Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: I'm Joe Siegel, founder and CEO of Aspire Legal Solutions, and Myland Trustee, the largest and fastest growing land trust company in Florida. Our passion is helping people aspire to a better life. One of the many ways we do that is by helping them remain anonymous when it comes to their real estate holding as they build their wealth. But it also extends to everyone else we touch each day. We're fortunate to work with some of the most successful entrepreneurs in the country who share our mission of aspiring to a better life. And we hope others will benefit from hearing their journeys, tips, strategies and tactics to get there.
[00:00:36] Speaker B: People have this idea that they have to completely know and understand everything.
No, you don't. If you think you're going to know everything about everything in your business, your business is going to be small.
[00:00:52] Speaker C: Right?
[00:00:53] Speaker A: Tom Lehman jumped into real estate after leaving the health food industry. He's quickly moved from renovating and wholesaling to manufactured home construction and development. He shares how resilience and not letting perfect become the enemy of good enough has helped him to start scaling his business in ways he'd never dreamed.
I've got a great guest today, Tom Lehman. He's been a client. I consider him a friend. Not just a client, sometimes semi business partner as well. And Tom's had a great journey along the way to where he is today. And I think he's got a lot of insight to give everybody here who's on that journey for entrepreneurship and life in general. And with that, I just want to go ahead and introduce Tom and ask Tom, it's like, tom, where are you today? And sort of a quick synopsis of how you got to where you are today.
[00:01:52] Speaker B: So this is year five of the journey, right. And today we are a licensed, manufactured modular home dealer.
But way more than that, right? We're getting into, I mean, besides the one off projects we do, we're now getting into large scale developments. We're making offers on getting ready to. On an 83 unit build in Zephyr Hills, we're doing due diligence on a 72 unit value add mobile home park. Just the journey, right. The quickest way to 100 is not by ones, right? So that's today where I am, and you know where I started.
[00:02:33] Speaker A: Well, tell us a little bit about where you start when you got into real estate.
Number one, why did you get into real estate and what were you doing initially when you got into it?
[00:02:45] Speaker B: So after grad school, I had a health food company for a while. Eight happened, right. No one can afford milk, so they can't afford what I have. Took a year or two off. Was out in San Diego, got into consulting, right? But I wasn't the consultant. I was the development know, the guy who translates.
When I moved back to Florida to take care of my mom, the consulting company was based in didn't.
I didn't like working in the office every day. So then one of the companies, we turned around, I had a trucking company. I started to work with them. Oh, this could be great, right? But we just had a young daughter, had a son, a young daughter now, and I'm gone all weekend, and that's not what I wanted to do.
I said, oh, this real estate thing someone was doing. And they said, hey, come and do this. We can do this. And I'm like, sure, this can't be hard, right?
So, yeah, it was really hard the first year, but I just jumped over into it and just went in full speed. That's what. First year, we did three projects, and I made $4,000 total one year.
Didn't tell my wife either, right? We weren't shared finance. We were just married a few years, thankfully, where we didn't have shared finances yet.
[00:04:01] Speaker C: Right.
[00:04:02] Speaker A: Because it wouldn't have gone good.
[00:04:03] Speaker B: Yeah, we had a new child and a new home, and it was like, oh, this is not going to be good. I better figure this out quick.
[00:04:10] Speaker A: So you made 4000 your first year, and what was it that kept you going in it? It seems like at that point, a lot of people go, well, just never mind this. This is not working for me. What kept you going?
[00:04:25] Speaker B: I thought I knew I could do it. I said, I can do this. But the issue was I didn't have the knowledge yet, and I was relying on other people to help me. And I said to myself, if I'm going to fail, which I wasn't going to, I'm going to fail, because it is completely my fault. Nobody else's, right?
I reached out to somebody local, Marlena, right, about a marketing course she offered, and that was the start of the education and growth process in this business. Okay, I remember it was Covid, right? So we're meeting on zooms, and I had to have these six or seven questions answered for her. And I told the story at her meetings, and she laughs about it. She's hard, and I just expect validations, right? Hey, I'm doing my third flip that I'm going to lose money on. I'm great, right?
And she destroyed me on a Friday night.
My plan was to quit her class, but I took care of my daughter, every Friday, right. It was our night. She was like two years old. So whatever. It was baby shark night, probably, we did whatever we watched. And then the next morning I woke up and said, that is the best thing that ever happened to me. And I became a sponge in this business. Just completely changed how I thought, right. I said, I don't know crap and I better learn quick.
[00:05:51] Speaker A: You had that growth mindset.
[00:05:53] Speaker B: I didn't before that. That was the pivot, the changing point, because everything else kind of came easy for me.
[00:06:01] Speaker C: This didn't. Right.
[00:06:04] Speaker B: So it was either fail or fix it, and I had to fix my brain first.
[00:06:11] Speaker A: What's your passion today? What is it that makes you get out of bed every day and do.
[00:06:16] Speaker B: What you, you know, you as well as I know, and especially in central Florida, there was no affordable housing.
[00:06:22] Speaker C: Right.
[00:06:23] Speaker B: And we're creating a lot of opportunities in that space for people to actually start having that home ownership journey. It was easy for me and my first home years ago, I thought, today, how do you do that?
[00:06:37] Speaker C: Right?
[00:06:38] Speaker B: With the prices, the craziness in the market, interest rates. So we're creating the entry level homes inside of the manufactured community, but now with the modular space, the same, because we can build them in six weeks, not ten months. And when you're able to do it like that, you're going to be able to just keep the price point correct for people.
[00:07:00] Speaker A: Right.
So helping people start out in their first home, that's your path.
[00:07:08] Speaker B: Those are my clients, that's my market. That's the people we're here to serve.
[00:07:13] Speaker C: Right.
[00:07:14] Speaker B: And we look at it that way. We're here to serve them.
[00:07:17] Speaker A: And it sounds like you're getting ready to take that next thinking big and getting a lot more people into housing at once instead of just one at a time. Now you're going to be doing a lot more.
[00:07:28] Speaker B: Ten x is greater than two x, right.
[00:07:32] Speaker A: Well, people starting out, a lot of people listening to this are just starting out on this. Where you and I have been, they're in the beginning of that.
And when you're starting out, I think a lot of everything looks important. Every class that comes along, everything that comes across, your Facebook feed, your LinkedIn feed, Instagram, they all look like, hey, this is the next thing I need to sign up for boot camp. This class that talk to this person, get this mentor, get that mentor.
What is something most people think is important that could be skipped entirely when they're starting out?
[00:08:11] Speaker B: Everybody wants to build a perfect system, okay? And depending on what you're going to do if you're a flipper, if you're a wholesaler, you have to find the product to do okay, but everybody's building a system. Oh, I'm not going to do it till I have this everything down perfect. Just go and do it right. Go and find a house to wholesale. Go and find a house to flip. I don't regret my first year because I learned so much of what not to do.
And I think that people just don't go and do right away, okay.
They want to just keep learning. And learning is important, don't get me wrong, but there's nothing more important than hands on learning, right? There's just not. I'm not suggesting that for a doctor, we don't want the doctor doing surgery. Right. We're going to say that. But in this business, look, and you and I met through CFRI, the first person I ever really went to an event with and met there. She was a Disney engineer. She'd been doing this for six years. Back then, she took every class four or five times. She was so prepared for her first flip, did the first flip and quit the business because it went against everything she was taught as an engineer. That should happen, right? Because when you start opening up walls and plumbing, guess what? It's not going to be easy.
[00:09:30] Speaker A: Yeah. And that's one of the things I tell people all the time, and I tell our crew often, I go, don't let perfect be the enemy of good enough.
If you are 80% there, you're far ahead of anybody else. So just go ahead and jump in and get it done. Just get it done. And you'll learn from there how to be maybe 85% next time. And we often face that. And I agree with you, and that's very difficult for me as an attorney, I was taught it's got to be absolutely, you can never, ever be wrong. If you are wrong, 1%, someone has lost money, or heaven forbid, if you're in criminal law, somebody could lose their life or lose their freedom. So we're taught it has to be perfect. But never let perfect be the enemy of good enough to at least get out there and start doing it. And I agree with you. I hear so many people going to so many classes and constantly studying and thinking and thinking and think that they never do their first deal. Just jump in, try it.
Worst it happens, you're going to lose some money. You'll lose some money, but you'll make it back someday.
[00:10:45] Speaker B: You have to have that thinking, though, right?
I know people who I had gotten the business with that. Their first couple of ones, they went so perfect, right? Because they had a lot of help from other people that when they had to go do it on their own and they ran into adversity, they don't want to do it anymore.
[00:11:02] Speaker A: Right, right.
[00:11:03] Speaker B: So here I am. Mine's the opposite. My first three are disasters, right? Disasters. And I'm just like, okay, the next one, that's going to be the one where I put it all together. And you and I met at the fourth one, which was those duplexes. I had no idea how I was. Remember that? Years ago, I'm going to buy these four duplexes, but I don't know what a tenant estoppel is, but we're going to figure it out, right? And then I did the first one after that was a flip. And that was my only perfect one, Joe. The only one. It closed on time. It was a 28 day rehab. I put it on the market Monday morning. It sold. This is right as Covid was, ending here, 2020.
It sold for like ten grand over asking in 3 hours. So I don't expect another perfect deal ever again.
[00:11:51] Speaker C: I had it.
[00:11:51] Speaker B: I always say that I have my perfect one. We're done with them, right?
[00:11:57] Speaker A: Hey, people, if they get one in their life, they're happy. Just one is great.
[00:12:02] Speaker B: I remember my wife wanted a car. I said, I'm going to buy you a car for Christmas. You're good now. I got you your car, right?
I was awesome then with it. But when you look at it that way, those disasters helped me realize on number four, what to do.
[00:12:19] Speaker C: Right?
[00:12:20] Speaker B: And that steamrolled into everything else.
[00:12:23] Speaker A: I agree. I think so many people look at successful people and go, wow, you're so lucky.
You're just lucky. And they don't see how many times you failed. I was in a summit back in November, and flow Ryder came in and spoke about business. Because you want to talk about somebody who failed for years before finally hitting it big. I mean, he told us stories of being. Taking a bus from Miami to Hollywood and being stuck out there and having to ask his mom to wire him $300 so he could get the bus back. And he said, I did that at least five times in my life before I finally got it and hit it. And recently, just a few years ago, he won an $83 million lawsuit in a bad business deal for himself that had gone sideways. So people don't see the failures. And trust me, I went through them too. Yeah, it's work. It's work. Every day you get up and I think that's really what it is, is skipping entirely. It's the giving up.
Don't just go, okay, well, that didn't work. So now I'm just going to give up and move on to something else.
[00:13:36] Speaker B: Because they see it and they say, oh, well, people think that this is easy and you and I have different schedules. Like you're more of a late riser. I'm an early rise. But a lot of times when you're going to sleep, I'm getting up and our emails start to cross. So I think about it, that's like three, four in the morning, folks, just so you know.
And I always tell people, well, are you going to put in my 03:00 a.m. Because that's what I'm doing, right. I don't mind it. It's my schedule.
[00:14:04] Speaker C: Right.
[00:14:05] Speaker B: But they don't want to do that. They don't want that 03:00 a.m. They want, hey, I want to be eight to four and I want this. Okay, then you want a paycheck, you.
[00:14:13] Speaker C: Want a job, right?
[00:14:15] Speaker A: And eventually you can get there. But it takes usually years and years to get to that point. It's not overnight. Definitely not overnight.
[00:14:25] Speaker B: I'm starting to see that now.
[00:14:27] Speaker C: Right.
[00:14:27] Speaker B: But that's because I have consultants, I have a team, and I'm still up at three, four just because I kind.
[00:14:35] Speaker C: Of like it now.
[00:14:36] Speaker B: No one bothers me, right.
I always tell everybody, I can talk to you at any time you want between 04:00 a.m. And 06:00 a.m. I will make time for every mistake you have then. But how about 10:00 a.m.. No.
If it's really important, you'll make time to talk with me then, right?
[00:14:55] Speaker A: And that's the thing.
I'm staying up till three or four in the morning, getting back up at 830. That's my typical day. And you're up at three or four and staying up until late as well. So, I mean, that's long. Days are part of it, too. It's just part of what it is. But I have kids, right?
[00:15:18] Speaker B: So I have to fit them in.
[00:15:19] Speaker C: Right?
[00:15:19] Speaker B: I get up early for that.
[00:15:20] Speaker C: Right.
[00:15:20] Speaker B: Because I know, hey, it's karate night. It's this I don't miss a lot. Like the worst thing for me is, look, my daughter came in. I can see it over here. It's ties and tierras. It's daddy daughter dance night. She put it on my wall so I wouldn't forget, I'm like, girl, look at my calendar, right?
[00:15:36] Speaker A: Prioritize.
Yeah.
Speaking of that, what is something important in your daily routine that you wish you had started early?
What's your atomic habit, as they call it?
[00:15:52] Speaker B: I start now with myself, right? If I don't take care of myself, how can I take care of other people, right? So, you know, I have this home, office, three screens, laptop, everything. I don't turn any of this on till I'm good with me, which not right this week because of surgery, but I start with stretching mindset, motivation and exercise before I let any of whatever the screens can bring. I don't turn the phone on.
This is my other phone, right? It's this little iPhone twelve that has no email, no outside connections besides YouTube, right?
I put in what I'm going to listen to my audible just to get my brain ready for the day and all the nonsense that can come. Because if it's not right, my day won't be right.
[00:16:44] Speaker A: So it's set your day up from the get your mind straight, get your mindset right, then do it, then go.
[00:16:51] Speaker B: My only stop during that time is I have a habit with my children, which is I tell them I love them, they're amazing and to go do amazing things today. And sometimes when I'm running a little late, they come in here to give it to me, right? And I just see that it's like, okay, good, I've done my job, right?
[00:17:12] Speaker A: Well, speaking of children, let me go let my dog in the door. He's going crazy. I'll be right back.
[00:17:17] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:17:18] Speaker A: We'll edit all that out.
At least children can be told, be patient. Dogs, not so much.
[00:17:28] Speaker B: You don't have a six year old girl there.
[00:17:29] Speaker A: We. That's true.
I have a 13 year old dog.
Hey, we were talking about some of the people you met at CFRI early on, and it's a cliche, but you are the average of the five people you surround yourself with. And I always say, if you look around and you're the smartest one in your group, it's time for you to find a new group to hang out with.
What channels have led to you building those high quality relationships for you? Where have you found those five people to surround yourself with?
[00:18:04] Speaker B: So, obviously, I started off in Ria's and then I went to one local mastermind, which made me go into the several that I'm involved in now.
And it's being around these people who are crushing it at so much higher level than me that made me want to elevate myself all the time.
[00:18:24] Speaker C: Right.
[00:18:24] Speaker B: I can do this. And then it's the connections of the relationships you make and how they help you along the way.
[00:18:33] Speaker C: Right?
[00:18:33] Speaker B: Local guy over here in Orlando, Rob Basko. As we were flying home from boardroom in Austin, I think, sitting next to each other on the plane talking developments for 3 hours.
[00:18:43] Speaker C: Right.
[00:18:44] Speaker B: And just sent me down that path where, okay, I can do this now. And him and I were pulling apart. I bought him lunch on a Saturday, brought it all to his office up in Altamont, and we went through on a Saturday, the development of 83 units.
[00:18:58] Speaker C: Right.
[00:18:59] Speaker B: Pulled out the plans, called the broker on it, got the numbers started going across because of one conversation on a plane coming back home.
[00:19:07] Speaker C: Right.
[00:19:09] Speaker A: So finding people in those rooms. Yeah, finding people. It's not necessarily in a group, but it's maybe anywhere you can find it on a plane. I've met some really cool people in airports.
They may not propel my business forward, but I feel like they've enriched me in other ways.
[00:19:29] Speaker B: Well, he's in my group, right? That was the time we had to talk for 3 hours, right. Because you're not always next to these people all the time. And you know how masterminds are, they're very structured. Right, right.
But you go to these meetups and you go to these meetings, you pay a lot of money to be there. So you can see right off the bat the people who think just by showing up, they're going to get better and they'll be gone, right. Because it's not just showing up. Are you going to put the work know, Gil, I'm cheap. You already know that if I pay all this money, I am going to get my value, right? But it's important to me that I bring value back, right? That I give as much as I can, however I can do it, because it has to work both ways.
[00:20:15] Speaker A: If you do what everybody else does, you're going to get the same thing that everybody else gets back. Mediocrity. So what is something you did differently than your peers one, three, five, or even ten years ago that you got pushback on, but it served you well.
[00:20:32] Speaker B: Now, one, I just jumped in and started flipping with no clue, right? No clue. They were like, no, you have to learn all this first. And I was like, no, I don't.
[00:20:42] Speaker C: Right?
[00:20:43] Speaker B: So that was one.
That was a big one, because everyone told me, that's not how you do the business. And I was like, well, okay, but I know how I learned better. I see it. I learned it two is that I started to develop a network. Not just flippers, but everybody. The attorney. How many times have you saved me on things, right? And people don't listen. Your network is going to decide how far you go, not just, oh, this other wholesaler or this other flipper.
The guy who used to work for me thought I was the smartest person in the room ever until he really worked with me and realized, I just know a lot of people to ask questions, right? People will answer my questions.
And that's important to develop that network. But that network has to go both ways. It can't be just me always asking.
[00:21:33] Speaker C: And asking and asking.
[00:21:34] Speaker B: It has to be a give back. And people become very transactional, right? Oh, well, if I pay Joe for this, he's always going to answer my question. No, it's different, right? Like you said earlier, we have become friends in a lot of ways. Look, I've done business in your house now, right? Just come over, nice house.
And if you do business that way, you'll be better off, because just life happens, and people are more inclined to help you if you keep it a relationship and not a transaction.
[00:22:06] Speaker A: And I think you're a great example of the old adage know who, not how you and I have talked about this. You learn who can take care of things, because a lot of the things that you're doing, you may only need it one or two times in your life. So why are you going to go to all the brain damage to learn how to do this one or two times in your life when your time could be spent doing something else and just finding the who who already knows how to do it, to take care of it and say, here, take care of this. And really, a lot of times that, who is your lawyer? It's your accountant, it's your doctor, it's your real estate brokers, your mentors, and other people around you, and they know the who to call to get it done.
And it saves you so much time and energy that you would otherwise waste learning how to edit social media videos, learning how, learning how the Google algorithm works today, this minute, all that's not that you're not the who to be doing that. Somebody else needs to be doing that for you 100%.
[00:23:22] Speaker B: But that's appreciating the value of my time and what I'm good at. We should only be doing three or four things we like to do every day. Now, that doesn't always happen, but you have to find those other people to do them. And once you do, you're going to start multiplying what you're capable of doing. Because I remember sitting on a floor trying to put a video out for Facebook that took me an hour that they get done in 30 seconds. And I was like, I'm done with this and it looks way better.
[00:23:51] Speaker C: Right.
[00:23:55] Speaker B: People don't understand the value of their time.
And that's a problem because I always say that's my most valuable commodity. If you can tell me where I can buy more, we can talk longer, right? Because it's not there.
[00:24:09] Speaker A: Right? That's one thing.
We can't make time.
Yes, you can make money and you can buy time by finding other people, other people to do the things that are a higher and better use of their time. Not your time, but you have to.
[00:24:29] Speaker B: Learn that in this business, remember when you start, you have more time than money.
[00:24:33] Speaker C: Right.
[00:24:33] Speaker B: And then a lot of people never change that mentality, oh, I can still do that. I can still do that. And I'm like, oh, I'm not doing that anymore. Because then I'm focused on developments instead of whatever. A septic issue on a lot somewhere in Ocal, yeah.
[00:24:49] Speaker A: There's an exercise in the entrepreneurial operating system called delegate and elevate. And it's a four square chart. And you write down things I hate to do and I'm horrible at. Things I hate to do but I'm good at. Things I love to do but I'm horrible at and things I love to do and I'm great at. And you fill up those four squares and you try to focus on that last one. Things I love to do and I'm great at. All the others, you find other people to handle for you. All that work up there, we're talking about problems we're having today from growth and everything else that we've done in our past to where we are today. And a lot of people would say, lucky you, a lot of people can afford to hire all this, these people to do all these things. What can beginners expect to struggle with along the way as they move through this?
[00:25:50] Speaker C: Everything.
[00:25:51] Speaker B: You're going to struggle with everything.
[00:25:55] Speaker C: But.
[00:25:55] Speaker B: You have to learn that, right?
Unless, you know marketing, you're going to struggle with it, right? So then you're going to learn it and eventually you're going to give it to somebody else.
Unless you're a contractor and you're doing flips, you're going to struggle with that because you have to learn it. You should understand it. Look, I know how to break everything, but I shouldn't be allowed to fix anything. But I always used to say, I can tell you what it's going to cost me.
[00:26:24] Speaker C: Right?
[00:26:25] Speaker B: I could look at it and say, oh, that's this, that's that. So I learned my value. I don't need to fix it. I just need to know what it's going to cost me to get fixed. But I struggled with it in the beginning, and now when I look at things that I don't struggle as much as I used to because now it's like, oh, I don't need to even worry about that. Someone else is going to give me that number who I trust now, right? What is this? Because if I struggle with things now, I struggle with being involved with too many things, right, but you're going to struggle completely because you're learning a new lesson every day, right? There's so much to do.
How do you sell the house? How do you buy the house? How do you finance it? How do you repair it? That's a lot to learn. And you're going to struggle until you figure it out, okay, and just be prepared for it. But I look back and I'm like, man, I really enjoyed all that I did, right? Because when you're done, what do you have to look to? The next mountain? Because there is going to be a next mountain, right?
[00:27:30] Speaker A: Always.
[00:27:31] Speaker C: Exactly.
[00:27:32] Speaker B: People are like, oh, when I'm done with this, it's like there's just another hill to climb.
[00:27:37] Speaker A: Right?
[00:27:37] Speaker B: I already see my next hill, right. My wife and I have talked about it because she said, what are you going to do next? And I was like, what do you mean?
[00:27:44] Speaker C: Right?
[00:27:44] Speaker B: This was at Christmas, and I'm like, okay. And I showed her and she was like, you can do that. I was like, I love that.
[00:27:55] Speaker C: She.
[00:27:55] Speaker B: Has faith in me.
[00:27:58] Speaker A: I think that's something that you've learned, too, is just having a good person, a partner in life by your side who supports you and can also tell you when you're full of crap as well, because they know you in ways that maybe you have blind spots about yourself, but they're in a position where they can go, no. I've had one of the best coo CFos we ever had. He looked at me across the table and he said, joe, you are a horrible manager. Stop it.
[00:28:37] Speaker B: I resemble that mark.
[00:28:39] Speaker A: Yeah. And I'd always seen myself as, no, everybody loves me and I get along great. And he says, that's exactly what makes you a horrible manager, so stop it. And surrounding yourself, I think, with people who are willing to tell you no, but then you being able to also put your ego aside to say, okay, right. They're seeing something about me.
I've got a blind side about, I've put myself in my own little box of my perfect self, and they're telling me I'm not perfect at everything.
It definitely helps.
Speaking of.
[00:29:14] Speaker B: This is an eggplant, right? So this is what my employees will send me an emoji of when I am being an eggplant.
[00:29:24] Speaker C: Right.
[00:29:24] Speaker B: Okay. So the people around me have that kind of ability. My senior people.
[00:29:31] Speaker C: Right.
[00:29:33] Speaker B: And they sent it at Christmas because they haven't had to send me an eggplant in so long.
[00:29:37] Speaker C: Right.
[00:29:38] Speaker B: And it's important that the important people who have to do everything you need done to move the business forward have that ability.
[00:29:47] Speaker C: Right.
[00:29:49] Speaker B: I work better with women, just one on one. And so they're there. And this is from Heather. She's like, you don't need this anymore. But so I want to send it to you.
[00:29:58] Speaker C: Right.
[00:30:00] Speaker B: That was part of my just, you know, that's important, that they have that comfort to see things I don't see. Stop being a jerk.
[00:30:07] Speaker C: Right.
[00:30:07] Speaker B: Okay. Yeah. Because you know how driven I am, you know how focused and I will be jumping on the table. Let's go. And it's like, oh, that's not the right.
[00:30:18] Speaker A: But I think that's a sign of a good leader is someone who the people they're leading have the permission to tell the leader, and the leader will take that in and not become vindictive about it, become angry about it.
A good leader can say, oh, yeah, you spotted something in me. And I thank you for letting me know that. I've had employees scream at me and walk out the door, and then they come back later and they're apologizing to me for yelling at me. And I go, no, I take responsibility. I should not have put you in a position where you felt the need to blow up at me. We should have had other mechanisms in place to release the steam along the way, not a blow up. So that's on me, not on you. And good leaders can do that and take responsibility for themselves, not just for the business.
[00:31:23] Speaker C: Right.
[00:31:27] Speaker A: What is something that you believed five years ago that you had to unlearn, that you had to get past to take that next step?
[00:31:41] Speaker B: People have this idea that I have to completely know and understand everything.
No, you don't. If you think you're going to know everything about everything in your business, your business is going to be small.
[00:31:58] Speaker C: Right.
[00:31:59] Speaker B: It just is. It's impossible. And the only way to. Is to take that idea, unscrew it, and throw it away, because that's the difference between me two years ago, me today.
[00:32:10] Speaker C: No.
[00:32:10] Speaker B: I need to have control of everything now. It's like, hey, what do I need to know?
I know what's in the bank account, okay? Now, when we have our weekly meetings. I just found out that you signed two contracts last week, Mr. Trustee. I didn't know. Like, cool, okay. I didn't even know any of that.
[00:32:30] Speaker C: Right.
[00:32:32] Speaker B: And that not knowing used to be a problem.
[00:32:36] Speaker C: Right.
[00:32:37] Speaker B: Because then I'm focused on this and this, and now I'm focused on other things.
[00:32:41] Speaker C: Right.
[00:32:43] Speaker B: You and I, we should be focused on things we're ready on. Take the business, not what's going on in the business today.
[00:32:48] Speaker C: Right.
[00:32:49] Speaker B: Right. If we're focused on what's going on, we're in trouble. And when I see that happening and I tell people, hey, you have to be frozen. Start singing. Let it go. Let it go. It took me a long time, right?
But it's that right there. If you're going to micromanage, your business is going to be small.
[00:33:09] Speaker A: Well, and I agree with you 100%. It took me years to get to that, too. And I think early on, you're spending a lot of time. You are learning. You're learning about. For me, I was learning accounting and finance. I was learning marketing. I was learning sales. I was learning all that. And it serves me well. I mean, it was in education. And as my dad says, you always pay for education, whether it's through mistakes, time, or literally paying tuition to a school to learn it. And it took me a long time to learn all that. But once I learned it, I was like, okay, I don't want to have anything else to do with this anymore. And I just feel this weight lifted off of me. Whenever I can hire someone, either inside, outside, virtual, whatever, to say, you take care of that now and just let me know what's going on. And the thing is, I learned. So I know what questions to ask of them whenever they're bringing me something. And based on experience that I had, but for the most part, I had to unlearn that. And that goes back to that control, goes back to being perfect. It's got to be perfect. I learned, hey, yeah, they may not do it as perfectly as I would have done it, but it's good enough, and it propels us forward. And with that momentum, we don't have to worry that it's not perfect.
It's good enough. And with that momentum, we can fix things along the way if it becomes a problem. We can fix it on the fly if it becomes a problem.
But nine times out of ten, it's not going to be a problem. There is no problem that arises from it.
[00:34:53] Speaker B: But more importantly, you didn't do it. You didn't take your time and do this task.
If you're doing it and you could pay someone else to do it who's doing your job.
[00:35:03] Speaker C: Right?
[00:35:03] Speaker A: Right.
[00:35:05] Speaker B: Because our role is different than someone who works with us. It just is.
[00:35:10] Speaker C: Right.
[00:35:10] Speaker B: And if I'm whatever, God forbid, doing whatever I used to do all the time, I'm not doing my job, which is a lot different today than what it was four years ago. If I'm driving projects, who's in front of my three screens and talking to people, right. God forbid that's a problem then, right? I mean, I do it every once in a while because I still like to go out. I take the guy I mentor with me, and we drive around. That's fun for me. But if I'm doing that like I used to do every day three, four years ago, man, we have an issue, right? And once you realize that your role is your role and their role is their role, and let's just let me know when you need me. If there's a problem, bring it. But let me hear what you think is the fix for it, too.
[00:35:55] Speaker C: Right?
[00:35:56] Speaker B: I don't want to ever see, oh, this is the problem without, but I think we can fix it like this.
[00:36:02] Speaker C: Right.
[00:36:02] Speaker B: Because you're trying to also teach people to problem solve.
I think one of our probably great attributes is we can problem solve.
[00:36:11] Speaker C: Right.
[00:36:11] Speaker B: We need other people to problem solve.
[00:36:14] Speaker C: Right.
[00:36:14] Speaker B: And I always say, hey, well, what do you think the fix is? When you send me an issue, just send me what you think it's going to be like. If you think we need to hire a pink unicorn dragon or whatever, great, let me hear it.
I always try to make it fun, like jokes, but I want to hear what you. There are no stupid questions. They're just stupid problems later because you didn't ask a question or you didn't tell me, hey, I think if we just do this, this is handled. Okay, great. Go ahead.
[00:36:38] Speaker C: Approved, right?
[00:36:40] Speaker B: And you want to empower people to fix it.
[00:36:44] Speaker A: We used to do an exercise. We called it the exile project. I'd learned it in one of my coaching programs. And the exile project was, okay, think of your most important employee or person that you have now. They've come to you and told you for whatever reason in three months, they're going to have to take a year off and they will not be back, but they'll come back after that year. What will you have to put in place? So you sit there and you write all these things down of what you'll have to do to replace that person during that year and how you will spend the next 90 days getting them in that position to where it's taken care of. Then the next part of that exercise is, okay, now that person who's going to be gone is you. What are you going to do? How are you going to do that? So if you sit down periodically, have these clarity moments or hours where you sit, and you think, how would I replace myself?
That right there, you're going to be bringing in people around you to replace, and you're only going to hold on to the best, most important things that you have to do that you enjoy and give you life every day.
[00:37:57] Speaker B: And we're in the process of that now of replacing myself, but we also, then I use sharper consultants. They're like, okay, you don't want to do this anymore. Great. How do you pay for it?
[00:38:11] Speaker C: Right? Yeah.
[00:38:12] Speaker B: Because it's not just so simple. Like a lot of people will say, oh, I'm not replacing myself if I have to pay somebody. Well, people don't work for free.
[00:38:19] Speaker C: Right.
[00:38:19] Speaker B: So we're in that process now of like, hey, this is what I'm going to focus on. And we're going to bring in a business unit manager. I'm horrible manager.
If I'm looking over emails on numbers, sometimes it's just like, yeah, process mapping. I get the importance of it, but if you want me to do it, I told them, you just pick which nails you want and you start yanking them now. But I knew the importance of having it done because when they create a map, it's a KPI. Okay, I get it, but I don't want to read it after 90 days. So in February, when they come for my quarterly, we're going to put in place the procedure to put a unit manager there for me.
[00:39:00] Speaker A: Good idea.
[00:39:02] Speaker B: I know what I want to do. It's just I'm kicking and screaming to get there.
[00:39:09] Speaker A: Well, speaking of, what is something that you didn't pay enough attention to early on and then you had to learn the hard way, something that kicked you in the butt because you weren't paying attention to it.
[00:39:21] Speaker B: The numbers, the formulas, everything is in business. Business is math.
[00:39:27] Speaker C: Right.
[00:39:27] Speaker B: And in the beginning, there's a lot of emotions.
[00:39:31] Speaker C: Right?
[00:39:32] Speaker B: Oh, if this happens. If that happens, it'll be great. Whenever you think that way, it's going to be a disaster.
[00:39:38] Speaker C: Right?
[00:39:40] Speaker B: You got to take the emotion out of it. You have to learn your business's numbers, right? And when you create, for instance, we have a buy box for land purchases, right? Every county is a little bit different. I don't get involved anymore, right? We have virtual assistants. This is the buy box.
If the purchase price is in that buy box, you make the offer right then and there, right?
[00:40:07] Speaker C: Done. Okay.
[00:40:09] Speaker B: And you have to unlearn all this stuff about emotions and business. And it's like, hey, these are my numbers.
The numbers don't lie unless you lie about the numbers.
[00:40:18] Speaker C: Right?
[00:40:18] Speaker B: If you start, that's it for me, that was the biggest thing. I was very emotional. Oh, I can make this work. This will be great. If the moon happens this way. And I lost money, right? Why did I lose money? Oh, because it was emotions, right?
[00:40:35] Speaker A: Yeah. No, I had to unlearn ego. Because going to what you're saying there, well, I got into this deal, and if I made a mistake, I'm not perfect. So let me figure out how I can fix this or I'm going to make it work. Over my dead body or over my bankrupt body. I'm going to make this work. Because otherwise I've failed and I can't fail. But over time, you learn, hey, spot the failure as quickly as possible, learn from it, get out of it as fast as possible, and move on. It's all you can do.
[00:41:15] Speaker B: Failure is not final.
Look, I'm going to fail at something today. My wife will let me know at 05:00 what it was. I'm sure. And if I go into my day always knowing that I'm not perfect, I think that a lot of people, there's a great book, ego is the enemy. And I bought it for several people. A couple of them, you and I know, Joe, and they haven't still read. You know, when you take that out of your life and out of your day, things change, right? This isn't about me and how great I am. This is about what we can do.
[00:41:48] Speaker C: As a team, right?
[00:41:50] Speaker B: And I'm big with that. Now, when we fail, guess what I'm going to say. I failed.
[00:41:56] Speaker C: Right?
[00:41:56] Speaker B: But when we succeed, I say, great job, everybody. This is what we did.
And you're 100% ego. So many people get tripped up on that, right?
[00:42:07] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:42:07] Speaker B: Oh, it's a little mistake.
One of my guys kept telling me, this will be my last mistake. I'm like, hey, you're married. No, it's not right. It's not. No, this will be my last mistake ever.
And that's part of the reason why they're not here anymore, because that was their constant thing, right. And they kept beating themselves up and making it worse and compounding. And it's like you can't hold yourself to that standard.
[00:42:32] Speaker C: You can't.
[00:42:34] Speaker B: And it just makes your brain just because now you're going to keep tripping and tripping and tripping and you're done.
[00:42:39] Speaker C: Right?
[00:42:39] Speaker A: Yeah.
And it becomes very defeating if you look at it as well. I failed. It's all my fault.
And I'll never stop making mistakes. It's like, yeah, you won't stop making mistakes. It's coming to that realization and going, yeah, I'm going to make mistakes. And the mistake may be someone I hired, it may be maybe not that I hired them, but I put them in a position that that's not the best position for them. I was trying to get them to do something that that's not where they function. Their highest and best right person, right team. Right.
And spotting those things. And again, spot them fast, get out of them fast, as cheap as possible, and move on and learn from it. I think that goes back to that growth mindset. You learn everywhere. And if you've got a growth mindset, you look at it as, okay, well, I learned from that. Not going to do that again.
And you'll definitely improve. You get better at it.
[00:43:43] Speaker B: Somebody tell me that. Oh, I failed. As long as you get up again, it doesn't matter, right? If you quit, you failed. But if you get up and go again, you didn't fail. Oh, well, that didn't work. But look over here now, right?
And it goes back to ego. Well, I failed on this one project. I can't do it anymore.
[00:44:00] Speaker C: Really?
[00:44:00] Speaker B: Oh, my God.
We sold one, we made like a couple hundred bucks.
[00:44:05] Speaker C: Right?
[00:44:06] Speaker B: And we sold the weather one. We made a little more than a couple hundred bucks. Right.
It's just the nature of it. It just happens. They were like, oh, but it was only this amount. I didn't lose money, right? I did not lose money. I didn't fail really bad then. I looked at it that way.
[00:44:22] Speaker C: Right?
[00:44:23] Speaker B: I'm good.
Some things are out of your control, too.
[00:44:28] Speaker A: Yeah, sometimes. It's not that you didn't fail, you just didn't fail horribly.
You hit a bump.
[00:44:36] Speaker B: I learned better then, right?
[00:44:38] Speaker A: Yeah, you didn't suck as bad many days. It's like, we didn't suck as bad as we did before.
[00:44:48] Speaker C: Right?
[00:44:48] Speaker B: When you learn in karate, they teach you how to fall better. So that's what we're doing. We're learning how to fall better. And then you roll and get back up.
[00:44:57] Speaker C: Okay.
[00:44:58] Speaker B: And you know what I did, though? Whatever the problem was on that deal, I met with two or three people to explain to me how it's not going to happen again, because I went out and I learned what happened, right? I went out and learned, like, on Saturday mornings, I met with people who could teach me, and I'm like, okay, let me learn this part. It had to do with appraisals and issues and whatever. I'm like, okay, not a problem. Let me go learn this. And I sat down and they taught me and explained what their voodoo was all about. So it's not voodoo anymore.
[00:45:29] Speaker A: Well, that sort of brings me to the end here. Our firm's mission is to help our clients, our employees families aspire to a better life. That's why I get out of bed every morning. So you talk about these people who teach you, who is someone who has helped you aspire to a better life, and how did they do it?
[00:45:51] Speaker B: Well, and this is like, not. I'm not paid to say this, but you have helped me tremendously. I don't know how much you realize that.
[00:45:59] Speaker C: Right? Think about it. Hold on.
[00:46:01] Speaker B: This mobile home business, whose office did I come to at game it out a year ago?
Yours.
[00:46:08] Speaker C: Right?
[00:46:09] Speaker B: Sat in there, you answered a bunch of questions for me, and I went off on my merry way to do the have helped. And with the duplex deal on a Saturday morning, that helped me tremendously. Joe, right. When you say you consider me a friend, I appreciate that, because I don't think if that deal went bad or even with the mobile home, what you helped put in place in my brain, I had a lot of the pieces. And you said, no, that round peg goes in the round hole, tom. Not this. I'm like, oh, right.
But think about that. In a year, we went from a couple one offs to now we're talking developments, right?
Again, I'm not paid to say that I really thought about this question just now, and I was like, man, I don't think I'm doing this business this well. If we don't sit down for. I remember it was a CFRI night, or whatever I was doing. I was going CFRI, and you gave me like an hour and 45 minutes in the office. We just talked about it. And this business is here because of that night, because it was early in 2023, it was like January of 23, and I was just really starting to this whole family, I was wholesaling. I was flipping. I was watching the fires burn. I'm like, I don't want to do this anymore. But I knew I could scale the mobile home business, right? Because I saw it, and I was like, and I went into your office, and you and I talked.
[00:47:40] Speaker C: Right.
[00:47:40] Speaker A: Well, and you and I have learned more about mobile homes in the past year than probably anybody learns in their entire lifetime. So I thank you for that. You've given me an education that I did not seek, but I have learned, and it's very interesting. It's been very helpful. And I agree with you. It is that wave of affordable housing for those first homes for people. And I'm so happy that we can work together and do that for people, because that first home, people feel like at that point, they own a piece of the United States.
And it's kind of hard to hate anything if you own it.
Instead, you want to work to make it better. You want to work to make your neighborhood better, your better life for your family, better life for everything around you.
[00:48:38] Speaker B: Just real quick, the house I was only making a couple of $100 was two and a half hours away. I still drove down. I still walked through it. I made sure everything was perfect for them.
They went to the title company. They closed. They were really happy. They loved the fact that I walked, and I put a little note in there thanking them for buying the house and all that. They gave me two referrals.
It's the little things that you do because it's not just about. That's their first home. They were longtime renters. They rented for 20 years. They're in their. They bought their first home.
[00:49:12] Speaker C: Right.
[00:49:14] Speaker B: Bought my first home at 25.
[00:49:15] Speaker C: Right.
[00:49:15] Speaker B: Different world.
And we were able to make that happen for them. And I was really like, wow, awesome.
[00:49:25] Speaker A: Yeah. It does make you feel good when you can do something like that for people, and you don't look at life transactionally. A lot of people would say, well, you bought the house from me. I'm done, and I don't need you anymore.
And I believe that is a true sign of a great entrepreneur as well, is you're not looking at, well, what can I get from you and what can I give you to get back? You're just looking at things as you have an abundance mindset. There's plenty out here for all of us. And let me help you experience this abundance as much as possible as well.
And just sharing knowledge and expertise with people.
So I think you've done a great job with that. And I can't wait to see where the next year takes us together on this.
[00:50:23] Speaker B: It's going to be great.
Thank you for today. Thank you for helping us get here.
[00:50:29] Speaker C: Right.
[00:50:30] Speaker B: And it's going to be an awesome 24 and 25 and 26.
[00:50:35] Speaker C: Right.
[00:50:36] Speaker A: Just is from your mouth to God's ears.
[00:50:41] Speaker B: Yes, sir.
[00:50:43] Speaker A: Well, thank you very much for coming on today. It's always great to talk with you. I'm glad everybody finally got to listen into one of our conversations. You and I talk like this on the phone a lot of times, so it's nice to finally get it on record so other people can hear what's going through our minds sometimes.
[00:50:59] Speaker B: And we kept it pretty clean today, too, because Joe has a horrible body.
[00:51:06] Speaker A: Me.
You're the one with the eggplant, not me.
[00:51:12] Speaker B: I know. So I'm getting better.
[00:51:17] Speaker A: Well, thanks a bunch. And I look forward to seeing how it goes from here on out. And with that, we'll let everybody go today. Thanks a bunch.
[00:51:26] Speaker B: All right, everybody, take care. Thanks, Joe.
[00:51:28] Speaker A: Bye. Thanks for listening to this edition of trust this. If you got something out of it, please press like and subscribe and give us a five star review to help us reach others who can benefit from this series. Until next time, keep aspiring to a better life.
