now I have it where anything that you do, the last thing it does is kick you into my schedule, hey, would you like to set up an appointment with me? And I make all of these calls and since I’ve started doing that, because of the personal touch with all of the investors, I’ve just gotten a huge influx of not only deals but money and all kinds of opportunities right now.
Mike: Sure. Talk about maybe things you can do, and I’ve got a couple of . . . this is little bit of a softball that I know I can participate in this conversation, things you can do to stay top of mind to larger groups of people. And the one we’re talking about, the one-on-one relationships, the smaller groups and sometimes there are things you can do in larger audiences to kind of stay top of mind.
Let’s just say, if somebody is looking to lend money, if somebody has a deal that they might be interested in, how you kind of stay top of mind to where when they come across that thing that you ultimately want, that you’re top of mind instead of the sea of other people that they meet.
Pete: That’s going to really be on content that you deliver, by them seeing a value in who you are. So one of the things that I love about FlipNerd is that everything you deliver is . . .
Mike: I’ve got to tell everybody, I did not pay Pete to keep giving . . .
Pete: No, no, I’m just saying it’s just real . . .
Mike: Pete, what do you want? What is it that you want Pete?
Pete: Look, they’re listening to your show. I mean they obviously think that you’re great. So I’m just validating what they already know. I can say me and one of the great things about my . . . Now I don’t remember what I was going to say. What did you ask me? What was your question?
Mike: Talking about how to be memorable. How to position yourself as top of mind when somebody has something that you may want.
Pete: Adding value. The more value you add to people, the more they’re going to think about you. I found that when you put money in people’s pockets, they end up really liking you a lot. It’s just crazy how that works. But the same thing happens with knowledge. That helps them acquire money.
So adding value consistently to people. Look, I’ll send our emails and I’ll say, “Hey look, we have this for right now. You work with this company too. We have zero percent financing that I got hooked up with.” So always trying to find value adds that you could add to other people that you know that they need.
And not something that you’re looking at just trying to make money off of, but truly adding a value to them, whether you make money or not. Because as you do that, people are going to notice that and they’re going to start coming and they’re going to reciprocate. You just do. You do something for me, I automatically want to do something for you.
Mike: Yeah, one of the things I found is just by bringing people together, I’ve always been . . . I won’t tell any stories from high school or college, but I’ve always been the guy that likes to throw the party. So I like to bring people together.
Pete: I love that.
Mike: But even in the real estate space I like to bring people together. I don’t have a REIA club. I guess I have a big club online here, but for example, I just put in place a monthly happy hour in my market here but I have a bunch of people that I coach. I have some friends.
Pete: Yeah, the happy hours. I mean the people drink all the time in Texas I bet.
Mike: Yeah, yeah. But I mean a monthly happy hour where we get together because I will say, you’ll understand this that I don’t have a tremendous amount of free time. I have family things and I have a bunch of businesses and I’m always starting something new. But all the time people are like, “Hey, we should get together. We should get together.” And I’m like, “Well, let’s just all get together. Let’s just have a happy hour” and you show up or you don’t.
But it’s a way for me to socialize and get a chance to talk to a broad array of people and it’s a chance for me to connect people that I think have some reason to be connected. And of course if I’m the instigator of all that then ultimately that pays dividends to.
Pete: It absolutely does and even if it doesn’t pay any dividends right now, people realize, “Man, last time I went to his event, I got this. Last time I went to his event . . .” you know what I mean? And so you do an event. They want to go and that’s it. It all comes down to providing value.
Mike: Sure, anybody can do that and that was meant to be a tip. Anybody could do that. You could, with Meetup and Facebook groups and all these things that are out there, you can be that person. Now don’t start a Facebook group that you make 500 people that you admin for and the next thing you’ve got 20,000 members and it’s just full of spam and porn and everything else.
Pete: Yeah.
Mike: Really do one that’s effective that people get to actually get some benefit out of.
Pete: Absolutely. Even doing a podcast. I mean anybody can do a podcast now. It’s so easy just to record a show and then throw it out there.
Mike: Even a monkey like me.
Pete: No, that’s not what I meant.
Mike: Pete, come on.
Pete: But if they’re developing a database, that a podcast is a lot easier than a newsletter maybe, for them to produce. Now if they’re better at writing than speaking, then maybe they do the newsletter. But again, if you want to grow your relationships, if you want to grow your opportunities, you’re going to want to build a database and provide value to that database consistently.
Mike: Yeah, and we have some big improvements coming in this regard. I’ve never actually plugged this before but I’ll even say, I believe in this so much that we have actually inside of FlipNerd, I don’t know if you know it exists Pete, is we have something called Journals, FlipNerd Journals.
So people can build their own blogs, blogging platform inside of FlipNerd and we have . . .
Pete: That’s awesome.
Mike: And we have a lot of traffic on the site so you can share, you can actually put videos, you can put whatever you want. So people can kind of basically create awareness of themselves across our own platform and people that are doing well, we put them on our newsletter that goes out there with 50,000 people now. And so there are platforms out there to kind of build your brand and add value by sharing great information and that comes back around.
Pete: Absolutely, well I think you guys are number two on iTunes or something for real estate. I can’t remember but I remember seeing it. You’re not brand new anymore at this point. You’re almost like a kind of a [inaudible 00:33:18], which is a great thing.
Mike: We’re going into our teenage years.
Pete: Yeah, that’s a great thing.
Mike: I appreciate the lessons here. Is there anything else you want to add about taking action? You’re big on taking action, that folks can do that are kind of actionable, that they can listen to this and say, “That’s a great idea.” I think we just shared a couple of things, but it’s a great idea, I need to go do this. Any kind of final words of wisdom here?
Pete: Yeah. Stop procrastinating. If you want to do something, you want to do it because you want the reward. Do you want the reward later or now? Everybody wants it now. We all want the reward now. But what we’re not willing to do a lot of times is putting the work now to get the reward later. And the reality is, if you want to change your life, if you want to get definite results, any of that, start now.
Monday doesn’t matter. Beginning of the month doesn’t matter. Tomorrow doesn’t matter. What matters is right now because until you make that flip in your mind that no matter what, you’re going to get that result, you’re going to always have an excuse that will prevent you from getting there.
Mike: Awesome Pete. Thanks for sharing.
Pete: That was a good quote right there.
Mike: Yeah. Hey man, tell us how folks can get a hold of you, how they can learn more about you? I know you’ve got, I didn’t mention this upfront, but you’ve got a real estate investor magazine that’s Investor Quarterly, right?
Pete: Yeah, Investor Quarterly, yeah, I have that. We have a website called The Turnkey Investor and then you can always, if you want to get a hold of me, you can either text me at (951) 505-8303. You can email me at [email protected] or you can book an appointment at any time at BookPete.com.
Mike: Man, I can’t write that fast.
Pete: That’s pretty easy, right, BookPete.com, boom.
Mike: That is easy. I think you should have said that one upfront. I could have written that faster.
Pete: Okay. So just go to BookPete.com because it has my website and it has my phone numbers.
Mike: We’ll get links for all the stuff on the show notes here for those of you that are interested. So Pete, hey thanks for joining us and thanks for sharing your words of wisdom. And Pete likes to say it too, what do you like to say Pete?
Pete: Go make something happen. Tell me when you’re going to cut because I’ve got one more special surprise before you do it.
Mike: Oh I haven’t cut yet.
Pete: I know, that’s why I’m saying before you do, don’t cut before . . .
Mike: Oh okay. Hey everybody, we’re not going to cut this part out. This is like a blooper. Go ahead. What else you got?
Pete: I’m good. I’m good.
Mike: All right man.
Pete: I got a little bit of a slip. You can cut that out actually.
Mike: That’s some energy to burn off there, Pete.
Pete: Yeah, have a good day man.
Mike: Awesome, but take care Pete. Appreciate you.
Pete: Bye.
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