Real Estate Freedom Series – Gary Harper

[00:00:00] Mike: [00:00:00] What’s up everyone. Hey Mike, Hambright from flipnerd.com. I recently hosted an online event for members of my professional real estate investor Facebook group, which you can access by visiting flipper.com/professional. It’s only for professionals, not a new folks, but wanted to share this with everybody.

And today I wanted to share, um, this amazing event that we call the freedom series with eight industry legends. Today’s episode is with mr. Gary Harper, but as we’re getting, sorry, I’m about to ask Gary a question here. I’m gonna go ahead and ask them, but I’m asking you guys too. So, uh, if you could answer this too, if you, if you joined us yesterday and you already answered it, that’s cool.

You don’t have to answer again. You’re welcome to if you did not then, um, so what you think, but Gary, what, and everybody else, what is freedom? Mean to you. So go ahead and share what you think that means. And then for everybody else, tell me what you think it means. What does freedom mean to you?

Gary: [00:00:54] So I think the canned answer is, you know, being able to do what you want when you want with whomever, you want to do it with.

Right. Like, [00:01:00] I feel like it’s very canned and it’s, it’s, you know, cliche to a degree, but it really does have a good meaning behind it. Right. And so, like, I think I want to hear that. I want to hear like the details of it. Like, what does that mean? And I think to me is like, you know, on Sunday it’s been, you know, we were in Florida and we were at orange beach and it was being able to make the decision to go home or stay another day or, you know, just decide, you know, you know, really kind of last minute if we, if we want it to, I told my wife, I said, you know, what’s really cool is like, like we could literally decide if we want to stay another week right now.

We just stay here. Yup. And I think that’s really freedom is just being able to make that free decision. That stability. Yeah. The other thing too, I think for freedom for me, because I worked a job for 20 years. Is honestly, you know, in this probably not going to go well with many people because the whole like hustle, hustle, hustle thing, but, you know, I slept till nine 30 today, you know, you know, I don’t feel [00:02:00] bad.

I wasn’t sick. Just I wanted to sleep in. Yeah. You know, and then I want the launch from my friend, Josh caller today. And then, and then he came back from that and it’s like, Mike, you know, I got texts from you. And I’m like, man, I love, you know, It’s being able to react and not have to have everything planned out.

Right. Like that’s, that’s freedom for me is, you know, do I, what I want. Right. And I think those are prime examples of that for me.

Mike: [00:02:28] Yeah. And I think, uh, you know, back to the, back to the, you know, With whom you want. Right. And what you want is I know you’re, you have a servant’s heart to you. You’re really big on helping people.

And obviously you remember the investor fuel mastermind, you help a lot of people in there. Um, he helped me a lot, you know, all those things, for sure. I think it’s having the flexibility to do more of that. More giving, more, helping more, and truthfully, sometimes it’s. I want to say ulterior motive sometimes you’re you have a business?

I have a business. I I’ve, well, the business around you have to around helping people like where we all [00:03:00] win. Right. So it’s not just like, it’s not all not-for-profit, but we try to help people all the time. Sometimes we benefit as well. But I think it’s being able to do more stuff like that. Like you just don’t, you don’t, you know, we all still have things that we have to do.

It comes with the territory. When you own a company, you know, if it’s a huge company, you might be able to find a way to you have a CEO running it and all these people. I mean, we’re more of active companies where we’re. Still involved. They’re still the face of it are still, you know, the go to person for things.

But I do know this, like you said, I could get up tomorrow and say, you know what, I’m just, I’m going to cancel everything today. I’m just going to chill out or something happens. Family-wise I’m like, you don’t want to take a week off. I’ll just, I’ll figure out how to make it work and fill in the gaps. But when you have a traditional job, that’s like not possible.

Right.

Gary: [00:03:44] And I think, I think this is kind of summarizes it for me. About 10, 15 years ago, I was about 15 years ago. My wife’s grandpa passed away and I was driving to Chicago. And my boss, Mike, I got it was corporate America. I was an executive. And he was the senior vice president. Right. So I walk in [00:04:00] and he says, he’s.

I said, listen, I gotta leave. My, my wife’s grandpa just passed away. And the man’s response was, Hey Gary, you got things. And I said, but I, I, yeah, I need to be there for my wife. And he says, Hey, life’s for the living room. Right. So fast forward to July, January, my wife’s mom passed away and it was in a car accident three days for Christmas.

And we canceled everything for 30 days. Right. Like you just, we just disappeared

Mike: [00:04:29] for 30 days

Gary: [00:04:30] and we went to Disney world and we went to places to spend time together as a family to refresh, you know, and we were able to do that just because we decided to write, like, I think that’s pure freedom and I think a little further deeper than I don’t think people really realize this freedom is that being in America, independence days, coming up, you know, 4th of July.

Man, we got the freedom to start our own business. Right. You know, like that, it’s a beautiful thing of freedom. Like maybe you really want to back it up, everybody on this call though, to agree. Cause you, you made the [00:05:00] choice to start your own business. You’re not, you’re not a slave to somebody today and I love Ryan.

Yeah.

Mike: [00:05:05] One thing rod Rodney was on yesterday and one thing he says, we have the freedom to fail. Yeah. Like we, we can try stuff and that’s, that’s the beauty of entrepreneurship. And I mean, you know, and I are both the same. We failed. We probably, we failed more than we’ve been successful, but we couldn’t be successful until we had those failures, but we have the ability to fail, but kind of fail forward and just like shake it off and move forward.

Right. And everybody that’s watching this right now has the same thing. We fail every day. Every time somebody tells you no is a failure when you’re trying to buy houses. No, no, no. We hear no way more than we hear. Yes. Right. We have the ability to do that. And the more freedom you can get in your business, which can be my next question.

The more freedom, meaning from my perspective, the more your, uh, I guess self-employed in the more, you’re a business owner. Like you’re getting more of your time back because you can build a team. The more of that freedom you get in the more opportunities you have to try, stuff that you might fail on.

Right? So that is my next question, Gary. So how do you work with a [00:06:00] lot of investors? You have a lot of investors take their business from, you know, 30 miles an hour to 60 and, and, uh, take it to the next level. How do investors just generally kind of get more freedom in their life? And we’re, again, we’re kind of defining freedom here in the context of our businesses is, um, get more of your life back, less involved in the day to day.

Gary: [00:06:21] Yeah, I think, I think the sea quadrant is, and we talk about freedom. That’s our whole reason, like sharper exists. It exists to take companies and people from self-employed to business owner. Right, right. Yeah. Bottom box from an investor. That’s, you know, teaching well, how to invest. That’s not our play.

Right. But we want to put you in position to be able to invest properly. And I think ultimately comes down to time, like where do we spend our time? Right. And so when you’re self employed, you’re exchanging time for money. When you’re a business owner, you’re exchanging other people’s time for money, right.

Part of your own. And I think that’s where it is. And so like, how do we do it? That’s the question I think. And the question, the answer is, I think, I think most people miss this, [00:07:00] but I think first it starts with our mindset. Probably biggest thing for me with, Oh, you know, I think Mike now we’ve helped over 360 entrepreneurs.

And it’s crazy thinking about that over the last three years. But with that said like 360 people had to get rid of the mindset of like, it’s all about me. It’s all on my shoulders. It’s honestly, one of the hardest things is to get somebody to just shift that mindset. We have systems and processes and people and all that in place.

But if people have this dictator mindset, they never truly become free. Right. They became, they become a single point of failure in their own business and they, it, and it collapses on them, you know? And, uh, it’s, it’s mine. You said it’s probably one of the biggest things for me, I think. And then next is knowing your numbers.

Yeah, I know your numbers, people. I, that one thing that frustrates me the most is like, you can not feel free if you don’t know your numbers.

Mike: [00:07:57] You can’t. Yeah, you can’t, you know, you have to [00:08:00] manage your business by the numbers, by a scorecard, right. You’ll you can’t, you can’t have employees and not have a scorecard.

Yeah. Like when you’re, and I think part of what happens and, you know, there’s a lot, there’s a lot of real estate investors, you know, that are doing. And maybe people watching today that are doing a deal two, three a month. And they’re doing it all mostly or husband and wife team, or father, son could be a lot of scenarios.

There it’s enough to earn a respectable living probably more than you’re making in a, in a, you know, working for somebody else. But it’s still very much a job and a lot of stuff’s in your head, right. And you’re like, ah, just kinda flying by the seat of my pants. I can make it work. I know the money’s coming in, but that’s not, you know, you’re still self-employed right.

You’re not a business owner. Whenever you start to get to the point to where. Um, and by the way, you can’t get to a business owner. If you’re not operating from a scorecard tracking here kind of KPIs and numbers everyday in your business, right? Yeah. Yeah.

Gary: [00:08:49] You know, the, I always don’t, I I’ve come up with this kind of a thought lately here that I’ve been sharing a lot and it’s, I feel like in order to become free, we have to be confident and we’ve become [00:09:00] confident, really in three areas, we have to be people confident.

Right. We have to be confident in the people that we have around us. We have not metric confidence, which is knowing your numbers. And last is we have to be money cost, right? To get the freedom, the true freedom. You gotta be confident that you have the money that allows you to be free. You gotta be confident in your numbers.

Right metrics. And then you gotta be confident in the people and trust in the people that are allowing you to give you, you know, to not be there. You know, that you’re using their time. You know, I think it’s confidence. It comes down to that. You know, my whole philosophy likes three to three, and I’ve found that to be the play too.

Like if we’re going to be free, we have to be confident in those three areas. And we’re actually entrepreneurs fail or struggle is like, They’re not there. They’re confident in their people and they’re confident in their money, but they’re not confident in their numbers or they’re confident in their numbers and are confident in their people, but they don’t know what they’re, if they’re making money right.

Mike: [00:09:52] Yeah. And you’re just fooling yourself. I mean, it’s kind of like, you know, this analogy of like, you’re trying to lose weight. You get out of scale, ask that as low as I [00:10:00] wanted. And next thing you know, you’re like, well, let me, let me take my boxers off. And like, like, you know, there’s an extra three ounces by taking your box off.

You’re only fooling yourself. Right. So at the end of the day, it’s like, Oh, that’s how a lot of real estate investors are. And they’re like, yeah, it’s good enough. You’re just fooling yourself. You’re you’re choosing to not be held accountable. Yeah. And so, and we’re all guilty of it. We’ve all done, you know, stuff like that.

But if you really want to grow your business, you’ve got to have a scorecard that you’re looking at and you’ll be held accountable for, and you can hold your team accountable. And I honestly, I think one of the great things that comes out of that, especially with all the technology we have over the last few years in the real estate space is once you have a scorecard and you can see what’s going on, you can basically potentially manage your business from.

Uh, virtually, right? So you can travel, you can do things, you can see what’s going on in your business. We all can sign contracts, my pads and all that stuff. But now you can see a scorecard of what’s going on and you’re looking at, it’s like your dashboard, right? You’re looking at what’s going on. You don’t necessarily have to be anywhere physically.

Gary: [00:10:58] Yeah. Numbers tell a story. You [00:11:00] know, I, I say numbers don’t lie. People do you know? And so like, it would give me any time. If someone, as soon as somebody calls me and says, Hey, can you help me? And they started telling me about how great they’re doing or this or that. I just immediately go, Hey, what are your numbers?

Yeah, I almost turn off everything. They’re telling me, just look at the data, right? Because you can be persuaded one way or the number numbers don’t lie.

Mike: [00:11:23] Yeah. Yeah, for sure. And especially real estate, we all, a lot of our numbers do have asterisks next to them. Right. Probably more than not, not necessarily all industries, but in our industry.

It’s like

Gary: [00:11:34] a lot of that. I mean, and then we have different definitions for the ma the metrics too, like, you know, qualified lead. Well, what’s a qualified lead to you versus me, you know, what’s gross profit versus my gross profit. Like, you know what I mean? Like, Yeah, everybody has people get up in different groups and stuff.

And they’ll say I’m making $2 million. I’m like, wait a minute, like fine. Are you making $2 million gross or net? Right. What is net to you? Right? Like, that’s my, because [00:12:00] somebody will come back to me. Like, I can’t believe a guy’s making 2 million. I’m like. Yeah, he’s making a gross, he’s not making a net.

Right, right. That’s funny too.

Mike: [00:12:07] Yeah. So, so guys, if you have any questions for Gary Chatham in here, we want to make sure we tackle them. He really helps a lot of people kind of grow their business, take it to the next level. So, Gary, another, another question is what do you think differentiates people? One of the things that you and I know both happens with a lot of smaller real estate investors, not to say anything bad about small real estate investors.

That’s not a jab. It’s just a lot of people stay small because they, they. Can’t get out of their way. They’re not sometimes not willing to invest in people. Sometimes again, they don’t know their numbers. We’re frugal, you know, we’re cheap or cheap houses. Right. So I want to buy houses, sheep. I want to get a contractor.

That’s going to get it done cheap. So sometimes we cheap out on people, people, and honestly the skin comes off of our back. Right. So I think a lot of people are just like, I’ll just do it myself. Right. So I know that’s part of it, but what kind of differentiates the investors that they go from, you know, kind of right here, you want a couple of deals a month versus those that are going to.

[00:13:00] You know, five plus deals a month and I’ll send the, I said this yesterday to everybody to give you the caveat. The goal is not units. Sometimes it’s easier for us to say units, like who cares about units? And the goal is not even money. Like I know we all want to make more money, but the truth is, is when you do more deals where you can scale your business, that gives you resources to truly build a team and start to buy your time back.

Right. So when you’re small, you just can’t get there. So what kind of differentiates those that are willing to take that, that risk, that perceived risk and that next level.

Gary: [00:13:29] Well, I, okay. So I think some people grow to higher levels, just straight away power gets them to a higher level. Right. And some people, you know, they don’t have the talent, they don’t have the knowledge, something, and that willpower is not enough enough to get them to that next level.

And so, first of all, I think, you know, people allow fear to slow them down. You know, they’re fearful what they don’t know. People will allow fear to either cause them to do something or not do something. But I’m reading a book right now. I just finished it and it’s called why, why willpower doesn’t work.

[00:14:00] Right. And it’s a really good book. I’d highly recommend anybody read it. It’s helped me a lot actually. And the four things I took notes from are four things I walked away was number one and it rings so true to how I, when I help one guy and I helped somebody or. Business and then help a different business and how, you know, and I actually growth in and people we work with, but like, why does this guy like sputter along?

Why this guy just propels forward and hits, you know, hits, you know, full throttle gas. And so these are four things. Number one is you don’t no, what you want, they’re just winging it. They’re just, they’re just literally, especially some of the younger entrepreneurs, I just don’t know what they want. And they, you know, maybe it’s, you know, a new, new toy or something, but they really don’t know why they’re doing it.

Number two is your why’s that strong enough for your goals, right? Your why isn’t strong enough for your goals. So like the reason you’re doing it, once you do know what you want, the reason you’re doing it, it’s not enough to push you and propel you to the goals that you want to. Like when a [00:15:00] little opposition comes in, it slows you down and just stops in the wise.

Yeah. It’s not this big of a deal.

Mike: [00:15:05] We talked about that yesterday. Let’s come back to that one.

Gary: [00:15:08] Yeah. I mean, I recently saw a guy literally leave the real estate industry and go after something else, because this is why it’s so strong that his goals are bigger than what real estate or that niche of real estate was getting him.

Mike: [00:15:21] Yeah.

Gary: [00:15:21] Right. And so number three is, for me is you are investing enough in yourself or your dreams. Hmm. You know, I think people fail to invest in themselves and I’m not just talking about hiring a coach and I think you should, I’m not trying to put a plug in there. I’m also talking about like truly investing in yourself, like reading guys.

I read three books a week. Hmm. Wow. Three books a week. I always have Susan and I, we have a little challenge going where we challenge each other, how many books we can read. And she whoops my butt and telling me we’re in, but I’ve never won. Like I’m never one. Cause I didn’t start [00:16:00] reading until I was 35 years old.

And my wife, like always pushed me here. You need to read, you need, I was an executive and unfortunate 500 companies filled in. Right. And so she’s like, you need to read, you need to read. And you know what? I couldn’t get, I couldn’t get locked in. So she had me of all things and the movie just came out on it.

She had me read the book Artemis. Wow. A 12 year olds. But why? Cause he had to like, teach me how to learn, to read, not read, but like learn to love to read. Yeah. You know, and so I had to get into that and now I get assume books. Like I love books. And so I think you ought to take time to invest in yourself.

Number four, this is the one that I think really cripples people. And it’s your environment, opposes your roles.  your environment, opposes your goals. You don’t allow yourself to be in the right environment that supports where you want to be. Mike. One of the best things that people get up and walk away from investor fuel with is their environment.

They’re all going towards the same goal. Right. Like, why wouldn’t you have be [00:17:00] around people that want to be where you want to be, right? Like it’s not even being around people that are already where you want to be. It’s as much about being around people that want to be with you on the journey to get to where you want to be.

Yeah. You know, but when you’re around people go, you’re stupid. Like you’re going to do that. I mean, when somebody is opposing your goals, you’re not going to get there. We all heard that. You’re the sum of the five people you hang around with the most in this book, it actually goes further and says, you’re actually the sum of the five people that defied people hanging around.

Mike: [00:17:26] Hmm. Yeah. The network.

Gary: [00:17:28] Yeah. You know the thing about it, you eat something, you’re not just eating that, you’re eating what it ate, right? Like, so you got to understand, be very careful who’s around you and your network because it’s not just them. It’s the people downstream from them too. That might be influencing you.

And so those are the four reasons when you ask that question, I think hard on it. I go, you know what, those are it. One is, people don’t know, no, what they want. Number two, they’re there. Why isn’t strong enough? Number three, they don’t invest in themselves. We get people hire us and we go out and one and done.

And then they called [00:18:00] me six months later. I’m like, well, we’re not quite, you know, things don’t feel quite as dialed in as they should then when you left. Well, yeah, because you stopped working on it. Right. Like the people we see the biggest impact with go back every quarter, Luciano and your group two, almost three years now he refuses the lettuce mix coming out every quarter.

And you know, how much hiccups does he really have every quarter when he got here?

Mike: [00:18:23] Yeah. Now she’s running smooth. Yeah, because of these buddies in the past couple of years, he’s dramatically increased his business probably four or 500%, right?

Gary: [00:18:31] Yeah. But he doesn’t come in like every quarter, like some, you know, the world’s falling apart.

Right. Why? Because he works, he invested himself every week, every quarter. I think that’s really important. And then he stays in, you know, he’s not one of these guys that come and go from a mastermind, you know, like he’s just been there. He’s mr. Consistent. Yeah. You want consistent results. You gotta be consistent as you go.

So go

Mike: [00:18:52] there. So, Gary, the second thing you said was your, your, why is not big enough to hit your goals? I think that’s effectively what you said, right?

Gary: [00:18:58] That’s exactly what I said. Yeah.

[00:19:00] Mike: [00:18:59] So, you know, one of the, one of the challenges I talked about this with somebody that was in the event yesterday, Is that? I think one thing that happens is, uh, I’ll give an analogy of a contractor first, but I know real estate investors do the same thing.

The contractor that makes like 60 or $80,000 a year. And that’s how much he made last year. This year, he made, he makes that by like September and he’s like already made my money. So I just take the rest of the year off. There’s disappear. You know, people like where my contractor, I was like, Oh, I’m thinking the rest of the year off

Gary: [00:19:27] now, look,

Mike: [00:19:29] we’re all, we all want to some level of lifestyle business to do what we want.

But as an entrepreneur, I don’t see that path is like, well, if I, if I win the game based on some metric too early, I just quit and give up, you know, I just, I don’t see that. It’s like, okay, we’re always, usually trying to take it to another level, but I think a lot of real estate investors do that. They get comfortable.

Right. And it’s like, well, Hey. Initially for me, it was the thing for me. It was, it was more about survival initially. Like when I lost my job, I have a baby. My wife’s dependent upon me cause she quit her job. This shit has to work. [00:20:00] Like I have to get, I have to pay the bills. We have to get insurance. We have to do all those things.

And a lot of us have been there. Um, it’d be a real easy. And I think a lot of people get to the point to where like, Hey, you know, in my corporate job, I made $50,000 a year. Now I make 150 and it’s way more than I could’ve ever made before. And they just kind of sat back and like, accept that. Right. Um, now on some levels, I want to say if that’s where you’re at and you’re cool with that.

That’s okay. Cause I, I think honestly, there’s, there’s some piece of mind of being content. Like my butt’s always burned and I’m never content. Like I always want to go to the next level. It’s a little bit of a curse for some of us. Right. But, um, talk a little about how those, that. You know, they say they want more, but like you said, it’s their, why is not strong enough to get through that.

So what they try to do with it pains their mind, right? They’re like I can’t get there. And it’s like, well, you’re not even really trying. You say you do it, but your actions don’t meet it. So how do people break through? There’s a really long. Uh, question four. How do people break through that barrier [00:21:00] where they’re comfortable,

Gary: [00:21:01] but not happy with where they’re at yet?

Yeah. It’s just like anything go back to the weight loss thing, right? Like that’s a perfect example of how somebody sets a goal and then they lose 10 pounds or I’m like, ah, I lost 10. I mean, I lost 10. Right, right. Yeah. Yeah. I’ve done that. Actually. I won’t be here. I’m good. But I’m going to get rewarded for that.

Right. So it’s just mindset thing. But at the end of the day, I think it’s accountability. You know, I go around and tell you, I don’t think there’s too many people that haven’t heard me say my 10 year goal is to give two point $6 million away to the Lord’s work. Right? I’ve said that many times from stage, I get to almost every slide I have and people like we bragging.

I’m like, no, it’s accountability. If I tell everybody in the world in 2026, when people walk up to me, I want people to say, Hey, where are we at with your 2026 goal? You’re 2.6 million, right? Like, cause here’s the thing, it’s a big freaking goal. Like I’m scared to death of it, honestly. I’m scared [00:22:00] to death of it, but I, I, it’s so big.

I need it’s my why and I need it to hold me accountable, but I also need everybody around me to hold me accountable with that goal.

Mike: [00:22:11] Yeah. Important. I’ll say, uh, you know, I’m gonna throw myself under the bus a little bit. Here is, um, you know, about a year and a half ago. I hired a personal trainer. I lost like 30, 35 pounds.

I’ve gained most of it back now. Why did I gain it back? I fired my personal trainer. I was like, I don’t need them anymore. And then I dropped my bad habits back and I’ll be honest with you. I like margaritas and chips and salsa. I’d like to eat. But when I had a personal trainer and the thing is, is this, here’s the crazy thing.

My personal trainer was in the UK. It wasn’t even, he wasn’t even here, but just the fact that I had to, like, I met with them every week. And he, he actually had a login access to my app, so he could see, am I exercising, you know, weigh in myself, like, where am I at with all these things? What am I eating? And he could see my calorie counts.

And every once in, wow, he’s like, Oh, [00:23:00] slipped up yesterday. I like, I just had somebody looking over my shoulder. That truthfully, it was going to be less of them holding me accountable than me holding myself accountable for fear that they’re going to say something, right.

Gary: [00:23:13] I don’t think I’m not sure anybody’s going to come up to me in 2026 and actually ask the question, but you’re not freaking scared.

I am that somebody is going to call me out in that timeframe and I go hit it. Right? Like that’s what scares me. And that’s what drives me. But when you have a purpose, you have a call, do you have a passion? And then you put accountability around it with goals. Yeah. And then you speak because here’s the thing I tell people this, I say, you know, when we create a Vizier plan, which is, which is a part of the purpose, the goal is the why.

And we don’t tell anybody, we let our vision die. The day we create. Yeah. Right. When you don’t speak it, it doesn’t come alive. And if you don’t tweak it and it doesn’t, it doesn’t breathe there. And it doesn’t, it doesn’t create accountability. Speaking is not about doing it for us. It’s about creating accountability [00:24:00] to us.

Right. And so I totally important.

Mike: [00:24:05] Yeah. We, uh, you know, we did it, we went through initially, I guess, gosh, probably two years ago with your EOS implementation with you just had our quarterly level tent here, uh, last week. Had our weekly level 10 this morning, we do it on Wednesdays. And, uh, you know, we have a scorecard we know in last week and we did our quarterly goals.

We said, what are we going to account for each person on the team? What do we, what are our rocks? What are we, what are our 90 day goals? Right. And so, um, and then every week we look at that, like, where are we at off? And this year we got, I mean, the school this year, this past quarter, we were able to get more granular on some stuff around lead gen and stuff that, you know, we just kind of felt like it was hard to.

It was hard to, uh, know where to dive in. And we kind of got a little more granular there, but my point is, is every week the team has to come together. They know they’ve got to report out how they’re doing and where their numbers are. We look, we have a scorecard that we look at and, uh, you know, somebody we’re either gonna celebrate [00:25:00] or not, or at least we know where we’re at.

Gary: [00:25:02] And,

Mike: [00:25:02] um, it forces you to prepare right. Forces you to think about it versus flying by the seat of your pants, which a lot of us do as real estate investors.

Gary: [00:25:10] Yeah. Well, that’s very true. Yep. That’s good to hear you guys are still doing that. I mean, I, you know, it’s important. It’s important to yeah. As a business owner that you create focus on a seven day and a 90 day cycle right now.

And if you want true freedom, you got to get this consistency with that. And, um, I’ve been talking a lot lately, Mike, about the broken window. Um, experiment. Have you ever heard of that? The broken

Mike: [00:25:36] window theory? I just mentioned it, my son last week about something else that he got, he didn’t get in trouble, but I was like, anyway,

Gary: [00:25:44] I want my son to, because I was like, You know, he got it.

He had a brand new truck. Remember he got that truck a year or so ago and he paid for it and he took great pride in his truck, but then he had wrecked it. He wrecked it extra three times. And the third time he racked it, he like backed down a side of [00:26:00] a trailer, just like destroy those side of the truck.

And so I made him pay for it. Obviously he’s going to pay it out of his own body and I am paying for it. And it took him a while to say what the hell money and worked for it. And it was six grand to get it fixed. I wasn’t wanting to turn it in and charts. And, uh, and he told me, you know, we were talking about this.

Broken window theory. And we got talking about like the importance of like taking care of stuff and, and he’s like, dad, you’re right. Like I let my truck go after it got hurt, you know, after I, I wrecked it, like he stopped cleaning the inside and he stopped taking care of it. Right. And. You know, for those of you that have not heard of the broken window.

Well, theory, it basically talks about like, you know, if in a neighborhood that windows that get broke, that don’t get careful right away, the it’ll actually create a ripple effect in the economy or in that area and cause the degregation of that area, right? Like people stopped caring and taking care of things.

I don’t know if you heard about the experiment they did, but they put a brand new car. In a high crime invested infested area. And they were, uh, wanting to see [00:27:00] like how long it took for this car to get stripped brand new, never been taught zero, like almost zero miles on it, clean, straight from the biller.

And that car surprisingly sat there for, I think it said multiple weeks without being touched and then to do, to check the theory, they walked up and they broke the window and walked away. And it took 45 minutes after breaking the window for the car to get his truck. Yeah. Right

Mike: [00:27:26] before like, yeah. Well, somebody else has already destroyed.

I might as well do more like,

Gary: [00:27:30] well, the value’s gone. And so I’ve been asking people lately. I mean, if you want true freedom, right. It comes down to like fixing your broken windows of your business. Yep. Right? Like you gotta take the time to focus on what I call the fundamentals of business. You know, having that vision, having that quarterly meeting, having that week, like, you know, and Mike, here’s a, here’s a little bit of task.

I don’t, you, you smack me later. So start of your level 10. Did you still do the good news?

[00:28:00] Mike: [00:28:00] We do.

Gary: [00:28:01] Wow. I love it. Here’s why I am broken window. Number one in business. You want to hear the first window that gets broken? Yup. It’s it’s gratitude. The first window we see broken when the business starts to degregate and get worse and go down and they stopped doing things is they stop that part of their meeting.

They stop sharing gratitude. Everybody calls me all the time. Why don’t we have to do this? Seems like a waste of time. And I go, you know what? The very first window we break in our business is we’re not grateful. And when an gratitude shows up, it gets gratitude gets replaced by something. He actually gets replaced by entitlement.

And what happens is everybody starts to feel very entitled. I deserve this. I deserve to be successful. How do you deserve it for this to happen? I deserve to make money. I deserve for you to work hard for me. Right. And the entitlement shows up on title. It shows up. That’s the beginning of the end. Yeah.

Right.

Mike: [00:28:58] That’s great. [00:29:00] No, that’s good. That’s good. So, Gary, uh, what do you think, um, what’s kind of the biggest piece of advice. I’m sure we’ve covered some of this a bit, the biggest piece of advice you can give to people that are

Gary: [00:29:09] watching right

Mike: [00:29:10] now to get more freedom in their life. Uh, and again, everybody defines freedom differently.

I think it all means. You know, I think we all agree with your original upfront is like doing more of what I want when I want with who, with whom I want. Right. But maybe you could just share your, kind of your biggest advice for those that are listening. You know, they’re all real estate investors, um, how they can get more freedom in their own life.

Gary: [00:29:31] Well, I think in order to get more freedom in your life as a real estate investor is you’ve got to, it starts with you. You gotta, you gotta know who you are, right? You gotta know what your strengths are, what your weaknesses are, what you’re good at, what you’re not good at. And then I think you need a, you need to delegate to people.

That are going to fulfill your weakness, right. And then, and then build trust, you know, but ultimately if you’re going to get completely free, if you’re going to get what we’re talking about today, you’ve got to know your numbers. [00:30:00] You’ve got to be cash confident, and you got to be people confident. You got to trust those three things.

And that would be my biggest advice. If there was nothing more that you you’re going to go work on, know your numbers. Make sure you have, you know, Harvard talks about those scales of business and it starts with like, you know, startup pre profit, profit scaling, and then difference, like making a difference mattering.

Those are the five layers of business and too many people want that freedom so bad. So you’ve got to evaluate where you are. Are you in startup? Are you a pre-Brown but you’re in profit. Are you in scaling? Cause you can’t get the matter and make a difference retire and be free. If those other four stages haven’t been hit yet.

And so many people won’t go from stage one and two straight to stage five. Yup. You know, we all talk about earning the right Mike, you and I didn’t get here overnight. It took me 20 years. Right. Everybody wants to go from pre profits straight to scaling and you don’t have the cash confidence to scale yet, [00:31:00] you know?

Dow, if you’re in pre profit today, you got to get your people dialed in. You gotta get your processes dialed in and you got to get your numbers metrics dialed in. Right. And you’ve got to get like profit first. You got to start dialing at it. Once you get the profit, you’re starting making money and you’re, you’ve got money going to the bank.

The next step. Now that’s scaling. And that’s, that’s a delegating part, getting, you know, getting rid of the things you don’t want to do start that layer of freedom. And then you get through that and you know, none of us know when we’re that. That, that light switch is flipped and which free this happens, you know?

And we don’t even know if you just kind of like more Synduit right. And one day you’re like, they don’t need me anymore. Oh, I’m going to go to the beach.

Mike: [00:31:43] Yup.

Gary: [00:31:43] Yup. You know, so I don’t know. I think that’s my advice. My advice is know where you are and know what, know what the next the steps are for you.

Mike: [00:31:51] Good stuff.

Good stuff. Well, Gary, thanks for sharing with some time with us today. Thanks for. Uh, joining us for sure, buddy. Always great to see you.

Gary: [00:31:59] Yeah, you too. No [00:32:00] question.

Mike: [00:32:00] Tell everybody, uh, for those that are listening right now. You, you help a lot of people in a lot of different ways where they can go. Just learn more about the sharper your wife’s company.

Gary: [00:32:09] Yeah, it is mine. Sharper process.com is our website. And then you combine us on Facebook at sharper business solutions.

Mike: [00:32:18] Awesome. You guys go check it out. If you’re trying to scale your business to the next level, Gary’s been a huge resource for me. My friends are investor fuel mastermind, a lot of people in the industry, so go check them out.

So Gary, tell Susan, hi, we’ll see you guys. Okay. All right. Bye. See about, Hey, I hope you enjoyed our freedom series, which includes eight shows with eight talented real estate industry legends. How can we work more together? I hope real estate investors in a few different ways. I’d love to help you get to know you better.

And here’s how I run the investor fuel mastermind. It is a leading mastermind association of America’s top real estate investors. You can learn more about it at an investor, fuel.com. In fact, our next meeting is coming up very fast. If you go to investor fuel.com, you can learn more. [00:33:00] Schedule a call to talk with our team.

The second way is I help real estate investors generate better leads. I’m a cofounder of an agency that we call the investor machine. You can learn [email protected]. We help take a consistent and high quality lead generation off of your plate. So you can focus. Um, well, getting more of your life back and driving the business.

The third way is I have a professional real estate investor network group. It’s a free Facebook group for professional real estate investors. Only, not for newbies, have a soft spot in my heart for newbies as well. And I’ll talk about that in a second, but if you’re experienced, if you’re actually doing deals each and every month, you should check out our professional real estate investor network.

By going to flip their.com/professional. That’ll redirect you to the right Facebook group. And last but not least for the past, almost seven years, we’ve created over 1500 video podcast shows, hundreds of blogs live so free training all on flipnerd.com. You can go there and check it out. [00:34:00]