Show Summary
What’s getting in your way of success? If you’re not achieving the success you’d like, Doubt, Disappointment and Distraction are the likely culprits. Tom Krol joins us to discuss this in detail, then walks us through one of his “Welcome Calls” that he typically reserves for only high paying students. Don’t miss this excellent episode!
Highlights of this show
- Meet Tom Krol – Wholesaling expert, podcaster, coach and mentor.
- Learn why you should stop trying to get better at the things you stink at, and focus on your strengths.
- Listen in as Tom talks about how Doubt, Disappointment and Distraction may be holding you back.
- Join an example of Tom’s ‘Welcome Call’ that he typically reserves for only high dollar coaching clients, to help you get started on the right foot.
Resources and Links from this show:
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.
If you’re already a member of FlipNerd.com, welcome back. We’re excited you’re here. If you’re new, please go to FlipNerd.com and you can set up a free account literally in about 15 or 20 seconds. We’ve got an awesome community that’s growing rapidly. We have tons of deals available on the site and hundreds of hours of great information and interviews with experts.
This is episode number 296 with my friend, Tom Krol. Tom has been on the show before, but it was around 150 episodes ago. So it’s been a little while. Tom is a wholesaler and a coach that has a pretty amazing story of how he got into real estate investing at all. So hopefully, he’s going to share that with us for a couple minutes here in just a couple minutes.
If you don’t know Tom, he’s passionate. He’s got a ton of energy and if you’re feeling a little low today, prepare to get woken up here. So we’re going to spice it up today a little bit with Tom. Really the core of all real estate investing is wholesaling. That’s what Tom teaches. He’s also a coach and has a business that’s just on fire right now.
If you have been watching the show in 2016 here so far, you already know that we break the show into two parts. We have part one and part two. Part one, we’re going to talk about common mistakes that real estate investors make or those trying to get into real estate investing. Tom’s going to talk about how to clear those.
Then in part two is our taking action segment. What we’re going to do in this part, I’m really excited about this, Tom has a $5,000 coaching program and he has an onboarding process of what he coaches everybody in the very beginning. Despite the fact that we didn’t pay $5,000 for it, Tom is going to onboard us today. He’s going to kind of go through the process of telling you what to think about and how to achieve success in your real estate investing business. So let’s get started. Tom, how are you, my friend?
Tom: Bam! Let’s do it! All right, brother. I am excited to be here.
Mike: Dude, I don’t know what you’re taking, but I want some.
Tom: It is good to be here again. I’m glad it’s my second appearance. That’s awesome, man. I love it.
Mike: Yeah. What we decided to do going forward, not that we won’t have some new guests, we do have some new guests, but there are certain people we’ve had on the show after doing hundreds of episodes where we find ourselves kind of stretching to find new people. It’s like, hey, we’ve got people with great information, great content, so we talked for a half-hour. It’s not like we extracted everything you knew out of you. So we’re here to extract some more today.
Tom: All right. Awesome. Well, I am absolutely here to share. We’re going to pour out some awesome content so I hope everyone is ready. They’ve got a pen and paper. They’re ready to take action today.
Mike: That’s great. For those of you, if you don’t know Tom, first off, he’s extremely generous with sharing information. This is the interesting thing about it. I know that Tom in his coaching program is simply sharing what he does that works. It’s not like, “Here’s some academic view of what might work.” This business is all about taking action ultimately.
Hey, Tom, why don’t you take a minute and tell us your background? I know your story about how you got in. For those that haven’t heard it before, why don’t you take some time and tell us?
Tom: Absolutely. I’ve got a sad story, like a lot of people out there who got into wholesaling, I lost my job. I was selling lawn care door to door. It was a total disaster. I got fired from that horrible position, thank God. I called my brother, Todd Toback, who was in wholesaling for a long time out in San Diego and I said, “Todd, what should I do? What I should I do?”
He said, “You’ve got to get into wholesaling.” He’s like, “I’m telling you, I’m crushing it.” He was doing $2 million a year and I was totally broke. I was whining, “San Diego is not as good as I live in a tiny town in Port St. Lucie. It’s never going to work. Your houses are more expensive. It’s a bigger area.” He said, “Shut up and do what I tell you to do.” He literally dragged me kicking and screaming the whole time to do my first deal and then my second and my third and my fourth and now I’m ringing that victory bell every day right behind me.
Mike: That’s a good part of, would you agree? After you do your first deal, but certainly after a couple days, it’s largely a confidence thing, right?
Tom: One hundred percent.
Mike: You start making excuses as to why it won’t work where you are or for you or whatever it might be.
Tom: I’m going to go through some of that because we’re going to spank everybody who has those belief systems. But I will you, I always joke with my clients. I have a brand new client. Her name is Jodie Christianson. Hopefully, she doesn’t mind me sharing her name.
Mike: Too late.
Tom: Yeah, too late. She’s in Charlotte, North Carolina and she joined the program. She was saying, “Tom, it’s tough. It’s tough.” I said, “Jodie, your first deal is always the hardest.” And then she did her first deal and she made $9,800, which was awesome. Then I said, “Jodie, your second deal is always your hardest one.” She got her second. I’m like, “Well, Jodie, your third deal is really the toughest one.” So now she’s doing her third deal, but the first three are always tough.
I think it really is a mindset problem because wholesaling is brain-dead simple. If I can do it, anybody can do it. All the education that you ever would need on wholesaling is you find a motivated seller, you put them under contract, you sell the contract. That’s it. It’s wholesaling is simple . . . wholesalers, very complicated. That’s the bottom line.
Mike: I think with real estate investing in general, there are a ton of people that do no deals. There are some people that do five to 10 plus deals a month, not a ton, but they’re out there. We know a lot of them. I have a lot of them on the show. There are just a whole bunch of people that do a deal or two a month or between six and 15 deals a year.
The challenge is if you’re doing six deals a year, that’s a deal every other month. So you’ve got like 59 days of freaking out. That’s just kind of how it works is this emotional cycle. What a lot of people do in that time is they start to convince themselves even if they did a big juicy deal before, they start to convince themselves, “Well, I got lucky once. But that’s not going to happen again.”
Tom: Right. It’s the rollercoaster. It’s that rollercoaster. The reason that happens, as far as I’m concerned, is that they can’t get out of their own way. They are doing things that they shouldn’t be doing. What we have to realize is once we go down this journey, we are saying to the world, “Hey, we’re entrepreneurs,” and the deal with entrepreneurs is that we are at 35,000 feet, not 5,000 feet.
So I’m telling everybody who’s listening to this podcast right now, you absolutely stink at the details. Stop trying to get better at your weaknesses and start outsourcing them. Stop wasting your time. It takes too much willpower and discipline to fill out an Excel spreadsheet and do your marketing on time. It’s supposed to be done by other people. Outsource that and this way you can get off of the wholesaling rollercoaster and start having consistency in your deal flow and your cash flow and things like that.
Mike: Yeah. We’re starting to dive into the common mistakes here. So, Tom, one of the things that a lot of new people . . . you’ve faced this. There are a lot of people that want to get into this business. You’re a testament from your story that you can be broke and be successful here. You probably would admit that it’s easier if you have money, right?
Tom: Yeah, for sure.
Mike: So the question is a lot of people that are trying to do this on a shoestring budget have a hard time outsourcing things because that money would be better spent on advertising, right?
Tom: Right. I’m going to shut this because you’re breaking up a little bit. Can you hear me okay?
Okay. That’s better. So I think wholesaling on a shoestring budget can be tough, but here’s what I’m going to say to that. I believe when I started, I was really truly broke. I did my first mailing and I made a tremendous mistake. I forgot to put last market sale date into my list criteria, which is a getting a little granular, but that’s a tremendous mistake because everybody who was on my list had just bought their home for 100% cash the last six months and I could tell you . . .
But here’s the deal, Mike, here is the deal . . . I know this is going to sound silly and this is going to sound amateurish, but that’s okay. The bottom line is if I went ahead and I kidnapped your children or someone that you love and I said, “Hey, you’ve got to wholesale a deal in order to get them back, I guarantee you would wholesale a deal in 72 hours.
Mike: You’d figure it out.
Tom: The bottom line is it’s all about your perspective. You will figure it out if you go and take action and get away from the books and all of that.
Mike: Yeah. Let’s keep talking about common mistakes that people make and how they can kind of overcome those.
Tom: So there are a lot of them out there. I think that it really comes down to the belief system [Inaudible 00:08:57] in different ways. One of the first ones that will start to happen is doubt. So doubt is really the symptom . . . it has a lot of symptoms, but the core problem is doubt, “Am I smart enough? Am I good enough? Am I good looking enough? Do I have enough money? Am I in the right territory?”
That’s one that really dealt with big time. I thought because my brother was in San Diego. I’m in [inaudible 00:09:23] town in Florida. All of the self-doubt and are you worthy . . . doubt can come in a lot of forms, but one of the main problems is definitely doubt and how do you deal with that, where is your belief system, where is courage, where is your motivation, where is your faith? Doubt is a problem.
So the other one, of course, is disappointment. Disappointment can be not knowing how to get past the disappointment when you first start. That can come in so many different forms. So disappointment can be you’re working on a deal. You’ve got a seller and you’ve got a big, fat $20,000, $50,000 assignment and right at the eleventh hour, seller pulls out of the deal, whole entire deal explodes. Disappointment can also be that you are busting your butt for a week and everyone that you talk to tells you to go pound sand with your BS lowball offer. That’s a total nightmare.
Then, you’ve got the stage IV terminal killer of wholesalers or all real estate investors and that is distraction. That’s the worst one. Distraction is a bear. Distraction will kill you. It kills more than anything else. Distraction can come in the form of education. A lot of people call it analysis paralysis, right? You need to know before you go. You want to be a learner, not an earner. So there are a whole bunch of analogies, but the bottom line is your busting your butt learning, learning, learning and you’re really just on a treadmill. You’re not really going anywhere. It’s like you have the hustle, but you don’t have the instruction.
So you’ll talk to these people in six months and it’s like, “Hey, how’s it going?” You’re like, “Oh, I’m doing great. I just learned this new tactic so now I have multiple exit strategies with a motivated seller.” I hate to even smile about it because it’s a shame. If they would just actually get right to failure, that would be the key. That’s really the key.
But distraction comes in education. It comes in shiny object syndrome, right? You send a brand new wholesaler to a REIA meeting, “Oh, forget wholesaling. You should flip bulk REO deals. There’s more money and less time.” And people are like, “Tell me more about that.”
Mike: Yeah, multi-family, what’s that? Land? Okay. Let’s do that.
Tom: Absolutely. So shiny object syndrome. It can be personal. You get started in your wholesaling career and all of a sudden, your wife books a trip to Hawaii for a week and then you’re off and that’s it. So I think not knowing how to deal with these gut check moments and these hurdles, that’s really the difference.
That’s the common thread that runs amongt the most successful wholesalers, the most successful people who are doing this. They are anticipating these hurdles. They’re anticipating these gut check moments. They’re prepared for them. They know what to do. They know how to handle them and then they handle them. I think that’s definitely a key, for sure.
Mike: Without kind of stealing thunder from the second part of the show here, which is going to be taking action, where we’re going to dive into some of the stuff, can you share some ways to get over some of those issues?
Tom: Yeah, for sure. So here’s one thing that people who are successful have been saying for a long time that I never really listened to, but when I started wholesaling, thank goodness I did. It’s really about . . . this comes from Jim Rohn . . . you are the average of the five people you spend the most time with. This is so true again and again and again it pops up and is certainly a commonality among my most successful clients and myself included.
But I can tell you, Mike, if I want to get to know you, I never have to meet you in person. All I have to do is get to know the five people you spend the most time with and I will know everything about you. I’ll know how successful you relationships are with your friends and family, I’ll know how much money you have in the bank. I’ll know everything about you.
So if you really want to make some serious changes in your life and you want to bring a supernatural growth to your business and to your success and some stability to every area of your life, you’ve really got to be looking for those rock stars, the people where you need improvement, where you want to get to in those areas is crucial for your success.
Mike: Yeah. Some of it is to maybe stop disassociating yourself with people that are in your circle, right?
Tom: Right. Absolutely.
Mike: I think a lot of people . . . I don’t want anybody to go disrupt their family too much, but a lot of challenge for real estate investors, to be honest, is the family usually thinks you’re crazy early on, right?
Tom: Oh, yeah, absolutely. It’s so funny. People always say in this industry. You watch these motivation videos and they say, “I want to prove these people wrong, the people who told me I couldn’t do it, the people who told me I couldn’t be this person. Those people are easy to prove wrong. Those aren’t the problem people. The problem people are the people who love you. They care about you. Those are the ones you’ve got to watch out for people those are the ones with these codependent relationships. They’re kind of rooting for you, but you’re not really sure what their agenda is.
So it’s the people who you spend time with, the people who love you care about you, those are the ones where it’s more challenging. So stop worrying about the people you want to prove wrong, like your high school teacher from 20 years ago. Worry about the person who you’re closest to. That’s the key, for sure.
Mike: Yeah. I think some of it is I think you and I both know this, if you’re going to fail, fail fast, learn from it and move on. That’s really how every business is. There’s nothing better than showing your spouse or whatever that, “This is going to work for us. Here’s an example.” That overcomes any kind of concern they had before because they see you do a couple of deals and make money on it and put some money in the bank, then it’s like, “Okay, I thought you were crazy, but now I see it. Go do that again.”
Tom: Absolutely. I think getting your first few checks is so key. I remember getting my first $2,000 checks. My first amount was $2,000. As a matter of fact, I did everything wrong. I had to get in my car and follow the buyer home to get the assignment fee in cash because I forgot to tell him at the closing he had to pay for closing costs. So he didn’t have enough money to pay me and it was a big debacle. I remember celebrating that $2,000.
Mike: Like you won the lottery.
Tom: This business, it’s so good and honest and wholesome. I just love it, brother. It just changed my life. It’s incredible to be sitting here with you three years . . . if you would have talked to me three years ago, if we would have spoken, I would have been like, “Mike, let me get $50 for gas, bro.” It’s incredible.
It’s really true. It’s just like an amazing journey to be on and you’re catching me while I’m still on it. We have bigger plans. Our goal this year is to buy a vacation home in South Carolina in Charleston. We’re looking at homes. The realtor said, “What’s the price point?” I said, “$1.8 million, $1.9 million.” It’s like how is that possible? That is crazy, brother. That is crazy. It’s incredible, man. I love it. I love it.
Mike: Awesome. So Tom, are you ready to help us take action?
Tom: Absolutely. We’re going to crush it right now. I hope you’re ready.
Mike: Awesome. So tell us what you’re going to go through here. I know you have coaching clients and you’ve had such great success over the past few years that I know you’re sharing your information with a lot of people now that are coming to you for your coaching program. But just kind of tell us what is the process of what you go through and then let’s just dive into it.
Tom: Absolutely. So when we bring on a new client right now, what we do is I actually go through a welcome call with every new client and what I’m going to share with you today is the welcome call. So what is the welcome call? The welcome call is what we found are there are common threads that run amongst our most successful clients.
So these are the common threads that we see against and again popping up with the people who right out of the gate are making $100,000, $200,000, $300,000 in their first 90 days in our program and what we want to do is we poll those people and we figure out, “What are you doing differently than everybody else?” And then we share that with every new client. So it’s really super-exciting. We’re going to get right to it.
Mike: Awesome. Let’s dive in. What are those common traits that you see?
Tom: Here’s what I’ll tell you. What I’d like to do is I’ll just kind of go through a welcome call with you. Does that sound fair?
Mike: Let’s do it.
Tom: We can kind of have a back and forth.
Mike: Let’s do it.
Tom: I’ll treat you as if you’re a new client.
So the first thing is welcome to the Rhino Club, Mike. So what we do is I’m going to share these things with you. These are what we find are going to catapult you right to the stratosphere. The number one most important is that whenever you come into a new program, Mike, this is Mr. Miyagi/Daniel-san.
It’s all instruction. We are going to tell you what to do and I just want you to do it. I don’t care what you want to know about wholesaling. I don’t care what you think about wholesaling. We have a certain particular way of doing things, I want you to follow directions and take the instruction. You can ask all the questions you want about how to wax the car. Don’t ask any questions about why you’re waxing it. Make sense?
Bam! That’s number one. So part of that is to try not to be anticipatory. Whenever you’re getting instruction from a wholesaling mentor, what you want to do is step by step. So you want to follow them blindly. You’ve got to trust the process. That’s the key. Get out of your own way. Don’t change the postcard. Don’t put in your own input. So one of the things I want you to do is I want you to make a big sign. I want you to put it above your desk and I want it to say, “Progress, not perfection.”
What I want you to do is I want you to get out of the gate and I want you to fail and fail and fail. The people that come into my program and make the most money in the shortest amount of time are failing every day. Don’t worry about the details. We’re going to keep you safe legally. Just do what we tell you to do, take the instruction and take action, massive action. Make sense?
That’s number one. Number two . . . I want you to read and implement “The Four Spiritual Laws of Prosperity” right away. When I first started in wholesaling, I went to a conference. Three very, very successful and wealthy wholesalers recommended that book to me within a two-day period. I did that. It was a game-changer. It changed my whole life. I had immediate success. It is required reading in our tribe. So absolutely, 100%, let’s make it happen.
Mike: Awesome. We’ll find the link and add that in the show notes here too.
Tom: Let’s do it. Sounds like a plan. Number three, we talked about earlier in the show. You are the average of the five people you spend the most time with. So here is the deal, Mike: absolute rock stars. Anybody in your circle who you’re spending time with has got to be crushing it in the area where you want to be.
Anybody who’s negative has got to be cut out. So anybody who is a complainer, poor, whiner, victim, always blaming somebody else, always sick, starting rumors about anybody, you go out with an old high school buddy for a cheeseburger and he’s married and he’s looking at every hot girl who walks by, absolutely cut him out of the circle. So that’s the deal. It’s definitely crucial for your success. So that’s rule number three. Sounds good?
All right. Number four is momentum. Now, we call it momentum. It comes back from the polls from our top students in a lot of different ways, but here’s what momentum looks like. Once you start, you can’t stop. Now, I don’t work on Sunday, so you can take Sunday off or any day that you want to keep as a day of rest, but Monday through Saturday, you’ve got to be working towards your wholesaling goals or your real estate investing goals every single day. You’ve got to make time ahead of time.
So if you’ve got something coming up, you’ve got to book some time ahead of schedule to make sure that you’re focused on that goal. It’s absolutely critical because momentum can work for you just as much as it can work against you. One day off becomes two becomes a week becomes a month. You have a little tiny spark, you’ve got to make it flame and then you’ve got to make it a raging fire. The only way you do that is by focusing on it every day. That’s number four.
Number five is very, very simple. I’m going to tell you how to deal with the gut check moments. This is the secret sauce. If there is a secret sauce to wholesaling, if there is a secret sauce to investing in real estate and becoming a real estate investor and making tons of money, this is the secret sauce, what I am telling you right now.
So everybody better be paying attention. Here’s the deal. When you get these gut check moments, and I’m telling you now, if you’re just starting, they are coming and they continue to come at you. This is God’s way or the universe’s way of saying, hey, does Mike or whoever is listening, because I know you’ve already arrived, do you really deserve the awesome potential that wholesaling has to offer, the freedom, the financial freedom, the time freedom? Are you really worth of it?
So what they do is they put these gut check moments in front of you, doubt, disappointment and distraction. They’re absolute killers. Here’s how you’re going to deal with them. Number one, you’ve got to recognize that they’re going to happen. So once they happen, kind of giggle to yourself and be like, “Man, Tom told me that was going to happen.”
And then, you need to set a little egg timer, three minutes. That’s what you’re going to give yourself. Three minutes, you get to have the biggest pity party in the whole world. You can blame Mike. You can blame me. You can blame your spouse. You can blame your kids, your high school teacher, coach, whomever you want to blame for three minutes. But right at that moment, after three minutes is up, you’ve got to get right back to work.
I am telling you right now that if there is a secret sauce to investing in real estate, it is what I’m telling you right now is that you have got to persist until failure quits. As soon as you are discouraged and you’re losing heart, you have to make that next phone call. You’ve got to book that next appointment. You’ve got to go see that seller. You’ve got to send that next offer. It’s in your moment of despair and losing heart where you’re going to find your greatness. That is where you’re going to have success. It’s in those moments.
If it were easy, everybody could do it. It’s that extra 10%. Anybody off the street could do 100%. It’s that extra 10% when you make that extra effort, that is where you’re going to find your success and your freedom and that’s where you’re going to have your greatness.
So I really want to encourage everybody out there that when you’re struggling and these gut check moments come up and all of a sudden you’re distracted by this or you’re disappointed by that or you have this fear or doubt that you’re not good looking enough or smart enough or rich enough or in the right territory, when these gut check moments happen, lock back down, that is the time to punch the gas and not pump the break. Don’t have a sandwich and watch TV at that moment because that’s where you’re going to lose it all or you’re going to gain it all.
Mike: Yeah. So, Tom, you obviously are a mentor and coach and I am as well. So we coach and mentor a lot of people. People pay for that access to have somebody to call to say, “This just happened. What do I do?” That’s what we’re there for. But a lot of people that are listening to the call, 99% of them probably do not have a coach or a mentor.
So it’s real easy to have that timer be a lot more than three minutes. You just kind of fall into this funk of, “This doesn’t work,” or whatever. What kind of guidance could you give to people, whether it’s finding a person around them that they can lean on to pick them up or whatever it might be to overcome that issue if they don’t have a coach or a mentor?
Tom: First of all, if you don’t have a coach or a mentor, get one. I am not here to sell anything, but what I’m telling you is I just was out to dinner. Everyone at the business had a million dollar-plus wholesaling business. Everyone at that dinner started with a mentor, guys and girls. I can tell you that starting with a mentor is so crucial to your success. It can’t be overstated.
If you absolutely can’t do that and you’ve got to self-motivate, what I’m going to tell you right now is shut off the television and sell it for marketing money. Get rid of your television. It is filled with negativity, sex and drugs and affairs and murder and everything else. No news is good news. Don’t watch it and don’t do any of it. My buddy Clayton Morris, who’s the host of “Fox & Friends” is going to kill me for saying not to watch the news, but I’m telling you right now do not watch it. Shut it off and read books.
I can tell you that this is one of the pivotal changes in my life was access to have these conversations with absolute masters, people like Tony Robbins and 10x, Grant Cardone and Darren from the Compound Effect. Rhinoceros Success . . . which Scott Alexander just joined our tribe, the author of “Rhinoceros Success.”
Yeah. Access to these books is so . . . Darren Harding is the guy from Compound Effect. We have so many books that we recommend, but spending time reading books . . . I really want to talk to the people out there who say, “Well, Tom, I have this learning disability and when I read a book I’ve got to
” Every single person has a learning disability. That’s like the new thing. Just so you know, everybody has one. They say, “I read one page and then I’ve got to reread the same sentence and I fall asleep when I read it and get distracted.”
Here’s the thing: if you work at it, if you work at reading, if you take the Jeff Walker rule of 50-10-50, 50 minutes on of laser focus, 10-minute break, 50 minutes on, you can learn how to read a book and get through it cover to cover. You don’t need Audible and you don’t need any kind of other handicaps. You can get through it if you practice.
But here’s the deal, access to those books will change your life and it will motivate you. I would encourage you to get rid of the television and start reading, reading, reading. Everybody in my masterminds that I go to, everybody who’s successful reads all the time.
Mike: Yeah. Awesome. So I want to talk a little bit about a common trait. I want to ask you about common traits you see. In my experience, I was in a different situation than you, but I was at a point where we left our jobs and we were going to dive in full-time. It was not necessarily a hard-luck situation because we had pretty good corporate jobs before that, but we were at a point in our lives where failure just was not an option we were willing to accept.
I interview lots of people on the show and that’s a common thread of a lot of people who are successful, not everybody, but a lot of people, is they got to a point to where failure just wasn’t an option anymore. That’s what I think causes some people a handicap is they want to get into real estate investing, they say they want to get into real estate investing, but they still have a job. They still have a paycheck. Even if they hate it and they don’t like it, at least it’s kind of there and it’s almost kind of like a handicap or they allow it to be a handicap.
I’m not saying if you want to be successful in real estate investing, go burn everything and put yourself fin a hardship situation, but is that something that you see about people that have some level of comfort, which is not a bad thing necessarily, but it is if it prevents you from moving forward.
Tom: So my answer on that is . . .
Mike: That was a long question. I’m sorry.
Tom: Not at all. I can tell you we have clients . . . so, I have a client. His name is Cody Hofhine. He came into my program. He already successfully owned an insurance company. He had money when he came in. He did $107,000 in his first 90 days. I have people who have horror stories and they come in and they crush it.
So what I will tell you is sometimes, I think it’s the person. I have people who come in who use the money or the benefit of the situation as a crutch. It’s a safety net. The problem with that is when you’re sitting, it really comes down to the dining room table. That’s what it comes down to. It all comes down to the dining room table. The person who needs to make it happen is going to be sitting there and they are going to make it happen. They’re not going to get off of that dining room table. They’re not going to get up from that dining room table until they get that contract.
Whereas the person who’s not that hungry, who doesn’t have to eat, he or she may be willing to, right at that last moment when they have that contract and it gets a little hot in the kitchen or in the dining room for this analogy, they might get up from the table. So what I would tell you is the hungrier you are, the better you are, but you can also be great even if you have that crutch of already being successful.
But it keeps you scrappy. I will tell you, the people who come in and need to make it happen, I think wholesaling is one of those things where it’s not like you’re a real estate agent. You’ve got to find these deals and then you’ve got to make that happen. You’ve got to do that by having that be your only option. That’s why I encourage everybody to not have multiple exit strategies.
Don’t be sitting there saying, “Well, if this person doesn’t real want to sign this contract, I could always refer it to an agent for a referral fee.” No. Don’t’ give yourself any options. Be laser-focused, have hustle, get in there and don’t get up off that dining room table until you get that deal. Sometimes, if you have a lot of resources, it can weaken your position emotionally.
Mike: Yeah. I haven’t read it yet, but Damon John just launched this book, it’s like “The Power of Broke.” I know that the overlying attitude is that. Once you’re successful in real estate this comes back into play. If you start to get successful, are you as hungry as you were early on? You get a little fat and happy sometimes.
Tom: Absolutely. You’ve got to keep pushing yourself and I would say to join a mastermind. Masterminds are key. There are some great ones out there. There’s Collective Genius, EO, GoBundance, Envistage . . . there are some really great ones. There are even small little local things like Toastmasters. This comes back to surrounding yourself among some of the best people.
I’m reading a book right now by the EO guys called, “Scaling Up.” It’s phenomenal. But you’ve got to keep pushing. One thing I like about Grant Cardone’s book, “10x,” is that he lives his life . . . I don’t know that I necessarily agree with everything Grant Cardone says, but I will tell you he lives his life by going from major goal to major goal. He accomplishes one and then he goes to the next.
I’ll tell you this, Mike, I have never set a goal and failed. What I mean by that is that since I’ve been in real estate, I’ve never set a goal and lost. I didn’t always hit the goal because sometimes it was big, but the success and moving forward in that direction and shooting for the stars and landing on the moon, truer words couldn’t be spoken.
Setting these goals, it gives you something to do. It gives you something to work towards. It gives you something to actually have a trajectory of going in a certain a direction and being laser focused and when you say yes to something, saying no to everything else and how important that is.
Mike: Absolutely.
Tom: So “The ONE Thing” by Gary Keller.
Mike: Yeah. You’re dropping a lot of books. I’m going to try to add links for all these books here.
Tom: Brother, I love reading, man. You’re talking to a guy who my entire school career from first grade to 12th grade, the only book I read was “Dr. Doolittle.” I think it was in 10th grade. So if I can do it, anybody can do it. You’re talking to somebody who had untimed SATs. So if I can do it, anyone can do it. Absolutely.
Mike: Awesome. We’ll add links to many of these books down below and also to Tom’s website, Wholesaling, Inc. Tom, any kind of final words of wisdom you want to share? For people who are out there listening that let’s just kind of maybe two buckets of words of wisdom, one is the people that haven’t gotten started, but they want to. We talked about a lot of great things here. And then some people that have gotten started have had a little bit of success, but they need to take it to the next level. Can you kind of summarize some of the stuff that we talked about here today?
Tom: Absolutely. Very, very simple. If you want to start wholesaling or start investing in real estate and stop trying, you’ve got to start doing it right now. Take action. Don’t put the cart before the horse. Your learning is one the job training. It’s learning by failing. You’ve got to be willing . . . or I’m going to say this. If you’re not willing to look like an idiot in front of the seller and look like an idiot in front of the buyer because you don’t know what you’re talking about, then go find something else to do because this is not going to work for you.
You have got to be willing to take risks. I’m telling you now that even if you get the education, you’re still going to make the mistakes. So go out and make the mistakes now. I would also say to absolutely get a mentor, find somebody you’re comfortable with. It’s so key. As far as getting off the roller coaster, again, this is going to sound amateurish and a little elementary and silly, but I am telling you now that we, as human beings, love other people more that we love ourselves.
I’m telling you, wholesale, try to wholesale a deal like you are trying to save your kid’s life. And I am telling you that if I flew to your town today and tried to stop you, I wouldn’t be able to stop you from wholesaling a deal in two or three days if you had that kind of tenacity and that kind of system of belief that said that you were doing this as a ransom payment to get your little boy or little girl back. I know it sounds crazy, but if you actually can put yourself in that mindset, you are going to get started and you’re going to make it happen and nothing will be able to stop you.
Mike: Yeah. Awesome. Awesome. Well, Tom, thanks so much for your time today. Thanks for sharing some actionable lessons here and no doubt about it, action is the key to success in this business and any other business. But because of the rollercoaster effect of this business, it’s not like we’re selling tacos or pizzas here sales are up or down 3 to 5% every day, but you still have some action. You’re going to have a lot of days of downtime and you just have to keep taking action and plowing ahead every single day.
Tom: Absolutely. Absolutely. I love it.
Mike: Tom, thanks so much for spending time with us today. I appreciate you.
Tom: It’s my pleasure. Anytime, brother. Enjoy the day.
Mike: Awesome. Take care.
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This is episode number 296 with my friend, Tom Krol. Tom has been on the show before, but it was around 150 episodes ago. So it’s been a little while. Tom is a wholesaler and a coach that has a pretty amazing story of how he got into real estate investing at all. So hopefully, he’s going to share that with us for a couple minutes here in just a couple minutes.
If you don’t know Tom, he’s passionate. He’s got a ton of energy and if you’re feeling a little low today, prepare to get woken up here. So we’re going to spice it up today a little bit with Tom. Really the core of all real estate investing is wholesaling. That’s what Tom teaches. He’s also a coach and has a business that’s just on fire right now.
If you have been watching the show in 2016 here so far, you already know that we break the show into two parts. We have part one and part two. Part one, we’re going to talk about common mistakes that real estate investors make or those trying to get into real estate investing. Tom’s going to talk about how to clear those.
Then in part two is our taking action segment. What we’re going to do in this part, I’m really excited about this, Tom has a $5,000 coaching program and he has an onboarding process of what he coaches everybody in the very beginning. Despite the fact that we didn’t pay $5,000 for it, Tom is going to onboard us today. He’s going to kind of go through the process of telling you what to think about and how to achieve success in your real estate investing business. So let’s get started. Tom, how are you, my friend?
Tom: Bam! Let’s do it! All right, brother. I am excited to be here.
Mike: Dude, I don’t know what you’re taking, but I want some.
Tom: It is good to be here again. I’m glad it’s my second appearance. That’s awesome, man. I love it.
Mike: Yeah. What we decided to do going forward, not that we won’t have some new guests, we do have some new guests, but there are certain people we’ve had on the show after doing hundreds of episodes where we find ourselves kind of stretching to find new people. It’s like, hey, we’ve got people with great information, great content, so we talked for a half-hour. It’s not like we extracted everything you knew out of you. So we’re here to extract some more today.
Tom: All right. Awesome. Well, I am absolutely here to share. We’re going to pour out some awesome content so I hope everyone is ready. They’ve got a pen and paper. They’re ready to take action today.
Mike: That’s great. For those of you, if you don’t know Tom, first off, he’s extremely generous with sharing information. This is the interesting thing about it. I know that Tom in his coaching program is simply sharing what he does that works. It’s not like, “Here’s some academic view of what might work.” This business is all about taking action ultimately.
Hey, Tom, why don’t you take a minute and tell us your background? I know your story about how you got in. For those that haven’t heard it before, why don’t you take some time and tell us?
Tom: Absolutely. I’ve got a sad story, like a lot of people out there who got into wholesaling, I lost my job. I was selling lawn care door to door. It was a total disaster. I got fired from that horrible position, thank God. I called my brother, Todd Toback, who was in wholesaling for a long time out in San Diego and I said, “Todd, what should I do? What I should I do?”
He said, “You’ve got to get into wholesaling.” He’s like, “I’m telling you, I’m crushing it.” He was doing $2 million a year and I was totally broke. I was whining, “San Diego is not as good as I live in a tiny town in Port St. Lucie. It’s never going to work. Your houses are more expensive. It’s a bigger area.” He said, “Shut up and do what I tell you to do.” He literally dragged me kicking and screaming the whole time to do my first deal and then my second and my third and my fourth and now I’m ringing that victory bell every day right behind me.
Mike: That’s a good part of, would you agree? After you do your first deal, but certainly after a couple days, it’s largely a confidence thing, right?
Tom: One hundred percent.
Mike: You start making excuses as to why it won’t work where you are or for you or whatever it might be.
Tom: I’m going to go through some of that because we’re going to spank everybody who has those belief systems. But I will you, I always joke with my clients. I have a brand new client. Her name is Jodie Christianson. Hopefully, she doesn’t mind me sharing her name.
Mike: Too late.
Tom: Yeah, too late. She’s in Charlotte, North Carolina and she joined the program. She was saying, “Tom, it’s tough. It’s tough.” I said, “Jodie, your first deal is always the hardest.” And then she did her first deal and she made $9,800, which was awesome. Then I said, “Jodie, your second deal is always your hardest one.” She got her second. I’m like, “Well, Jodie, your third deal is really the toughest one.” So now she’s doing her third deal, but the first three are always tough.
I think it really is a mindset problem because wholesaling is brain-dead simple. If I can do it, anybody can do it. All the education that you ever would need on wholesaling is you find a motivated seller, you put them under contract, you sell the contract. That’s it. It’s wholesaling is simple . . . wholesalers, very complicated. That’s the bottom line.
Mike: I think with real estate investing in general, there are a ton of people that do no deals. There are some people that do five to 10 plus deals a month, not a ton, but they’re out there. We know a lot of them. I have a lot of them on the show. There are just a whole bunch of people that do a deal or two a month or between six and 15 deals a year.
The challenge is if you’re doing six deals a year, that’s a deal every other month. So you’ve got like 59 days of freaking out. That’s just kind of how it works is this emotional cycle. What a lot of people do in that time is they start to convince themselves even if they did a big juicy deal before, they start to convince themselves, “Well, I got lucky once. But that’s not going to happen again.”
Tom: Right. It’s the rollercoaster. It’s that rollercoaster. The reason that happens, as far as I’m concerned, is that they can’t get out of their own way. They are doing things that they shouldn’t be doing. What we have to realize is once we go down this journey, we are saying to the world, “Hey, we’re entrepreneurs,” and the deal with entrepreneurs is that we are at 35,000 feet, not 5,000 feet.
So I’m telling everybody who’s listening to this podcast right now, you absolutely stink at the details. Stop trying to get better at your weaknesses and start outsourcing them. Stop wasting your time. It takes too much willpower and discipline to fill out an Excel spreadsheet and do your marketing on time. It’s supposed to be done by other people. Outsource that and this way you can get off of the wholesaling rollercoaster and start having consistency in your deal flow and your cash flow and things like that.
Mike: Yeah. We’re starting to dive into the common mistakes here. So, Tom, one of the things that a lot of new people . . . you’ve faced this. There are a lot of people that want to get into this business. You’re a testament from your story that you can be broke and be successful here. You probably would admit that it’s easier if you have money, right?
Tom: Yeah, for sure.
Mike: So the question is a lot of people that are trying to do this on a shoestring budget have a hard time outsourcing things because that money would be better spent on advertising, right?
Tom: Right. I’m going to shut this because you’re breaking up a little bit. Can you hear me okay?
Okay. That’s better. So I think wholesaling on a shoestring budget can be tough, but here’s what I’m going to say to that. I believe when I started, I was really truly broke. I did my first mailing and I made a tremendous mistake. I forgot to put last market sale date into my list criteria, which is a getting a little granular, but that’s a tremendous mistake because everybody who was on my list had just bought their home for 100% cash the last six months and I could tell you . . .
But here’s the deal, Mike, here is the deal . . . I know this is going to sound silly and this is going to sound amateurish, but that’s okay. The bottom line is if I went ahead and I kidnapped your children or someone that you love and I said, “Hey, you’ve got to wholesale a deal in order to get them back, I guarantee you would wholesale a deal in 72 hours.
Mike: You’d figure it out.
Tom: The bottom line is it’s all about your perspective. You will figure it out if you go and take action and get away from the books and all of that.
Mike: Yeah. Let’s keep talking about common mistakes that people make and how they can kind of overcome those.
Tom: So there are a lot of them out there. I think that it really comes down to the belief system [Inaudible 00:08:57] in different ways. One of the first ones that will start to happen is doubt. So doubt is really the symptom . . . it has a lot of symptoms, but the core problem is doubt, “Am I smart enough? Am I good enough? Am I good looking enough? Do I have enough money? Am I in the right territory?”
That’s one that really dealt with big time. I thought because my brother was in San Diego. I’m in [inaudible 00:09:23] town in Florida. All of the self-doubt and are you worthy . . . doubt can come in a lot of forms, but one of the main problems is definitely doubt and how do you deal with that, where is your belief system, where is courage, where is your motivation, where is your faith? Doubt is a problem.
So the other one, of course, is disappointment. Disappointment can be not knowing how to get past the disappointment when you first start. That can come in so many different forms. So disappointment can be you’re working on a deal. You’ve got a seller and you’ve got a big, fat $20,000, $50,000 assignment and right at the eleventh hour, seller pulls out of the deal, whole entire deal explodes. Disappointment can also be that you are busting your butt for a week and everyone that you talk to tells you to go pound sand with your BS lowball offer. That’s a total nightmare.
Then, you’ve got the stage IV terminal killer of wholesalers or all real estate investors and that is distraction. That’s the worst one. Distraction is a bear. Distraction will kill you. It kills more than anything else. Distraction can come in the form of education. A lot of people call it analysis paralysis, right? You need to know before you go. You want to be a learner, not an earner. So there are a whole bunch of analogies, but the bottom line is your busting your butt learning, learning, learning and you’re really just on a treadmill. You’re not really going anywhere. It’s like you have the hustle, but you don’t have the instruction.
So you’ll talk to these people in six months and it’s like, “Hey, how’s it going?” You’re like, “Oh, I’m doing great. I just learned this new tactic so now I have multiple exit strategies with a motivated seller.” I hate to even smile about it because it’s a shame. If they would just actually get right to failure, that would be the key. That’s really the key.
But distraction comes in education. It comes in shiny object syndrome, right? You send a brand new wholesaler to a REIA meeting, “Oh, forget wholesaling. You should flip bulk REO deals. There’s more money and less time.” And people are like, “Tell me more about that.”
Mike: Yeah, multi-family, what’s that? Land? Okay. Let’s do that.
Tom: Absolutely. So shiny object syndrome. It can be personal. You get started in your wholesaling career and all of a sudden, your wife books a trip to Hawaii for a week and then you’re off and that’s it. So I think not knowing how to deal with these gut check moments and these hurdles, that’s really the difference.
That’s the common thread that runs amongt the most successful wholesalers, the most successful people who are doing this. They are anticipating these hurdles. They’re anticipating these gut check moments. They’re prepared for them. They know what to do. They know how to handle them and then they handle them. I think that’s definitely a key, for sure.
Mike: Without kind of stealing thunder from the second part of the show here, which is going to be taking action, where we’re going to dive into some of the stuff, can you share some ways to get over some of those issues?
Tom: Yeah, for sure. So here’s one thing that people who are successful have been saying for a long time that I never really listened to, but when I started wholesaling, thank goodness I did. It’s really about . . . this comes from Jim Rohn . . . you are the average of the five people you spend the most time with. This is so true again and again and again it pops up and is certainly a commonality among my most successful clients and myself included.
But I can tell you, Mike, if I want to get to know you, I never have to meet you in person. All I have to do is get to know the five people you spend the most time with and I will know everything about you. I’ll know how successful you relationships are with your friends and family, I’ll know how much money you have in the bank. I’ll know everything about you.
So if you really want to make some serious changes in your life and you want to bring a supernatural growth to your business and to your success and some stability to every area of your life, you’ve really got to be looking for those rock stars, the people where you need improvement, where you want to get to in those areas is crucial for your success.
Mike: Yeah. Some of it is to maybe stop disassociating yourself with people that are in your circle, right?
Tom: Right. Absolutely.
Mike: I think a lot of people . . . I don’t want anybody to go disrupt their family too much, but a lot of challenge for real estate investors, to be honest, is the family usually thinks you’re crazy early on, right?
Tom: Oh, yeah, absolutely. It’s so funny. People always say in this industry. You watch these motivation videos and they say, “I want to prove these people wrong, the people who told me I couldn’t do it, the people who told me I couldn’t be this person. Those people are easy to prove wrong. Those aren’t the problem people. The problem people are the people who love you. They care about you. Those are the ones you’ve got to watch out for people those are the ones with these codependent relationships. They’re kind of rooting for you, but you’re not really sure what their agenda is.
So it’s the people who you spend time with, the people who love you care about you, those are the ones where it’s more challenging. So stop worrying about the people you want to prove wrong, like your high school teacher from 20 years ago. Worry about the person who you’re closest to. That’s the key, for sure.
Mike: Yeah. I think some of it is I think you and I both know this, if you’re going to fail, fail fast, learn from it and move on. That’s really how every business is. There’s nothing better than showing your spouse or whatever that, “This is going to work for us. Here’s an example.” That overcomes any kind of concern they had before because they see you do a couple of deals and make money on it and put some money in the bank, then it’s like, “Okay, I thought you were crazy, but now I see it. Go do that again.”
Tom: Absolutely. I think getting your first few checks is so key. I remember getting my first $2,000 checks. My first amount was $2,000. As a matter of fact, I did everything wrong. I had to get in my car and follow the buyer home to get the assignment fee in cash because I forgot to tell him at the closing he had to pay for closing costs. So he didn’t have enough money to pay me and it was a big debacle. I remember celebrating that $2,000.
Mike: Like you won the lottery.
Tom: This business, it’s so good and honest and wholesome. I just love it, brother. It just changed my life. It’s incredible to be sitting here with you three years . . . if you would have talked to me three years ago, if we would have spoken, I would have been like, “Mike, let me get $50 for gas, bro.” It’s incredible.
It’s really true. It’s just like an amazing journey to be on and you’re catching me while I’m still on it. We have bigger plans. Our goal this year is to buy a vacation home in South Carolina in Charleston. We’re looking at homes. The realtor said, “What’s the price point?” I said, “$1.8 million, $1.9 million.” It’s like how is that possible? That is crazy, brother. That is crazy. It’s incredible, man. I love it. I love it.
Mike: Awesome. So Tom, are you ready to help us take action?
Tom: Absolutely. We’re going to crush it right now. I hope you’re ready.
Mike: Awesome. So tell us what you’re going to go through here. I know you have coaching clients and you’ve had such great success over the past few years that I know you’re sharing your information with a lot of people now that are coming to you for your coaching program. But just kind of tell us what is the process of what you go through and then let’s just dive into it.
Tom: Absolutely. So when we bring on a new client right now, what we do is I actually go through a welcome call with every new client and what I’m going to share with you today is the welcome call. So what is the welcome call? The welcome call is what we found are there are common threads that run amongst our most successful clients.
So these are the common threads that we see against and again popping up with the people who right out of the gate are making $100,000, $200,000, $300,000 in their first 90 days in our program and what we want to do is we poll those people and we figure out, “What are you doing differently than everybody else?” And then we share that with every new client. So it’s really super-exciting. We’re going to get right to it.
Mike: Awesome. Let’s dive in. What are those common traits that you see?
Tom: Here’s what I’ll tell you. What I’d like to do is I’ll just kind of go through a welcome call with you. Does that sound fair?
Mike: Let’s do it.
Tom: We can kind of have a back and forth.
Mike: Let’s do it.
Tom: I’ll treat you as if you’re a new client.
So the first thing is welcome to the Rhino Club, Mike. So what we do is I’m going to share these things with you. These are what we find are going to catapult you right to the stratosphere. The number one most important is that whenever you come into a new program, Mike, this is Mr. Miyagi/Daniel-san.
It’s all instruction. We are going to tell you what to do and I just want you to do it. I don’t care what you want to know about wholesaling. I don’t care what you think about wholesaling. We have a certain particular way of doing things, I want you to follow directions and take the instruction. You can ask all the questions you want about how to wax the car. Don’t ask any questions about why you’re waxing it. Make sense?
Bam! That’s number one. So part of that is to try not to be anticipatory. Whenever you’re getting instruction from a wholesaling mentor, what you want to do is step by step. So you want to follow them blindly. You’ve got to trust the process. That’s the key. Get out of your own way. Don’t change the postcard. Don’t put in your own input. So one of the things I want you to do is I want you to make a big sign. I want you to put it above your desk and I want it to say, “Progress, not perfection.”
What I want you to do is I want you to get out of the gate and I want you to fail and fail and fail. The people that come into my program and make the most money in the shortest amount of time are failing every day. Don’t worry about the details. We’re going to keep you safe legally. Just do what we tell you to do, take the instruction and take action, massive action. Make sense?
That’s number one. Number two . . . I want you to read and implement “The Four Spiritual Laws of Prosperity” right away. When I first started in wholesaling, I went to a conference. Three very, very successful and wealthy wholesalers recommended that book to me within a two-day period. I did that. It was a game-changer. It changed my whole life. I had immediate success. It is required reading in our tribe. So absolutely, 100%, let’s make it happen.
Mike: Awesome. We’ll find the link and add that in the show notes here too.
Tom: Let’s do it. Sounds like a plan. Number three, we talked about earlier in the show. You are the average of the five people you spend the most time with. So here is the deal, Mike: absolute rock stars. Anybody in your circle who you’re spending time with has got to be crushing it in the area where you want to be.
Anybody who’s negative has got to be cut out. So anybody who is a complainer, poor, whiner, victim, always blaming somebody else, always sick, starting rumors about anybody, you go out with an old high school buddy for a cheeseburger and he’s married and he’s looking at every hot girl who walks by, absolutely cut him out of the circle. So that’s the deal. It’s definitely crucial for your success. So that’s rule number three. Sounds good?
All right. Number four is momentum. Now, we call it momentum. It comes back from the polls from our top students in a lot of different ways, but here’s what momentum looks like. Once you start, you can’t stop. Now, I don’t work on Sunday, so you can take Sunday off or any day that you want to keep as a day of rest, but Monday through Saturday, you’ve got to be working towards your wholesaling goals or your real estate investing goals every single day. You’ve got to make time ahead of time.
So if you’ve got something coming up, you’ve got to book some time ahead of schedule to make sure that you’re focused on that goal. It’s absolutely critical because momentum can work for you just as much as it can work against you. One day off becomes two becomes a week becomes a month. You have a little tiny spark, you’ve got to make it flame and then you’ve got to make it a raging fire. The only way you do that is by focusing on it every day. That’s number four.
Number five is very, very simple. I’m going to tell you how to deal with the gut check moments. This is the secret sauce. If there is a secret sauce to wholesaling, if there is a secret sauce to investing in real estate and becoming a real estate investor and making tons of money, this is the secret sauce, what I am telling you right now.
So everybody better be paying attention. Here’s the deal. When you get these gut check moments, and I’m telling you now, if you’re just starting, they are coming and they continue to come at you. This is God’s way or the universe’s way of saying, hey, does Mike or whoever is listening, because I know you’ve already arrived, do you really deserve the awesome potential that wholesaling has to offer, the freedom, the financial freedom, the time freedom? Are you really worth of it?
So what they do is they put these gut check moments in front of you, doubt, disappointment and distraction. They’re absolute killers. Here’s how you’re going to deal with them. Number one, you’ve got to recognize that they’re going to happen. So once they happen, kind of giggle to yourself and be like, “Man, Tom told me that was going to happen.”
And then, you need to set a little egg timer, three minutes. That’s what you’re going to give yourself. Three minutes, you get to have the biggest pity party in the whole world. You can blame Mike. You can blame me. You can blame your spouse. You can blame your kids, your high school teacher, coach, whomever you want to blame for three minutes. But right at that moment, after three minutes is up, you’ve got to get right back to work.
I am telling you right now that if there is a secret sauce to investing in real estate, it is what I’m telling you right now is that you have got to persist until failure quits. As soon as you are discouraged and you’re losing heart, you have to make that next phone call. You’ve got to book that next appointment. You’ve got to go see that seller. You’ve got to send that next offer. It’s in your moment of despair and losing heart where you’re going to find your greatness. That is where you’re going to have success. It’s in those moments.
If it were easy, everybody could do it. It’s that extra 10%. Anybody off the street could do 100%. It’s that extra 10% when you make that extra effort, that is where you’re going to find your success and your freedom and that’s where you’re going to have your greatness.
So I really want to encourage everybody out there that when you’re struggling and these gut check moments come up and all of a sudden you’re distracted by this or you’re disappointed by that or you have this fear or doubt that you’re not good looking enough or smart enough or rich enough or in the right territory, when these gut check moments happen, lock back down, that is the time to punch the gas and not pump the break. Don’t have a sandwich and watch TV at that moment because that’s where you’re going to lose it all or you’re going to gain it all.
Mike: Yeah. So, Tom, you obviously are a mentor and coach and I am as well. So we coach and mentor a lot of people. People pay for that access to have somebody to call to say, “This just happened. What do I do?” That’s what we’re there for. But a lot of people that are listening to the call, 99% of them probably do not have a coach or a mentor.
So it’s real easy to have that timer be a lot more than three minutes. You just kind of fall into this funk of, “This doesn’t work,” or whatever. What kind of guidance could you give to people, whether it’s finding a person around them that they can lean on to pick them up or whatever it might be to overcome that issue if they don’t have a coach or a mentor?
Tom: First of all, if you don’t have a coach or a mentor, get one. I am not here to sell anything, but what I’m telling you is I just was out to dinner. Everyone at the business had a million dollar-plus wholesaling business. Everyone at that dinner started with a mentor, guys and girls. I can tell you that starting with a mentor is so crucial to your success. It can’t be overstated.
If you absolutely can’t do that and you’ve got to self-motivate, what I’m going to tell you right now is shut off the television and sell it for marketing money. Get rid of your television. It is filled with negativity, sex and drugs and affairs and murder and everything else. No news is good news. Don’t watch it and don’t do any of it. My buddy Clayton Morris, who’s the host of “Fox & Friends” is going to kill me for saying not to watch the news, but I’m telling you right now do not watch it. Shut it off and read books.
I can tell you that this is one of the pivotal changes in my life was access to have these conversations with absolute masters, people like Tony Robbins and 10x, Grant Cardone and Darren from the Compound Effect. Rhinoceros Success . . . which Scott Alexander just joined our tribe, the author of “Rhinoceros Success.”
Yeah. Access to these books is so . . . Darren Harding is the guy from Compound Effect. We have so many books that we recommend, but spending time reading books . . . I really want to talk to the people out there who say, “Well, Tom, I have this learning disability and when I read a book I’ve got to
” Every single person has a learning disability. That’s like the new thing. Just so you know, everybody has one. They say, “I read one page and then I’ve got to reread the same sentence and I fall asleep when I read it and get distracted.”
Here’s the thing: if you work at it, if you work at reading, if you take the Jeff Walker rule of 50-10-50, 50 minutes on of laser focus, 10-minute break, 50 minutes on, you can learn how to read a book and get through it cover to cover. You don’t need Audible and you don’t need any kind of other handicaps. You can get through it if you practice.
But here’s the deal, access to those books will change your life and it will motivate you. I would encourage you to get rid of the television and start reading, reading, reading. Everybody in my masterminds that I go to, everybody who’s successful reads all the time.
Mike: Yeah. Awesome. So I want to talk a little bit about a common trait. I want to ask you about common traits you see. In my experience, I was in a different situation than you, but I was at a point where we left our jobs and we were going to dive in full-time. It was not necessarily a hard-luck situation because we had pretty good corporate jobs before that, but we were at a point in our lives where failure just was not an option we were willing to accept.
I interview lots of people on the show and that’s a common thread of a lot of people who are successful, not everybody, but a lot of people, is they got to a point to where failure just wasn’t an option anymore. That’s what I think causes some people a handicap is they want to get into real estate investing, they say they want to get into real estate investing, but they still have a job. They still have a paycheck. Even if they hate it and they don’t like it, at least it’s kind of there and it’s almost kind of like a handicap or they allow it to be a handicap.
I’m not saying if you want to be successful in real estate investing, go burn everything and put yourself fin a hardship situation, but is that something that you see about people that have some level of comfort, which is not a bad thing necessarily, but it is if it prevents you from moving forward.
Tom: So my answer on that is . . .
Mike: That was a long question. I’m sorry.
Tom: Not at all. I can tell you we have clients . . . so, I have a client. His name is Cody Hofhine. He came into my program. He already successfully owned an insurance company. He had money when he came in. He did $107,000 in his first 90 days. I have people who have horror stories and they come in and they crush it.
So what I will tell you is sometimes, I think it’s the person. I have people who come in who use the money or the benefit of the situation as a crutch. It’s a safety net. The problem with that is when you’re sitting, it really comes down to the dining room table. That’s what it comes down to. It all comes down to the dining room table. The person who needs to make it happen is going to be sitting there and they are going to make it happen. They’re not going to get off of that dining room table. They’re not going to get up from that dining room table until they get that contract.
Whereas the person who’s not that hungry, who doesn’t have to eat, he or she may be willing to, right at that last moment when they have that contract and it gets a little hot in the kitchen or in the dining room for this analogy, they might get up from the table. So what I would tell you is the hungrier you are, the better you are, but you can also be great even if you have that crutch of already being successful.
But it keeps you scrappy. I will tell you, the people who come in and need to make it happen, I think wholesaling is one of those things where it’s not like you’re a real estate agent. You’ve got to find these deals and then you’ve got to make that happen. You’ve got to do that by having that be your only option. That’s why I encourage everybody to not have multiple exit strategies.
Don’t be sitting there saying, “Well, if this person doesn’t real want to sign this contract, I could always refer it to an agent for a referral fee.” No. Don’t’ give yourself any options. Be laser-focused, have hustle, get in there and don’t get up off that dining room table until you get that deal. Sometimes, if you have a lot of resources, it can weaken your position emotionally.
Mike: Yeah. I haven’t read it yet, but Damon John just launched this book, it’s like “The Power of Broke.” I know that the overlying attitude is that. Once you’re successful in real estate this comes back into play. If you start to get successful, are you as hungry as you were early on? You get a little fat and happy sometimes.
Tom: Absolutely. You’ve got to keep pushing yourself and I would say to join a mastermind. Masterminds are key. There are some great ones out there. There’s Collective Genius, EO, GoBundance, Envistage . . . there are some really great ones. There are even small little local things like Toastmasters. This comes back to surrounding yourself among some of the best people.
I’m reading a book right now by the EO guys called, “Scaling Up.” It’s phenomenal. But you’ve got to keep pushing. One thing I like about Grant Cardone’s book, “10x,” is that he lives his life . . . I don’t know that I necessarily agree with everything Grant Cardone says, but I will tell you he lives his life by going from major goal to major goal. He accomplishes one and then he goes to the next.
I’ll tell you this, Mike, I have never set a goal and failed. What I mean by that is that since I’ve been in real estate, I’ve never set a goal and lost. I didn’t always hit the goal because sometimes it was big, but the success and moving forward in that direction and shooting for the stars and landing on the moon, truer words couldn’t be spoken.
Setting these goals, it gives you something to do. It gives you something to work towards. It gives you something to actually have a trajectory of going in a certain a direction and being laser focused and when you say yes to something, saying no to everything else and how important that is.
Mike: Absolutely.
Tom: So “The ONE Thing” by Gary Keller.
Mike: Yeah. You’re dropping a lot of books. I’m going to try to add links for all these books here.
Tom: Brother, I love reading, man. You’re talking to a guy who my entire school career from first grade to 12th grade, the only book I read was “Dr. Doolittle.” I think it was in 10th grade. So if I can do it, anybody can do it. You’re talking to somebody who had untimed SATs. So if I can do it, anyone can do it. Absolutely.
Mike: Awesome. We’ll add links to many of these books down below and also to Tom’s website, Wholesaling, Inc. Tom, any kind of final words of wisdom you want to share? For people who are out there listening that let’s just kind of maybe two buckets of words of wisdom, one is the people that haven’t gotten started, but they want to. We talked about a lot of great things here. And then some people that have gotten started have had a little bit of success, but they need to take it to the next level. Can you kind of summarize some of the stuff that we talked about here today?
Tom: Absolutely. Very, very simple. If you want to start wholesaling or start investing in real estate and stop trying, you’ve got to start doing it right now. Take action. Don’t put the cart before the horse. Your learning is one the job training. It’s learning by failing. You’ve got to be willing . . . or I’m going to say this. If you’re not willing to look like an idiot in front of the seller and look like an idiot in front of the buyer because you don’t know what you’re talking about, then go find something else to do because this is not going to work for you.
You have got to be willing to take risks. I’m telling you now that even if you get the education, you’re still going to make the mistakes. So go out and make the mistakes now. I would also say to absolutely get a mentor, find somebody you’re comfortable with. It’s so key. As far as getting off the roller coaster, again, this is going to sound amateurish and a little elementary and silly, but I am telling you now that we, as human beings, love other people more that we love ourselves.
I’m telling you, wholesale, try to wholesale a deal like you are trying to save your kid’s life. And I am telling you that if I flew to your town today and tried to stop you, I wouldn’t be able to stop you from wholesaling a deal in two or three days if you had that kind of tenacity and that kind of system of belief that said that you were doing this as a ransom payment to get your little boy or little girl back. I know it sounds crazy, but if you actually can put yourself in that mindset, you are going to get started and you’re going to make it happen and nothing will be able to stop you.
Mike: Yeah. Awesome. Awesome. Well, Tom, thanks so much for your time today. Thanks for sharing some actionable lessons here and no doubt about it, action is the key to success in this business and any other business. But because of the rollercoaster effect of this business, it’s not like we’re selling tacos or pizzas here sales are up or down 3 to 5% every day, but you still have some action. You’re going to have a lot of days of downtime and you just have to keep taking action and plowing ahead every single day.
Tom: Absolutely. Absolutely. I love it.
Mike: Tom, thanks so much for spending time with us today. I appreciate you.
Tom: It’s my pleasure. Anytime, brother. Enjoy the day.
Mike: Awesome. Take care.
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