In Real Estate Investing Bigger Isn’t Always Better

Mike:This is the FlipNerd.com Expert Real Estate Investing Show, the show for real estate investors, whether you’re a veteran or brand new. I’m your host, Mike Hambright and each week I bring you a new expert guest that will share their knowledge and lessons with you. If you’re excited about real estate investing, believe in personal responsibility and taking control of your life and financial destiny, you’re in the right place.
This is episode number 403 and my guest today is Brett Snodgrass. Brett is a power player and wholesaled 354 houses last year, which was double the year before, also an impressive number. However, it caused some growing pains and Brett has found that bigger isn’t always better. As a real estate investor, it’s critical that you have a vision for what it is you’re trying to create.
Now, a lot of us started in this business for freedom, financial freedom, freedom with our time. However, even if you’re only doing a few deals a month, you may become enslaved to your own business if you’re not careful. In fact, a lot of real estate investors fall into that hole of just being self-employed, not really business owners or even entrepreneurs.
Today, we talk about building a business that helps meet your vision and building a team that can help you not only make your business more successful but help add more balance in your life, which is why you probably got into this in the first place. Please help me welcome Brett Snodgrass to the show.
Brett, welcome to the show.
Brett:Hey, Mike. So excited to be here. Thanks for having me again. Always a pleasure to be on FlipNerd.
Mike:Yeah, it’s good to see you, buddy. I always love talking to you. We just talked about it on the last show too. I’m having some people back that have been on the show before and I just kind of realized that this is 403 episodes now . . .
Brett:That’s a lot of episodes, Mike.
Mike:Yeah, I know. We have this other show, REI Classroom, that we’re kind of approaching, gosh, 800-something episodes on that one. That’s like a five-minute show. By the way, if you haven’t checked out REI Classroom, check out REI Classroom, guys. But you know, I kind of came to this realization over the past like six months or so that for the first couple years, we went out of our way to try to find new people every time.
For guys like you, you bought 354 houses last year. You got a ton of experience, good and bad. We could talk for days and never even repeat the same subjects again. So, I’m kind of reeling it in and saying I want to deliver good content to people that are listening and watching the show and I want to talk to people that I respect and that I like and I don’t care if they’re on a show ten times. We’re going to deliver value each and every time.
Brett:Let’s do it. I mean, the market and my business changes literally every year. So, we’re growing and we’re getting stretched. Everything is always changing and different. So, yeah, I love to be back. So, thanks again.
Mike:Yeah. So, today, guys, we’re going to talk about kind of team building and really having some vision to what you’re building in the first place. What are you setting out to do here or if you’re trying to grow or god forbid, if you’re trying to retract a little bit, that’s okay too. It’s just kind of having purpose and knowing what it is you’re trying to do. It’s going to be really a good discussion because you’re going to find out here that Brett has grown. He did 354 deals last year, a ton of deals.
A lot of people just assume, “Wow, that must be awesome. I want to be him. Even for me, doing lots of podcasts and having a big network and stuff, there’s a lot of baggage that comes with that. Sometimes it’s not really what you set out to do. We all kind of get in this business to have a better life and have impact and sometimes you find out that it’s maybe a noose around your neck sometimes, that it’s not really kind of doing what you intend.
Brett, I’m really excited to talk to you about this. Before we get started here, maybe just tell us a little bit about you and kind of how you got into the business.
Brett:Yeah, definitely. So, I am not from a very wealthy family. My parents were both teachers. So, I grew up in that type of environment. So, we didn’t have a lot of money. We were very middle class. I remember my dad even saying a statement that when he was teaching for 33 years, he never remembered a time that he had more than $5,000 in his bank account.
That really resonated with me. I ended up getting a teaching degree. That’s something that I did not want in my life. I’m not saying that money is everything, but I wanted to be able to give more. I wanted to be able to take vacations and not always be living from paycheck to paycheck in my life. That kind of started me down this entrepreneurial path and I tried a lot of entrepreneurial things. I did some network marketing. I flipped anything and everything that I could get my hands on, including cars and stereo equipment, stuff like that.
Then I got into real estate, just kind of fell into it. My dad introducing me to a guy who was flipping land. This isn’t houses. This is basically large parcels of land, 50 acres, 100 acres and he owned his own timber company in Southern Indiana. He was looking for birddogs to work for him off of commission. So, I was out hustling. I was helping him find deals on these large pieces of land. I did really well at that.
I remember I was getting ready to get a paycheck for $7,000 commission working for this land developer and that was more money than I had ever seen in my life. So, I was getting some checks like that, but I started reading some books like “Rich Dad Poor Dad” and “The Millionaire Next Door” and some of these other real estate books. I realized most wealthy people get into their wealth from real estate.
So, I really need to dive into this. I was working for somebody else. I always saw myself doing my own thing. So, back in 2007, 2008, I was scrolling through houses on eBay online. I found a house in Youngstown, Ohio. I had about $5,000 and Dad had about $5,000 and we bought this house for $9,000. It was a super cheap house in the inner city of Youngstown, Ohio. We ended up selling it for $15,000. That’s when I realized, “Wow, I don’t know what we just did.” It was something. Could we build a business around this? Could we build a system?
At that time, there were a lot of REO properties. So, we developed an MLS system where we put in a bunch of offers and we put in 200, 300, 400 offers a month and we’d get five deals, ten deals and we really built an amazing business with that. That’s kind of how I got into wholesaling real estate.
Mike:That’s awesome. I should probably not say this live that I know I’m going to screw it up. I actually met somebody a couple weeks ago. I can’t remember where I was at. It might have been my mastermind or something that had sold you one of your first—I don’t think it was the first house or bought a house from you. It was on eBay. I can’t remember who it was.
Brett:Was it one of your masterminds?
Mike:I think so. I can’t remember who it was. That’s a side conversation. I’ll remember it as soon as we get off here. This guy started selling houses on eBay—not anymore.
Brett:Was his name Ted?
Mike:Oh, yeah. Ted Snyder, yeah.
Brett:Yeah, Ted Snyder. I actually still buy houses from Ted Snyder.
Mike:He’s in my Investor Fuel mastermind. So, yeah.
Brett:That’s awesome.
Mike:I was like, “Who was that?”
Brett:I just got an email from Ted today. We just bought three or four houses from him in the last few months. So, he’s a good friend of mine. Small world.
Mike:Yeah, small world, for sure. So, that’s awesome, man. Let’s talk about—I think a lot of people that get started in real estate investing, we all have ambitious goals and dreams. Probably more importantly, one of the things we tend to know more than anything is what we don’t want in our lives. We’re like, “I don’t want to have to work for somebody else or I don’t want to have to work for that company anymore or I don’t want to have to rely on corporate America.” We kind of know what we don’t want and then we think we get attached to this dream of being a successful real estate investor.
A lot of people end up being self-employed. They end up doing everything themselves and not building a team and kind of stuck, not really getting those freedoms that we all get into real estate investing for. So, let’s talk a little bit about building a business or just building a job for yourself. What are your thoughts on that?
Brett:Well, Mike, I’m in the trenches. We had a little bit of a conversation before this. I’ll just kind of tell you a little bit of my journey of building the team and kind of what happens and how I built that. So, my dad and I had a great business. I started flipping houses, fixing them up and flipping them. I realized that was a crazy job and I was super-stressed out. I had just gotten married and I was flipping about six houses at one time and couldn’t sleep at night because I had contractor problems and management problems and loan problems and all these different things and I said, “I can’t do this anymore.”
But I loved the real estate. That’s when I got back into wholesaling about three years ago and I created our company, Simple Wholesaling. I decide I was going to build a team because I wanted that freedom. I hadn’t done that for the first six or seven years. I had a job. I was doing everything. I was wearing all the hats, taking all the calls, negotiating, selling all the deals, going to all the closings, just doing everything. I said, “I don’t want to do that anymore.”
So, I met a friend of mine and we sat down at Cracker Barrel, 6:00 in the morning one morning. He needed a job. I would not recommend hiring somebody in this way, but I was like, “I need some help and you need a job. Let’s try and help each other.” I said I heard about these guys writing yellow letters and doing some direct mail stuff. That’s how he started. He started handwriting my yellow letters. Then I realized, “Wow, there was definitely something to that,” because we started getting deals from him writing these yellow letters.
Mike:Right.
Brett:So, that kind of led one thing to another. I met another investor. He bought a couple houses from me and he was working at a trucking company. He was a pretty good sales rep for them, but he didn’t like what he was doing and he loved real estate. So, I said, “Well, maybe you can work for me and you can help me on the acquisitions side of the business.” So, again, kind of a win/win, just kind of winging it here and there.
So, he started and that’s when we really started scaling and I started to realize it wasn’t . . . I was super-scared to pay them because that was my whole mentality of, “I don’t want to pay anybody because I always figured that would be an expense.” The way my dad taught me, don’t pay somebody else if you can do it yourself because that’s an expense. What I really started to realize is if I pay somebody $10 an hour but they help bring in $20 an hour into the company, number one, I’m doing the job and I don’t really like what they’re doing that much, and number two, it’s not the expense, it’s the return on investment. If I put in $10 and get $20 out, it’s a great investment.
So, that’s when I really started to . . . the light bulb went off and I said, “I want to build this team now.” And then this structure started to form and basically, the last two years, we’ve pretty much doubled in size on the team and we’ve doubled in deals. We’ve doubled in revenue and we’ve doubled in everything. The way my team looks now is I have nine people, including myself. Eight people, including me, are all local. Then I have one virtual assistant that works out of the Philippines as an admin.
Just really to answer your question, I’m not used to running a business, so the past two or three years in running a team and managing a team, this is all pretty new to me and I’m just trying to figure it out as well. You’re exactly right. Sometimes as you grow, you continually just find problems. Now you’re just working with managing people and then people have problems and you’re having to feed their families and put food on their table. So, it’s a different type of ballgame.
So, now, I’m doing more deals and I’m just going to get super transparent, but I feel like I’m still working as much. I’m still having the same stress levels and the same headaches. Right now, I’m trying to figure out, “What do I do?” How do I scale it back a little bit?” Actually, the theme, we have different themes for each year. Last year, our theme was going pro, which was pretty cool because I felt like I come from a sports background, a basketball background. There’s like an amateur team and then there’s a professional team. I said, “Guys, we’re kind of in that amateur level, but let’s go pro this year.”
That’s a whole different level. I feel like we did. We went from 160 deals in 2016 to 354 deals in 2017. Then this year, 2018, I’m trying to think about what’s the theme. Our theme this year is going lean. I don’t really want to do anymore deals. I want to make more margins, but honestly, I want to make more margin in my life. That’s what I’m trying to do.
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Brett:Actually, the theme, we have different themes for each year. Last year, our theme was going pro, which was pretty cool because I felt like I come from a sports background, a basketball background. There’s like an amateur team and then there’s a professional team. I said, “Guys, we’re kind of in that amateur level, but let’s go pro this year.”
That’s a whole different level. I feel like we did. We went from 160 deals in 2016 to 354 deals in 2017. Then this year, 2018, I’m trying to think about what’s the theme. Our theme this year is going lean. I don’t really want to do anymore deals. I want to make more margins, but honestly, I want to make more margin in my life. That’s what I’m trying to do.
Mike:Yeah, it’s an interesting phenomenon. Most people, just by hearing you do 354 deals, they assume you’re successful and therefore, you must be happy and everybody around you, it’s like the land of milk and honey, right? That type of volume and having to build a bigger team, it’s like some people think they want that, but then when they get there, they’re like, “No, this isn’t really want I wanted.”
I’m not saying that you hate your life, but it’s like it causes new problems. Some of them are good problems to have, some of them are not good problems. Sometimes, it’s not worth the tradeoff, considering that most of us get in this business for lifestyle, lifestyle and freedom reasons. We want to be able to travel. We want to be able to do whatever we want, whenever we want as much as possible, but if you end up becoming enslaved in your own business, that’s not good either.
Brett:Definitely. I’m just, again, trying to figure that out. Our overhead is quite a bit. Yeah, like you said. I don’t hate my life at all. I actually love a lot of the stuff I do. I love our meetup. We just did a Simple Wholesaling meetup here locally last night and I love teaching and we had 85 people show up and it was jam-packed in this room. It was awesome and I love doing that. I love team building. I love we have our weekly team meetings on Fridays and I love coming up with some creative things to inspire them, to talk to them.
I love doing all that. It’s sometimes really just trying to figure out the system and the processes and really just learning to let things go. That’s probably what I’m worst at because I feel like I can do things the best. Some of that is true on some of the different tasks, but I have to realize if somebody else can just do it 80% as well as I can do it but I get 100% of that time back, I have to realize that. That’s where the whole freedom comes in.
I have to really ask myself some hard questions and it’s a lot of self-reflection and just kind of thinking about all that and really just saying, “What do I need to let go of that I’m not?” It’s hard to think about yourself that way. You can critique other people and point your fingers, but when you start thinking about yourself, you’re like, “What do I need to do to correct myself?” You have all these bad habits you just go through life with.
Mike:You’ve got to reflect and ask yourself what is this all for, right? Sometimes, bigger is not necessarily better. People assume that when they’re new and they’re getting started. They’re like, “I would love to make millions of dollars.” Yeah, but you’re going to have a lot more expenses. You’re going to have a lot more headaches. You’re responsible for more people, so you lay in bed at night thinking about the stress of that. I think you said this word before we started today where you talked about some other things.
We were talking about the pendulum swinging. Sometimes we go from one end of the spectrum to the other. It’s like, “I’m by myself. I’m working. I’m doing everything. It’s too much work. I need to build a team.” Then you build a team and it gets too big and there’s too much financial burden or risk there that you’re like, “No, this isn’t right either.” Of course, the reality is somewhere in the middle, but where is the question.
Brett:Yeah. I think at the last mastermind group, there’s a couple things I want to mention here. There was a gentleman that was the editor of “Success” magazine, Darren Hardy.
Mike:Yeah.
Brett:He was talking about the most successful people, out of 100 things that come across their desk, they say no to 99 of them. So they say no a lot. It’s not what they say yes to. I think sometimes that’s my problem.
Right now, when you do get bigger and you start to build a brand like we’re doing, I get asked to do a lot of things. I get asked to sit down for lunch or coffee quite a few times in a week. We’re doing a radio show right now, which is awesome because I want to do some local things, but we’re doing a radio show called Real Talk, real estate investing the right way, and it’s through our local REIA club and it’s really cool.
So, I’m doing a podcast. I’m doing a radio show. I’m getting ready to do a podcast with my daughter, which awesome. It’s something I want to do, but it kind of keeps piling on. I have to figure out, “Okay, write down everything that I’m doing and what do I want to eliminate, take out of my life, say no to and figure out what is the most important thing?” So, I feel like everybody has to do that and that self-reflection is crucial in our lives.
Mike:It’s funny. I’m gazing to the left up here at my wall. We went through an EOS implementation a few weeks, back, which is kind of from the book, “Traction,” for those that have read it. I’ve actually talked about it a couple times here in the last couple shows. Part of the process, some of it is to decide what you’re good at or what you like to do. I’ll talk about that in a second. But you could even do it at an organizational level, like, “What are we good at?” and “What should we do?”
So, if you kind of imagine this just like four-box quadrant, there’s like a two by two matrix, except for Gary put three at the bottom. So, there’s two boxes on top and three across the bottom. I have this big sheet that’s up here. It basically says, “What do I love to do and what am I great at?” and then, “What do I like to do and I’m good at?” That’s on the top. Then the bottom is, “I don’t like it, but I’m good at it.” Then on the other side is, “I don’t like it and I’m not good at it.”
Brett:But I’m still doing it.
Mike:Then there’s one in the middle, “I like it but I’m not good at it.” That was just a total mouthful here, so we won’t confuse everybody. But it’s effectively deciding what are you good at that you like doing and what do you hate doing that you don’t like it and you’re not good at it, clearly, you should stop doing those things. I think it’s just a matter of assessing like, “What are you good at? What do you enjoy? What are you not good at and what do you hate?”
I think sometimes in our business, we feel like we can do everything. This is a cheesy cliché at this point because I’ve said it before. If I were to buy a McDonalds franchise, I’m a perfectionist and so I feel like nobody would get the fries as golden brown as me. But I’ve got to run the business. I can’t be the fry guy. I think that’s what you’re saying too. There’s stuff in your business that you just have to let go of because you just can’t do it all.
Brett:And then just leading a team too, people are going to fail. They’re humans. They’re going to make mistakes. Sometimes, I really just have to let them make the mistakes. What I fail at is when they do make a mistake, I’ve taken my hands off of this task and I’m letting them do it, but then when they make a mistake, what do I do? I pick up the task again, I say, “You’re not doing it right. I can do it better.”
Then I just start really not intentionally, but I just start doing it again and then I’m sucked right back in to where I was at. So, I feel like as the leader of a company and you’re leading a team, you have to let them make mistakes and then teach them and talk to them and correct them in a positive way and don’t get sucked back into the task of doing it yourself. It’s a lose-lose.
Mike:Yeah. So, let’s talk a little bit about people. I want to just emphasize again, just the importance of this is also an EOS thing, it’s kind of fresh in my mind because you just went through it. It’s not like we went through it and we’re done. It’s kind of how we do things now. So, it will take a while for it to, like, fully implement, but it’s just having a vision, knowing certainly what you core values are. I know you know that for your business, but also, what is your vision? What is it that you’re trying to accomplish and why?
So, I think a lot of real estate investors, they’re like, “I want to make money.” That’s how they start. You can’t build a business around that long-term. Do a couple deals and then solidify it or whatever, but you just have to know what is it you’re trying to accomplish. Then of course, you have people in and they need to understand your vision and they need to have buy-in to it, right?
Brett:Yeah.
Mike:Let’s talk a little bit about those right people. I know you said you kind of willy-nilly found some people early on and not necessarily the right way, but talk about the importance of having the right people on your team.
Brett:I think it’s super important. Number one, I believe that Patrick Lencioni wrote a book called “The Ideal Team Player.” I really use this in my business. He talks about when you hire somebody, they need to be humble. They leave their egos at the door. They need to be hungry. So, they’re not sleeping in until 10 a.m. They want to get up and they want to get it done. They need to be smart. Not really book smart all the time, but they need to be smart at whatever they’re doing, maybe people smart, common sense smart. Those are the three things I look for.
I think the book “Traction” talks about really putting the right people in the right seats. I go through this all the time because I feel like everybody that I’ve brought on to my team started off in a different seat than they are in right now because as you get to know them, you get to know their personality, maybe they’re more detail-oriented and not as hungry and aggressive. I had them in a sales role and maybe since they’re so detailed, they need to be more in a transactional admin type of role.
So, I’ve really had to switch people around. I just had this conversation today. We just hired on a girl and she’s awesome. She’s been with us for about a month. She is the disposition’s assistant. So, she’s really great at details. She takes notes and has like six pages and she’s doing our property presentations and she’s doing our listings on the MLS. She’s doing our purchase agreements when we sell properties. So, she’s doing a lot of that admin stuff. We had a need for someone to help take some of the incoming calls on the acquisition side.
So, I said, “Hey, I think maybe you’ve got some extra time over here. So, let’s go ahead and have you take some of the acquisitions calls.” So, she just started this week doing that. If you’ve ever taken calls from motivated sellers, you understand, you get 20 calls, 10 of them are probably okay, 5 of them are a little harsh and they’re just like one or two that they’re just like cussing you out. They’re calling you . . . I think she actually got called the B-word today. She’s just not used to that.
So, she’s kind of welling up. I just said, “I don’t think this is the right seat for you and it’s okay. I think the admin and some of the presentations and some of the marketing stuff, that’s your seat. That’s your background. Let’s do that.” The more I do this business, I really realize that if you put someone in the right seat, that they can be an absolute rock star, but if you put that same person in the wrong seat, they’re going to drown, they’re going to be miserable and they’re really going to suck at that position.
That’s something you’ve got to kind of figure out. In our business, we do some different things. I think that personality tests are really crucial. We do the DiSC test, which is basically a personality to see if they’re a D or an I. Are they super-dominant or are they like detailed or do they like to influence, things like that. We also do the Kolbe test. That’s a test that just kind of tells them what they’re good at and what they’re weak at. That’s really crucial.
A lot of it kind of comes through experience. Like I said, I said, “Hey, I like this person. They’re really good at stuff.” They came in, then I’m like, “You know what? I think they would be better over here.” For example, I have one gentleman, his name is Alex. He’s working on our systems and processes. He’s working on our Podio CRM. He develops these outlines and all this detail stuff that drives me nuts because he’s putting this process, “Oh, you do this and this does this and this person gets this task. You hit this button and this stuff goes over here.” It’s all this development stuff and crazy stuff. But he loves it. He loves it.
He came in actually taking the acquisitions calls. That’s what he did for about a year. He doesn’t even like talking to people very much. He’s more like, “I want to be behind the screen and not talk to anybody,” and do his process and stuff like that. Now, he’s in that right seat and he loves it. Fortunately, he’s stuck with us just because he’s a loyal person for the first year and he was probably in the wrong seat.
Mike:Yeah. Talk a little bit about how . . . so, you gave two examples there of how you had right people in the wrong seat and fortunately, you had another seat for them. A lot of times in small companies, there’s only a couple seats. There’s not a whole lot, especially when you’re small and you’re new. But talk about, you don’t have to give specifics on them, but sometimes what makes the right person, whether they’re in the wrong seat or not might be another story, but at least in your business or maybe just generally for real estate investors or if somebody’s listening right now and they’re wondering the same thing, what makes somebody the right person for your business?
Brett:For me at my weekly meetings, I always talk about basically one thing that I expect out of everybody. Like I said, going back to the hungry, humble and smart, I definitely follow that. But really, the hungry part of it is super-crucial because the people that haven’t made it with our company, unfortunately, we’ve had to let some people go. That’s just the nature of the business and they just weren’t the right fit and we didn’t have a seat for them. They just weren’t the right person. And my biggest pet peeve that I really ask is I just want you to show up every single day.
The people that are still with us, even if they were in the wrong seat, like Alex, for example, yeah, he probably wasn’t in the right seat answering the calls and he’s not super-extroverted and he’s talking to motivated sellers, but he showed up every single day. Maybe he wasn’t the best at it, but at least we got some traction out of him. So, we still grew as a company, but when you put the right person in that right seat, then it just explodes. So, then we finally get the right person and it just goes from there.
Mike:Yeah.
Brett:So, I don’t know, I think the biggest thing for me is the right person is somebody who’s super-hungry, who’s going to show up who is passionate about the opportunity. I feel like everybody that I’ve brought in, they’ve really been passionate because they’ve come from maybe a walk of life that they had a job that they did not like. They were working these weird hours. They couldn’t find a position or they were working in a culture that was super cutthroat, people cutting their legs out from under them.
Then when they come into ours, I want to encourage them. I want to bless them. I want to be generous with them. I feel like just the culture of what I’ve created, what we’ve created with the core values, it has kept people here. So, even if they’re in the wrong seat, I feel like they hold on to the hope that I’m just going to stick this out and maybe eventually I’ll enter into something that I truly enjoy and that’s kind of what’s happened.
Mike:Yeah. The core values thing is awesome. I think anybody that’s listening right now, that’s what you need to think about. What’s important to you? What are your core values? I know, again, I’m just going to keep coming back to the EOS stuff because we just went through it. We had to define our core values.
I’m ten years in the business and I had never defined that. It’s not that we had no values. There are things that I valued that I just didn’t have it framed on my wall like, “This is what we care about as a business.” We haven’t done that yet, but we will. I actually have it here in front of me. I have our vision traction organizer here, process you go through.
Our values, probably a lot like yours, we kind of listed four things—giving and caring. You care about people. You want to give. You need to make money as a business, but you want to give back. You’re giving me and my audience your time right now and I’m giving my audience my time. Nobody’s getting paid for any of this. We’re just sharing our experience. We like to give. We like to share our knowledge.
Hard working and goal-driven, same thing as you. I think if you remember, I’m in Dallas now, but I grew up in the Midwest. You’ve got those Midwestern, hardworking values that are important that you’re going to get it done, you’re accountable. No matter what, the buck stops with me type thing. Integrity and honesty and loyalty, all those things are important. I think for people that are listening, you have to kind of define what your core values are.
Brett:Yeah. I’m right there with you.
Mike:So, when you’re talking to a prospective employee or even partner, anything in your life, does this person fit my core values? Do they believe what I believe? Otherwise, you’re going to be disappointed.
Brett:Yeah. Everything boils down to the core values. When you guys are thinking about core values, just like you, Mike. You don’t have to think of 30 core values because that’s just too many. You need to think of a handful that you can really remember. Every client that you talk to and even the team in itself, that’s how I hire people and that’s how we fire people and let people go is based upon those core values.
If we have an interaction that is not pleasant, that’s what we talk about. Did this represent this? One of our core values is leaving a lasting impression. So, if we’re talking to a client or a cash buyer or just another team member, let’s say a motivated seller calls the acquisitions guy and they cuss him out. What do you do? How do you react? Do you cuss them out too? Do you keep your composure and be like, “I’m super sorry. I would love to add you right now to the do not mail list so you do not get another post card from us,” and hopefully that will leave a lasting impression and try to do that. So, it’s super crucial.
One core value that I implemented last year is by having this transparent conversation, it is a core value. It’s also an inspiring thing that some days I really hit, but it really kind of comes to mind because I have a business coach and he built a multi-million-dollar business and he sold it for a lot of money. I asked him, “Hey, when you were in your 30s or whatever and you were growing this business, what is one thing that you wished that you would have done different?” He said, “The one thing I wished I would have done is enjoy the ride.”
So, I said, “Man, that’s so good.” When you’re building this business, you just get sucked into it. You do the grind day and day and start doing 300 deals a year and grinding it out and you’re like, “Wow, this is so awesome.” Sometimes I’m forgetting to enjoy the ride. That’s just like one of our core values. When we’re not having a great week, that’s something we can come back to. “Guys, let’s just take a breath because we need to go out and enjoy ourselves. Let’s not even work. Let’s just go do something else.”
Mike:Yeah.
Brett:It all boils down to that.
Mike:Yeah. That’s awesome. Well, Brett, we’re kind of coming to the end here. Maybe you can just share for people that are just getting started or those that are doing some deals right now but they’re kind of doing everything themselves, what kind of advice would you give them on this topic of knowing, “You’re working hard to get build something here, or to get started building something.” The advice isn’t like, “Don’t get big.”
Brett:Well, people have huge, huge businesses and they have freedom.
Mike:Kind of summarize your advice for them of how to grow but grow in line with what their vision is but do it the right way. If you could go back, like you just said, if you could go back and do it all over again, what would you do differently? Kind of wrap that in terms of giving advice to people that are listening right now.
Brett:I think you’ve got to start off with the end in mind, not the end in mind on your goal to make $1 million a year or whatever that is, but the end in mind on what you want your life to look like and if that’s the way you want your life to look and you want to grind it out 60 hours a week and make a $1 million, then that’s okay. But if your life looks a little bit different than that and you want the freedom, you want to be able to go to your daughter’s play or son’s basketball game at any given time or go meet your friend for lunch or go meet a . . . whatever you want to do, if you want your life to look the freedom like that, then that’s what you need to paint.
Then you need to take your business and try to structure it to hit whatever you want your life to look like. I think that sometimes, we just hire somebody and they make us some money and then we hire somebody else and then we hire somebody else, then we didn’t really start there. So, right now, that’s kind of what I did. I hired a guy because I needed help and I hired somebody else. So, now, a few years into this, I’m really starting to think about, “What do I really want my life to look like?”
So, now, that’s why we’re kind of scaling back and lean. I said, “I don’t know if I want to be this big. I still want to make money and I still want to do good. I need to train better. I need a better system here. I need to let go of this. I need to write down what I’m good at and what I love and only do those things. Everything that I am good at that I do not like, I need to let go. Those are some of the exercises like you’ve been talking about, Mike. Figure out your why, your passion and what you want your life to look like and then you have to structure your business around your life and not structure your life around your business.
Mike:That’s great, man. Yeah. I think we talked about this a little bit. There’s this machismo in this industry of, “I hustle hard.” If you were to kind of do less deals, that somehow is a negative. People see that as, “He’s not as good as he used to be.” At the end of the day, there’s a million people that want to do what you’re doing. Don’t let their goals become your goals because they haven’t probably lived in your shoes. They don’t know what your vision and your goals are.
Brett:Yeah. People think that people that are very successful and want the freedom and I hear the stigma is, “I just want to sit on the beach all the time,” and that sounds really boring to me. I would rather just do things like this—do shows, help people and not maybe get into the day to day grind of whatever it is I’m doing.” So, that’s some advice. Keep it simple. It doesn’t have to be super complicated.
That’s where our business comes in, Simple Wholesaling. We just try to keep it simple, simple team. It doesn’t have to be rocket science. As you scale, though, just kind of think about that end in mind. Your core values, that’s huge. Your core values really probably if you’re a one-man show are really just representing you. My core values basically define who I am.
Mike:Awesome. Hey, Brett. If folks want to learn more about you, obviously, you have a podcast. You have another one coming up with your daughter, maybe just share how folks can learn more about you and what you’ve got going on.
Brett:Yeah, definitely. So, we are Simple Wholesaling. Our website is simplewholesaling.com. We have a lot of educational materials on there. Our podcast is on there. It is on iTunes, the Simple Wholesaling Podcast. Me and my cohost Brian Snider do that podcast together. I am launching another podcast with my 11-year old daughter. It is launching March the 7th. It is going to be called the Daddy Daughter Show.
We’re going to be having a website, very simple website because I don’t have time to do a bunch of stuff, just kind of feature the podcast, daddydaughtershow.com. It’s going to be a lot of fun. So, if you want entertainment, you want some laughs and you really want to learn how to relate to your daughter or any member of your family, listen to the daddydaughtershow.com. Go to simplewholesaling.com and reach out to us.
Mike:That’s awesome, man. Thanks for joining us. Good to see you, my friend.
Brett:You too, Mike. Thanks again.
Mike:Everybody, this is episode number 403 with Brett Snodgrass. Brett’s business has just blown up, as we talked about here, though bigger isn’t always necessarily better. It kind of depends on what you’re trying to achieve. If you got in this business or you’re trying to get in this business for lifestyle reasons and freedom reasons, don’t become a slave to your own business ultimately. It all comes down to trying to accomplish what it is that you originally set out to do and what fulfills your life in a way that whatever you did last couldn’t, I guess.
So, guys, again, episode 403. We appreciate you. If you could and if you haven’t yet, please give us a positive rating on iTunes, Stitcher Radio, YouTube, anywhere where you might watch or listen to the show here. If you watch it on FlipNerd.com, just share it with some friends that you think might get some value out of this. I appreciate it. That’s what keeps us energized to keep bringing you shows. After hundreds of shows, that’s really what keeps me going is the opportunity to talk to friends like Brett and get some reviews and feedback from people that got value out of it. Appreciate you guys. We’ll see you on another upcoming episode. Take care.
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