07 Jun Interview with Brent Daniels
Video Replay of Interview with Brent Daniels
Podcast Replay of Interview with Brent Daniels
Show Notes:
Transcription of Interview:
Steve: Hey everybody, thank you for joining us for today’s episode of Real Estate Disruptors. Today we’ve got Mr. Brent Daniels, and he’s here to explain one simple concept, which is talk to people.
Brent: That’s it baby.
Steve: That’s right TTP. If this is your first time tuning in, I’m Steve Trang, Broker/Owner of Stunning Homes Realty, and co-founder of OfferFast, the one app you need for wholesaling, and I help people become real estate entrepreneurs. If you’re excited for today’s show, please give me some wows, some hearts, and I just wanted to share that I started this show because I wanted to give back to our community. I struggled when I started my business, I think you probably struggled a little bit when you started your business.
Brent: Oh yeah.
Steve: What we want to do is just shortcut the struggle for as many young leaders as possible. Here’s all I ask, if you get value out of this show, tell a friend. Either share this episode, tag a friend below, or just tell them your best take away from this show later on. Don’t forget this is also a live show, so please post your questions for Brent’s answer.
Brent: That’s right. Let’s go man. This is live.
Steve: Let’s do it.
Brent: Steve Train. Leading the charge. We’ve got our black shirts on, looking good.
Steve: Matching shirts.
Brent: We match.
Steve: We already traded shirts earlier.
Brent: Yeah. We traded shirts. It was perfect.
Steve: Perfect.
Brent: Yeah.
Steve: All right, so what got you into real estate?
Brent: Geez, man. In college, you get the book called Rich Dad, Poor Dad, and you’re little mind explodes, so that led me down a rabbit hole of Robert Allen books. He was the nothing down, when your tw-
Steve: Multiple streams of income.
Brent: When your 20 years old, and you’ve got no money, and you have no idea what the hell is going on, you’re like “Oh, I can buy real estate? Like a house? Like my parents owned for nothing down? This is crazy.”.
Steve: Right.
Brent: Then I went and got my license in college, and as soon as I graduated college, got right into traditional. Traditional, you know, being a Realtor.
Steve: 2004
Brent: Listings. Yeah, 2004, it’s crazy. I’ve got … When you get your license they give you this really gray, black and white photo of you on your license, and I’ve got my bleach blonde hair and it’s all spiky and everything.
Steve: What? I didn’t get that.
Brent: You didn’t
Steve: I was in ’07. That’s when the economy started turning, so maybe they couldn’t afford that.
Brent: Oh, that’s it. Yeah, they cut the budget on that man. For sure.
Steve: Why did you get into wholesaling?
Brent: Wholesaling was kind of … I found it by accident. What I was doing in … Well, there’s a couple different evolutions of it. When the market crashed in 2008, I got into buying properties down at the trustee auction. So when you’re buying properties down at the trustee auction, you win the bid, and then the guy that bid for you goes “Hey, by the way I’ve got a guy that will pay you 15 grand if you let him take this property instead of you.”, and you’re like what is this? It was like, you know, winning the lottery. It’s like a lottery ticket that you scratch.
Steve: So you didn’t even know when you bought that property that it was a possibility.
Brent: No. I was gonna flip it.
Steve: Yeah.
Brent: You fix it up, you put a little bit into it, you flip it, you make some money, or you can make money by not even breathing on the property. It kind of clicked in my head a little bit there. Then that went away, a lot of the hedge funds came in, they started buying up the inventory as the trustee auctions.
Steve: Screwed it up for the rest of us.
Brent: They were smart, they were smart to do it.
Steve: Yeah.
Brent: Just got back into traditional business, and through the progression of just being a Realtor, started to find off market deals because our brokerage was located in Arcadia, and Arcadia was like the hot spot of finding small houses on big lots that people will pay retail for so they can value add. They can build, or they can knock it down and build a brand new house type of thing. Didn’t have any money at the time, it was just … In real estate, with the cycles that you kind of go through as you’re young, and your inexperienced, and you stop talking to people for amounts of time, you stop doing deals. I just started getting out there, and going out to the doors, and driving around the neighborhoods, and writing down the addresses of the worst houses.
Steve: Really?
Brent: Then I would call them up, and I’d say “Hey, my name is Brent. I’m a real estate agent. I’ve got a client that wants to buy a home in the neighborhood, would you consider an offer?”, and then they would say “Yes.”, and then I’d call up one of two cash buyers that I knew at the time and I’d say “Do you want to buy this house? If you do, I’ll charge you three percent.”. They were like “Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. No problem. Yeah, that’s great.”. I’d get to the closing, I’m like this is easy money. Three percent on this deal, wasn’t listed, I didn’t have to show it. This is beautiful, this is the easiest deal of all time. I’d look at the settlement statement, my buyer’s not on there. There’s another buyer on there, and down at the very bottom of the settlement statement is something called an assignment fee. The assignment fee said $40,000.
Steve: A little bit more than three percent.
Brent: I was like “What is an assignment fee, and how is it $40,000?”. I call up my buyer and I was like “Are you buying this house?”, and he goes “No, no, no. I sold it to a buddy of mine, he does a lot of work in that area, he loves it, he’s gonna do something special with it.”. I was like “How did you sell a property you don’t even own?”, and he’s like “No, no, no. I sold the rights to the contract.”, and I was like “What? What do you mean you sold the right’s to the contract?”, and he’s like “Yeah.”. I did that two more times, Steve, for another $30,000, and another $20,000, right?
Steve: Right.
Brent: Then I started catching on. Then I started buying them myself and then assigning them. That was the progression of wholesale. So why wholesale? Because in wholesale I make about 16% per deal, as opposed to the average of 2.5% that a normal Realtor gets, on average, for a traditional deal.
Steve: Well, so you got … We answered the question of why wholesale versus traditional.
Brent: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Steve: What about flipping?
Brent: I’ve done some flipping. It’s not … I’m just not good at it to be honest with you. I worry about contractors, I worry about the budget going over, I worry about people breaking in. People have stolen all the appliances the day after they got installed. I’ve had people break off lock boxes, and break through doors, and do all this stuff. I just don’t have the stomach for it to be honest with you. I just don’t have the cajones that a lot of the guys do that make huge profits on their flips. It’s just not my thing. It’s just not … I like sleeping at night.
Steve: Not just that, I don’t personally like paying 13 to 18% interest.
Brent: Sure.
Steve: For four, five, six months.
Brent: Sure.
Steve: Which is sometimes what you gotta do when you’re flipping.
Brent: 100%
Steve: Okay, so what were some of the early struggles that you had when you got into … Well, let’s not talk about traditional, but wholesaling.
Brent: Yeah. The toughest thing was, I was stuck … We call it being a cash buyer employee. I would sell the properties to the same group of three people.
Steve: Right.
Brent: I would find that they would sell it to somebody else, or they would … I could have sold it for a lot more. So I think the biggest struggle off the bat was I didn’t build a big enough network of cash buyers. That was huge for sure. Once I started developing that, and really started networking with people, and calling them up. And anytime we got a property in this neighborhood, I’d call all the Realtors around there that were doing flips, and see if they wanted … If their clients … Which often times, it was them. They were flipping their own deals. They would be interested. So I’d add them to the list, and add them to the list, and now the list is huge.
Steve: So you grew your buyers list.
Brent: Yeah.
Steve: Very nice. So you kind of mentioned driving around.
Brent: Yep.
Steve: Drive for dollars, but I read somewhere else that you were doing a little bit of door knocking.
Brent: Oh yeah.
Steve: So talk about that.
Brent: So we … Before, I really … I wanted to be as proactive as possible, and I didn’t really … I had prospected traditionally for canceled, expireds, for sale by owners, used REDX, used Vulcan 7, got the data, put it into Mojo, called them up, got listing appointments, got listings, the whole thing. Very competitive, so I was used to doing the calls, but I kind of got away with it. I was like I’ll just go see if I can … The houses that we’re talking to are right in this area, we’ll just drive down there and see if we can catch them at the house. Well often times, you couldn’t. Arizona’s really hot.
Steve: Are you talking about the market, or talking about the temperature?
Brent: Both, but it’s seasonal. Door knocking is truly seasonal. Around the country, if you’re a door knocker, good luck door knocking in the winter in Minnesota. Good luck door knocking in Phoenix right now.
Steve: Yeah.
Brent: You’ll burn alive. Especially being pasty white, and an Irish guy. You’ll just burn up like a vampire or something. Door knocking … We door knocked. I started and I got a group of really awesome real estate agents on my team, and we’d all go out and door knock for like two or three hours a day. We wore the same shirts that said Neighborhood Ambassador on the back. It was polos, it was like the whole thing. We door knocked 15,000 doors, got four deals. Four deals, 15,000 doors.
Steve: That’s a pretty good [crosstalk 00:09:37].
Brent: So what really turned me around Steve was, I went to a door and it was a neighbor, and she was caretaker for a house down the street, and the gal that owned it was … Her motivation was it was just too much for her. She lived in New York, she was like 80 years old, and the neighbor gave me her phone number, so I just cold called her. I cold called her, told her what was going on, told her that I had a client that wanted to buy a house in the neighborhood, and boom, it was done. We sent the paperwork, it all went smoothly, made like $25,000. It was great, it was just really, really great. I was like okay, there’s some magic to picking up the phone and calling people, and there’s also some comfort to being in air conditioning, and at a desk, and just standing up or whatever, and just being enthusiastic. Really, you can talk to way more people over the phone then you can door knocking, way more.
Steve: I think I had [Jed 00:10:35] [Blount 00:10:36], with Fanatical Prospecting, talks about that.
Brent: Must have.
Steve: Yeah.
Brent: Must read.
Steve: Cool. Cool. Okay, why do you think wholesaling is such a more effective strategy cold calling versus calling for listings.
Brent: An incredibly lower amount of competition. Let’s just be frank, not a lot of people, not a lot of wholesalers, real estate investors cold call. They just don’t. I’m trying to change that with my TTP, you know what I mean? Because it’s powerful, it’s really powerful, and the cost to do it is so low. Plus, I want to be my own client. I want to be the buyer. If I’m the buyer, I can do as many deals as I want ’cause I’m the buyer. If you’re going on listings, and you’re doing traditional, and you’re doing these type of things, then all of a sudden, you’re in an agency, and now you are … They’re the boss. Your clients are the boss. Wholesaling, I’m the boss. It’s just … It’s awesome.
Steve: Cool, well that makes a lot of sense. I want to talk a little bit about how we met.
Brent: Yeah.
Steve: So, I was looking up before our meeting … I can’t believe it’s been over 10 years.
Brent: I know.
Steve: You had just turned onto trustee sales, and I was like “Man, this market sucks, but I’m gonna keep working with buyers, and we’re gonna keep showing short sales.”. And we had a short sale we were working on, my client was buying, and this other guy is like “I got it, the banks about to approve it. Any day now we’re gonna get that approval.”, and then I was like “Hey that trustee sale is gonna get postponed. What’s going on?”, and then low and behold I get a call, and it’s like “Hey, that short sale didn’t get done. But guess what? Investor bought it, and they want to still sell it to your client. Is your client still interested?”. I was like “Well, they were interested before, don’t see why they wouldn’t still be interested in it.”, so we worked it all out. I was like let’s see what this investor is doing. What’s his story.
Brent: Who is this mystery investor?
Steve: Yeah. I was like “Man.”, ’cause again, going to the same method as you it’s like I’m getting 3% of 300,000, which is pretty cool, but this guy made like 40K here.
Brent: Yeah.
Steve: Like what’s going on? And so we had dinner, I want to say, like two weeks later. It’s like let’s just figure out what this wholesaling thing is about. One of the things that stuck out to me still, I shared this with you a few weeks ago, was I was telling … I got clients looking to buy on east side, I got clients looking in [inaudible 00:13:01] and [inaudible 00:13:01]. I was like I don’t know why you want to do that, all the smart investors are on the west side. I’m thinking man. I didn’t want to buy on the west side before, but he just made me feel like I should buy on the west side.
Brent: Yeah.
Steve: It’s unbelievable. So I think the way you framed that conversation, and the context, was really impressive. All right w-
Brent: Well, it’s true. I mean it was true. At that time, the east valley was on fire. It always is. And even the west valley, but just certain pockets, you just get better bang for your buck for sure.
Steve: So let’s tell them, what does TTP-
Brent: TTP stands for Talk To People, baby. It’s very simple, talk to people. That is the whole business, whether they call you or you call them, it’s … You’re just talking to people, so why wouldn’t you want to be proactive and reach out to ’em? Why wouldn’t you want to have as many conversations as possible? If our value in this market place is to provide opportunities to other people, the only way we do that is by talking to people. That’s the only way.
Steve: It’s so much easier to just send out postcards and just wait.
Brent: Well, sure. Sure, of course it is. You wait for people to call you, but even when people call you, they call you to tell you “Take me off your mailing list. I’ll never sell this house. They’re gonna bury me in the back yard. Why are you sending me this trash?”. You still get the same kind of rejection from post cards, you just get a whole lot more of it from cold calling. You just do. But here’s the thing, after you talk to 1,000 strangers, and have a conversation about their property, you can talk to anybody about anything. You’re building up a skill there, you’re building up endurance, you’re building up a muscle there that, if you are just waiting for people to call you then … What are you … It’s just not … You can’t build a very profitable business that way.
Brent: Plus, it costs a lot of money to get people to call you these days. It costs, on average in Phoenix what, PaperClick is eight grand a deal, Direct Mail seven to eight grand a deal, you know what I mean. When you pick up the phone and you call people, and you’re doing it yourself, you pay for your dialer, which is $150, and then you pay for phone numbers for addresses that you want to get ahold of, which are 25 cents each.
Steve: Right.
Brent: So, $250 bucks gives you 1,000 addresses that you can hand select, and call the owners, and have a conversation.
Steve: Right.
Brent: It’s a no brainer. You get to keep most of your profits.
Steve: The areas that you’ve decided you want to invest in.
Brent: Absolutely.
Steve: So, let’s see, Anthony wants to know … I’m sorry, [Kagen 00:15:31] wants to know, do you use a Mojo dialer?
Brent: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Yeah. It’s the most user friendly. There’s some better ones, some more slick ones that are a little bit more expensive, but I found just the learning curve for Mojo is like 30 minutes.
Steve: Yeah, and they got all the training videos and the support staff, so we use Mojo too. It’s great.
Brent: Yeah, yeah.
Steve: So who … I pitched this earlier that anybody and everybody, in every industry, can use TTP, but in your mind who is the target audience for TTP?
Brent: Wholesalers, real estate agents for sure, anybody that’s starting out and that wants to get … I mean, any investor. I don’t care if you want to wholesale, I don’t care if you want to build up your rental portfolio, I don’t care if you want to flip, at some point, somebody is going to have to source that opportunity, right?
Steve: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Right.
Brent: Do you want to wait until a wholesaler like me gives you the opportunity, that’s fine, I get it. You don’t want to deal with the homeowner, you don’t want to deal with the emotions, you don’t want to deal with any of that stuff going on, I get it. That’s what most flippers, and most people that are building their rental portfolio, they don’t want to deal with the guy that has chain smoked 1,000 cigarettes, inside his house, in downtown Glendale, for the 40 years. They don’t want to have that, whatever, that relationship. I do, I do. I love it. It’s wonderful, you know what I mean?
Steve: Right.
Brent: I think that if you want to source your own deals, then that’s the audience. That’s who I’m speaking to, that’s who I encourage to, every single day, pick up the phone and call people.
Steve: Okay. Then why do you think this is a great advantage? The TTP versus any other marketing?
Brent: It’s proactive.
Steve: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Brent: Here’s the difference, Steve … Here’s the problem in our industry, in wholesaling, in real estate, in everything. Let’s just call it the real estate industry, but specifically wholesale. We send out a bunch of marketing, and then our whole life, our whole schedule revolves around when those calls come in. If you’re at a basketball game for your kid, you better answer that call, that’s a money call.
Steve: That’s money.
Brent: When that PaperClick, clicks in and you hear the ding, it sounds like a cha-ching sound or whatever you set it for, you know what I mean?
Steve: [crosstalk 00:17:50] listening to my phone.
Brent: You have to drop everything and get on that. You have no … Your whole schedule is absolutely held hostage, when you’re waiting for people to call you. When you’re proactive … When I call between nine and noon, or anybody calls between nine and noon, that’s when the conversations are happening.
Steve: Right.
Brent: You’re initiating-
Steve: On offense.
Brent: Yes. You’re absolutely on offense. So with that, you get to schedule your whole life, you know what I mean? You get to schedule everything out so that you’re having those conversations on your time. That’s huge. Let alone it being cheaper than everything else, let alone the skills that you build when you talk to that many home owners.
Steve: Real sale skills.
Brent: Absolutely.
Steve: Yeah.
Brent: It’s not even sales skills as much as it is just communicating with strangers. Just being able to have a conversation with somebody and ask them about their house, or anything. It just builds up. It builds up your whole ability to communicate.
Steve: And then Kagen has another question, do you do your offers over the phone or face-to-face?
Brent: Great question. We loved doing it over the phone. We have found that in this market, face-to-face wins.
Steve: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Brent: Yep. Unless they’re out of town, face-to-face. I have two acquisition managers, Natasha and Julie, and their emotional intelligence level is off the charts. Off the charts. You meet ’em, you love ’em, you meet ’em, they’re charming, you meet ’em, you trust ’em, you meet ’em, they’re smiley, they’re happy, they bring joy to your life. That is an advantage that you have when you get to meet people face-to-face. What we do is, we try to get as much of the pre-qualifying out of the way, on the phone, as possible. When I’m talking about pre-qualifying, I’m talking about the four pillars of pre-qualifying. Condition of the house, their timeline to sell, their motivation to sell, and what’s their price. If you can get as many of those as possible, you know whether or not it’s a quality lead or not, or whether it just needs to be dead and not bug ’em anymore.
Steve: Sure. Okay. That was a really good question. What is the process of TTP. If you could just kind of draw it out. If someone’s new to this, what do they do?
Brent: So what you want to do is you want to identify your targets. Who do you want to talk to? We want to stay in the distressed bucket as much as possible.
Steve: Highly motivated.
Brent: Highly motivated, just distressed, like there’s a reason why they’re not putting it retail in this market, there’s a reason why they don’t want people to come through their house, there’s a reason why they don’t want a sign in their yard. You want to work on the distressed market as possible, so you get a list of those. You get their phone numbers by skip tracing ’em. There’s skip tracing services all on the internet. We use LexisNexis, and TLO. Some of those accounts are really difficult to get, but there is a ton of freelancers … Sal and Carlos have a company that do it, it’s a great resource, so you can get the numbers. You get the numbers, you put it into the dialer, and then you call ’em.
Steve: Sounds really complicated.
Brent: Oh, you call ’em. And if you have a good conversational script, and you sound like a neighbor, and you have a great tone, and you have a great pace, then you have great conversations.
Steve: Awesome. Then you brought this up in our last meeting, there are just six general responses you’re gonna get.
Brent: Yep.
Steve: What are those six responses.
Brent: We’ll kind of role play it a little bit. I call you up and I ring, ring.
Steve: Hello.
Brent: Hi, I’m looking for Steve.
Steve: This is Steve.
Brent: Hi, Steve. My name is Brent, and I know this call is completely out of the blue, but I was calling about a property I believe you own on 1010 West Jefferson?
Steve: Yep.
Brent: Yeah, you know what, I actually was just calling to see if you would consider an offer on that property. Now stop, right.
Steve: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Brent: When I ask that question there’s six responses. Yes, I do want to sell my property, which you’re like [inaudible 00:22:05], right? ‘Cause more frequently you hear no, I don’t want to sell my property. Maybe in the future I do, so that maybe future, it’s kind of murky. How’d you get my number, how much are you gonna give me, and who are you? That’s the six responses that you’re gonna get when you ask somebody if they would consider an offer on your house. So if you know the responses … In the coaching program, we really work to answer all those so we can keep the conversation flowing, or move onto the next one.
Steve: Cool. That’s really sharp.
Brent: Yeah.
Steve: Okay. And then I heard you also mention that one today, but you also leverage agents in your wholesaling business.
Brent: Yeah.
Steve: Let’s talk about that.
Brent: Well, you know, sometimes agents have properties that need a lot of love. The clients don’t necessarily want their neighbors to know what’s going on behind closed doors, they feel embarrassed, or they just don’t-
Brent: Going on behind closed doors, they feel embarrassed, or they’re just very private people, and they want to sell it to a cash buyer. I’m a cash buyer, so they reach out and we make it as smooth for them as possible.
Brent: It just depends on the situation, and some agents they just want to take advantage of not a ton of people coming through, not an inspector beating them up. You do an inspection on some of these houses and it’s a bloodbath, and then all of a sudden that offer that you gave them is now 30, 40, 50 grand less, sellers are pissed, so they want a simple, easy offer where it’s as is. We pay the title and escrow fees, and the agent can keep all their commissions.
Steve: Everyone’s happy.
Brent: Everyone’s happy.
Steve: Then, tell me some of your thoughts on key performance indicators.
Brent: We look at how many contacts per hour, we like to keep it at about 15 contacts, new contacts an hour of actual owners.
Steve: Wow, really?
Brent: Yeah.
Steve: 15 contacts, 15 conversations.
Brent: Yes.
Steve: Wow, that’s unbelievable.
Brent: With the actual owners, yeah. You leverage the dialer, so it’s pretty easy to do. We look at, from those, how many yeses or how many leads we get per hour. We’re looking at about one per hour, we’re looking to get somebody that’s that yes, maybe. Then, from there it’s how many leads to we need to close a deal, and then how long does it take to close a deal?
Brent: Now, when you’re cold calling somebody here’s real stats for everybody out there. Here’s the real stats, the average it takes is 150 days from the first time you call them to when you’re going out with your wife celebrating the big check that got sent into your account. When it actually closes, 150 days.
Brent: Now, 42% of our deals close under 90 days, which is fast, which is real fast. That’s like you call them and they’re ready to go. The reason it’s so long, I think, is because I’ve been doing this five years and keeping stats on it, and I look at everything. I closed a deal this year that I talked to them three years ago, so there’s some outliers. If I pulled out the outliers, I think that you would get to those deals faster, but a lot of my students get them within 45 days.
Steve: It’s really impressive to know all those stats. How in the world are you keeping track of all these stats?
Brent: Great question. Mojo is excellent, they don’t lie, if you’re people that are making calls … I hire prospectors, Mojo doesn’t lie, so I know exactly how long they’ve been making calls, I know exactly how many people they’ve talked to, you know everything, all the stats are there. It’s very easy to pull that out and use it.
Brent: I have an incredible virtual assistant named Lisa who’s in the Philippines and she’s the chief operating officer of my company, without a doubt. What she does is she puts together weekly reports on everything. From the Mojo we look at the stats in our CRM, which is through InvestorFuse or Podio, and between those two it’s very easy. She organizes it, puts it into an Excel, and sends me a report.
Steve: If I wanted to find a Lisa where would I find one of those?
Brent: I found her through Upwork.com, but you’ll never find a Lisa. No, I’m just kidding. No, they have some phenomenal people on there. I’m telling you, people with degrees, people that have been running businesses over there that get paid nothing. She started out at five bucks an hour, I’ve got her at nine bucks an hour now because she’s a superstar, but nine bucks an hour she literally runs the show, she organizes everything.
Steve: Wow, that’s awesome. Then, what do you think are some key skills to being a great cold caller?
Brent: Three main things for a great cold call. One, the script, two, your tone, three, your pace. All of those can be learned, all of them can be implemented, you can really … None of those are insurmountable. I honestly believe anybody can do it without a doubt. Now, the reason people don’t do it is because of the three P’s.
Steve: What are the three P’s?
Brent: The three P’s, this is what cripples people from making cold calls: procrastination, perfectionism, I need to know this script perfect before I’m going to even pick up that phone, and paralysis by analysis. Am I calling the right people? Is this the right list? Do I call between noon and 2 or is 8 and 9 better? I won’t test it out. I find mostly it’s procrastination and we let creative avoidance enter our lives and disrupt us. We’re like, “Oh man, it’s cloudy outside today, nobody’s in a good mood when it’s cloudy, and I’m going to just call, and people are going to be mean. Wait, let me check. Oh, it’s going to be sunny tomorrow. I’m going to call tomorrow yeah, I’m going to do double tomorrow, yeah.” Then, what happens?
Steve: They never call.
Brent: They never call.
Steve: One of my favorite is, “Well, I don’t want to call them right now they just got to work.” Then, “They’re probably getting ready to go to lunch …” Oh, it says live video interrupted.
Speaker 1: It’s still rolling here.
Brent: I don’t know if we’re interrupted or not.
Steve: Okay, we’re good now.
Brent: It was too much heat. Too much fire in here, shut Facebook Live down.
Steve: We were melting the lines.
Brent: That’s it.
Steve: “They just go to work, I don’t want to bother them when they just got to work.” Then, there is, “Well, they’re about to go to lunch.” Or, “Man, they’re at lunch I don’t want to call them during their lunch break,” and, “They just got back from lunch, I don’t want to bother them while they’re catching up on their emails.”
Brent: Yeah, they’re probably tired after lunch.
Steve: Then, there is, “Well, I don’t want to bother them after work or during work.” Then there is, “Well, they’re probably with their family, I don’t want to call them right now.” There’s no freaking time to call them.
Brent: That’s how it ends up, yeah. You get discipline … Discipline’s a silly word. You just time block. I’m telling you, if you time block three hours a day or 15 hours a week to make call you’re going to win. I don’t care who you are, I don’t care what market you’re in, if you do it with good enthusiasm, and you’re kind, and you’re optimistic on the phone on, and you confirm and approve everything people are saying to you on the phone, you’re not combative you will win. There’s 168 hours in a week, 15 of them to be proactive, to make as much money as you want. Then, build it, and build it, and build it, and build it. It’s a no-brainer.
Steve: We got one person asking, where to get the scripts? They can get it later on, we’ll put the link for the TTP website. Then, tone and pacing, let’s just talk about what kind of tone, what kind of pacing.
Brent: You want to have enthusiasm, but you don’t want to be as crazy as I’m being right now. The more enthusiasm the better. If you’re here it sounds like you work for Capital One, it sounds like you’re customer service. Customer service, that’s like the most hated call that you have to make is customer service for like Cox, or DirecTV, or whatever it is, forget about it.
Steve: I feel bad for them even though I’m yelling at them.
Brent: Yeah, of course. If you’re on one level the whole time it just sounds like everything else and turns them of instantly. You want to have some enthusiasm with it, you want to be able to really understand, and with the tone you just want to know who you’re talking with. If you’re talking with somebody that’s older you don’t want to be going crazy, and [inaudible 00:30:56], and your house, and how many bedrooms is it, and did you do remodeling, and what’s going on? How much do you want? Woo!
Brent: You go to slow it down, you got to understand who you’re talking to and how they communicate. If you understand the four personality types some people are analytical, they just take longer to buffer. They pause before they say something, and if you’re filling in the space the whole time with you just jibber jabbering it’s going to totally turn them off. It’s just understanding the tone and the pace, and the script.
Steve: Makes sense. What qualifies as a deal for you?
Brent: We average about 23,000 a deal, so we run everything through that filter and-
Steve: Regardless of price range?
Brent: Yeah. It just depends. Here’s the thing, a lot of people are like, “I won’t do a deal unless it’s like 10,000,” okay great, I’ll do it for five [crosstalk 00:31:55]. It’s a done deal.
Steve: Can I get it tomorrow? I’ll do it for two.
Brent: I think that there needs to be standards that you set because I think, most of the time the issues people have are they negotiate with themselves. I can’t offer that, that’s too low. I can’t offer that. Here’s the fundamental thing though, and I think you know this and I tell my students and my team this all the time, in every transaction the buyer sets the price. The buyer sets the price. The price for this property, for me, is this. Now, if you come along and say, “No, I’ll buy it for this,” and it’s way higher great.
Steve: That’s the price.
Brent: That’s the price. When you’re talking about well, I’m offering to low or I’m a shark out there, or whatever do you think it’s worth? It’s worth what you think it’s worth, you’re the buyer. You’re the one determining. If they put gas at $500 a gallon we’re going to see nothing but bicycles out there, we’re going to see nothing but Teslas.
Steve: That’s not the price.
Brent: Right, you know what I mean? It is what it is. The buyers set the price, so that’s something that you have to change in your mind when you’re in this business. It’s much different, and it’s tough when you come from traditional real estate. It’s tough because your job is to get it, or to list for the highest amount, get your clients the highest amount.
Steve: That’s a conversation that’s come up multiple times in some of my other traditional real estate masterminds. It’s like, “Well, we got to get them the most amount of money possible.” It’s like, Well, are you asking them what their situation is? Are you talking to them about what their timeframe is? How much they need to net, what their goals are? If you just go in there every time to list it, you’re not listening to what their problems are then you’re not serving them to the highest level possible.
Steve: We go in there, we ask them, “Hey Brent, you know, what’s more important to you how much you get, how fast to get it done, or amount of hassle?” You tell me how much you get, it’s a listing, there’s no other way about it. If you’re telling me I want this next week and I want no one coming through because I got my three dogs, I got my newborn well, here’s the price, now, we’ve talked about this, your house is worth this, here’s my offer. Does it work for you or not? If you need more sounds like you need a retail, let’s go back to the listing.
Brent: Absolutely.
Steve: You got to ask the question, and I don’t think people are.
Brent: And not be afraid to throw out whatever price you think, whatever you want to throw out. We’ve had situations, Steve, where we have thrown out a price and they’ve lowered the price by $30, $40000 of what we’d be willing to spend because they didn’t care about the money. What? That doesn’t happen. It happens every quarter for us, four times a year it happens for us. Somebody takes way less than what we offer them because they’re just like, “I want you to make a ton of money,” no joke.
Steve: Damn.
Brent: Yeah.
Steve: What list is this?
Brent: Yeah, right? It happens because people, we always assume it’s about the money, and 99% of the time it is, but some people they don’t need it, they don’t want it, they don’t care, they want somebody else to be successful, whatever. Whether it be their form of tithing or whatever. You could probably dissect it or investigate it as much as you want, but it’s not always about that, it’s not always about the price.
Steve: Then, [Ka-gan 00:35:26] [Sher-ub 00:35:26] asks another good question is, “How many calls do you think it takes,” I already know you know the answer. Not how many do you think it takes, how many calls does it take to get a deal?
Brent: Here’s the caveat, the asterisk, it depends on the list. It really depends on the list. If you go out and you write a list of all the Driving for [inaudible 00:35:46] … you go and write all the worst houses on the street and you start calling those you’re going to be … you should get a deal, it used to be like 1 out of 100, now, it’s probably 150, 200. Then, if you’re calling on probate it’s pretty close to that. If you’re calling on inheritance or pre-foreclosure, or tax defaults, it just depends because it depends on your skills. It depends on your ability to have a good conversation, and to really negotiate with them. You could get a deal, but is it a deal that’s going to be 10,000, 20,000, 50,000, or is it going to give you 100 bucks, or 1000 bucks?
Steve: That’s worth your while.
Brent: Yeah, for sure. Every market’s different around the country for sure, there’s some guys they’re talking to 30 people and getting deals.
Steve: They’re outside of Arizona.
Brent: Yes. Yes, they are. Smaller and sub-markets like those, if Phoenix is like an A market, like a B market are on fire right now especially if you’re cold calling.
Steve: I went and told my wife, “Yeah, we’re moving to Kansas City.”
Brent: Good, yeah.
Steve: The market’s really good over there.
Steve: What lists are you calling?
Brent: Driving for Dollars for sure. Tired Landlords people that have registered as a rental, and they’ve owned it before 2012. Somebody that’s owned it for a while, and it’s an older property, something that’s older, built before 1990 typically. We like those deals. Townhouses, trailers, trailer parks, trailer lots. You just get niche with it. That’s the bulk of it.
Steve: You want to do a little role play, you feel comfortable with that, you feel comfortable talking to people right now?
Brent: Yeah.
Steve: Let’s do it. You’re the caller, you’re calling me, I’m in foreclosure.
Brent: Ring, ring.
Steve: Hello?
Brent: Hi, I’m looking for Steve.
Steve: This is Steve.
Brent: Hi Steve, my name is Brent and I know this call is completely out of the blue, but I was calling about your property on 2020 East Camelback.
Steve: Uh-huh.
Brent: I was just calling to see if you would consider an offer on that home?
Steve: I mean, I guess, maybe right now.
Brent: Okay, so how long have you been thinking about selling it?
Steve: Since I stopped making payments on it.
Brent: Oh got you, so are you a little bit behind on it?
Steve: Yeah.
Brent: Okay, got you. Well, just to let you know Steve, the way that we purchase properties is we pay all cash, there’s no real estate commissions, we pay all of the title and escrow fees, and the best part is we buy them completely as is. For an offer like that how much would you take?
Steve: Well, on Zillow it’s says it’s like 250.
Brent: Okay, got you. 250,000 on Zillow, you know we’re buying homes, just to let you know I’m just pulling it up right now on Zillow, and we’re buying homes similar to yours in the area for about 170. Is that something you would consider?
Steve: That’s insulting.
Brent: Okay, I completely understand. What do you think the lowest you would go on it?
Steve: If I don’t have the big commissions, or any escrow fees, I think 230 will be fair.
Brent: Okay. Have you done any major remodeling in the last five years to the kitchen and bathrooms?
Steve: Mm-mm (negative).
Brent: Nothing? Is it pretty original?
Steve: When I bought it, 10 years ago, it was updated.
Brent: Got it. The kitchen and bathrooms, air conditioning, roof, all in good shape?
Steve: I think so.
Brent: Let me ask you Steve, why don’t you just list it on the market?
Steve: I thought about it, but I hate real estate agents.
Brent: Yeah, listen, I totally get that. Who likes real estate agents? I think to get you what you’re looking for, above 170 I think the best route for you would be to list it. Now, if you didn’t want to deal with any of it and you just wanted cash, and you just wanted out of it, it’d be around that 170,000.
Steve: Why don’t you come by and look at it, and then tell me if you want to pay like 220?
Brent: Okay, got you. Seems like we’re pretty far off. I’ll tell you what, I’m in the area tomorrow at 2 o’clock, are you able to meet me at 2?
Steve: I can do that.
Brent: Okay great. Anything else that I should know about the house? Any other upgrades? Did you do any additions to the property?
Steve: No.
Brent: Okay great. Well then, we’ll set a schedule for 2 o’clock tomorrow and, I’ll be completely honest with you, if I can’t get anywhere close to your price I’m going to tell you that, and then you can decide what you want to do with it then. By the way real quick Steve, I forgot to ask you, we typically close in like 2 weeks to 30 days, if we can close that fast is that going to be an issue for you?
Steve: No.
Brent: Okay, got it. Just, why are you thinking about selling it right now?
Steve: Well, I got this foreclosure notice so I’m not really sure what else I’m going to do.
Brent: Got you. If you don’t sell it, is it going to foreclose?
Steve: I’ll just call one of these we buy [inaudible 00:41:05] guys.
Brent: Got you, I’m one of those guys.
Steve: Really?
Brent: Yeah! I’m not one of those guys, but I’m a guy that’s going to give you an offer that’s solid, in cash, and make it as smooth for you as possible, so you don’t have that foreclosure on your record.
Steve: Okay.
Brent: All right Steve, well then I’ll see you tomorrow at two.
Steve: All right, thank you.
Brent: All right, cool.
Steve: I feel like that was pretty realistic to some of the calls we get.
Brent: Yeah, I like role playing with my students. I like role playing yeses because noes and too far aways, in my experience, you’re not going to take 170. Now, we might meet, we might see the house, it might be beat to hell, you might not be totally honest, you might just like the idea. You might have thought about it that night and wanted a lower offer, but being $50,000 apart when you start throwing out that you know how much Zillow is alarms go off in my head, “No, this isn’t a deal.”
Steve: Oh really?
Brent: 100%.
Steve: What we found is that we got people that are hard asses on the phone and they’re soft, and they’re real easy to work with. Then, you get guys that are really nice on the phone and they’re really hard ball. We tell our people just go and then we’ll figure it out, what we’re going to do. Also, we go out there to also take listings, so we go out there with two different things.
Brent: That’s the other thing. If I wanted to retail, which I don’t, and I don’t really do anything with those leads, which maybe I should but I really don’t, then I would probably approach it a little bit differently and just talk about other services or other opportunities to be able to list it, and give them the best opportunity to get the most for it. When you tell me Zillow I’m like, “That’s not it.” When we role-play we role-play yeses. “Yeah, this is terrible. My cousin’s been living in their rent-free, he’s a hoarder, he’s got four dogs there. I told him to get out like a month ago,” the whole thing. That’s what we typically deal with, but something like that pops up all the time.
Steve: Then, Max Jimenez wants to know, “How many weekly face-to-face meetings are you booking?”
Brent: We only go on face-to-face meetings when we know what their price as, and we know the four pillars. I’ll throw out a price like I did with you, which we typically throw out about 60, 66% of Zillow because I want to gauge your temperature. You’re not a hot seller to me, you’re not. You wouldn’t be. I’ll go on it because we’re role playing this, but I’d probably shut it down. Honestly, I’d be like, “Nah, it’s not going to be the right,” but if we’re having a good conversation I feel like we can help you out, we’ll go on that. To answer Max’s we’re going out on probably five or seven a week, face-to-face, but that’s when we know it’s going to be a deal. Most of the times we go to get the contract signed.
Steve: The 5 to 7 turns into about [inaudible 00:43:57].
Brent: No, about three.
Steve: Three?
Brent: Yeah. There’s always stuff that comes up.
Steve: That’s really, really good.
Brent: There’s competing, there’s a lot of things that go on, but yeah, so to answer that question. If you’re new, I want to be careful with this Max because if you’re new I say you go out, like you said, and figure it out 100%, but because my acquisition managers literally have 40 phone calls, lead follow-up phone calls every day, if they were to go on that appointment-
Steve: It’s not a good use of their time.
Brent: We’re missing out on the people that we consider hot leads, which means they’re going to sign the contract in the next 7 to 10 days, and that’s what we’re focusing on.
Steve: That’s makes a lot of sense. What kind of people do you hire?
Brent: Highly emotionally intelligent, like we talked about, high EIQ. I think that in real estate, to be honest with you, I think women are better. I think people trust them more and I think that they’re just better. They’re just better professionals.
Steve: They, for sure, have a better EQ, there’s no question about that.
Brent: Yeah. Neither of my people were in real estate before and so, I don’t know, just people with life experience, people that have a lot of enthusiasm. We talk about being kind and optimistic a lot. We talk about when we give offers we need to be likable, but we also have to be, this is something that I learned from Todd Toback if you ever see this but, certainty and likability. It’s the two most important factors when you’re negotiating.
Steve: What’s certainty?
Brent: Certainty on your price. If I’m like, “170 is where we’re at,” and you’re like, “Well, what about like 185.” I’m like, “No, 170 is the absolute best I can do.” The reason for it is this is the price that we need to do, need to get it at, it’s the best offer that we can do.
Brent: We need to get it out. It’s the best offer that we can do. What do you say? You know what I mean? Just a certainty with giving that low ball offer, you know what I mean? Whether it’s low ball or whatever, the buyer sets the price, but that’s the most common term.
Steve: I mean, I see this all the time when I’m negotiating with another agent on a deal. They’re like, “My buyer’s can do this.” It’s like, “I feel like your buyer can do more. I’m just hearing your tone.”
Brent: Certainty, yeah.
Steve: “I’m just hearing your tone. The buyer can do more.”
Brent: We’re getting close to their ceiling, Steve.
Steve: So, what’s their ceiling?
Brent: Yeah, right, 100%, man.
Steve: All right. So, you say you have two acquisition people. How about this position?
Brent: Yeah, Billy Bell, he’s the best. Billy Bell is my disposition manager. He lived here, but he moved to San Diego, because he’s smart and he’s single.
Steve: And he can afford it.
Brent: Yeah.
Steve: No responsibilities.
Brent: And he’s phenomenal. I think with that you need to be more analytical. You need to be more analytical. You need to have a little bit of ice water in your veins. You need to be able to deal with people busing down and trying to get you to accept their offer now. You know what I mean?
Steve: Oh, is that what he’s dealing with, people trying to beat him up in negotiations?
Brent: No, they just want to get the property, and they want it now. If somebody comes in higher than them 15 minutes later, so we just try to get the most for each deal with a quality buyer. Now, we’ll take less on some deals if it’s a quality buyer and we know they close and they’re just phenomenal. I mean, you’ve got some in your brokerage that we sell to, right? Some big boys in your brokerage that we sell to.
Steve: Big boys in our office, yes.
Brent: Yeah, exactly. So, if it’s them, we’ll take a discount on it, or we’ll just let them know before we send it out to everybody else sometimes, depending on the situation.
Steve: Okay, and then, how many cold callers do you have?
Brent: I have six. So, they work anywhere from 20 hours to 30 hours a week, just depending, and I’ve got one in the Philippines, one in Connecticut, and four in Costa Rica.
Steve: How do you find the guys in Costa Rica?
Brent: I just found a company that recruits and trains Americans living abroad, expatriates. I think it’s really important to have Americans making the calls, because there’s no cultural barrier. You know what I mean? The issue with that is if you hire Americans in the continental U.S., You’d better be ready for a lot of turnover, because it’s a stepping stone job. It’s a stepping stone job, and after three hours, they’re just dead exhausted. “I just can’t do it anymore. I can’t talk to another person.”
Brent: The start of their calls are just wonderful enthusiasm. At two hours, they’re like, “Hi, is Steve there? Yeah, Steve, nevermind.” You know what I mean?
Steve: God, I hope you’ve never got a nevermind when you’re listening to one of those.
Brent: So, there’s something about living abroad. The money goes further than when you can pay them, and a lot of times when they’re living abroad, there’s not a lot of job opportunities besides being on the phone. It crushes their sole to be that guy for Capitol One or some investment firm or some annuity company or some insurance company, and they’re just like, “Ah, six hours a day of this. This is the worst.”
Brent: So, it’s actually an exciting job.
Steve: Well, I think the big thing here, you said they can work 20 hours. You don’t care as long as they’re making the dials, and they’re making the appointments.
Steve: And then, what is the … We’re gonna shift gears here a little bit. What’s the value of a mentor to you?
Brent: Huge. I mean, I started off traditionally with the Mike Ferry organization, and I had a mentor, a coach, Cathy Anderson out of Vermont, and she was a killer, man, I mean, an absolute killer. I mean, she wouldn’t deal with anything, a driver personality. “This is what you do. Why didn’t you do it? This is what you got to do,” this type of thing, and I had her for three years.
Brent: And then I got into the Wholesaling Inc program with Tom Krol and Cody Hofhine, and that was huge. I’m mean, Tom’s just the absolute best.
Steve: When was that?
Brent: February 2016.
Steve: Okay, so not too long ago?
Brent: No.
Steve: Okay.
Brent: For Wholesale. I was doing a quarter million bucks in ’15 and 740 in ’16 to a million, three, five in ’17. It’s one of those things that … Mentors hang out with really awesome people, so you get into that network. You get into that social circle. You get that, and they’ve already done it. They’ve already done it, so what am I gonna do, reinvent how to build the wholesaling company? That sounds silly to me. I don’t have the patience for that, and I don’t want to wait three years to figure that out.
Brent: I talk about the Wholesaling Inc program like wholesaling is like buying a entertainment center from IKEA, except for you get no instructions, and you can’t look up on YouTube. You know what I mean? That’s what wholesaling’s like when you’re just starting out and you don’t know. So, then you get into Wholesaling Inc or some program … Wholesaling Inc, just forget about anything else. Now only are you surrounded by 100 people that build this same entertainment center every single day, you get the instructions. You get everything. So, it’s a no brainer. I mean, the top professionals everywhere have mentors. You know what I mean?
Brent: I just hired another mentor to teach me how to build up my rental portfolio, a killer. He wasn’t coaching. I just called him up to see if I could pay him 1,000 bucks a month to be coached. You know what I mean?
Steve: Talk to people. You reached out and called him.
Brent: That’s it.
Steve: Okay, what is your superpower?
Brent: No, honestly, I am the absolute best in the work at teaching people how to cold call for deals. I am. I am the absolute best coach to be able to do that. I’ve been doing it for five years. Now it’s becoming popular. Now, the cold calling’s starting to marinate a little bit. People are starting to feel it a little bit, because direct mail is rough in some areas. Paper click’s rough in some areas. Bandit signs are rough in some areas or illegal or whatever it is.
Steve: Stick some in one corner.
Brent: Yeah, or there’s a lot of competition, whatever it is. So, yeah, I’ve been doing it for a long time. I’ve got the whole path laid out, and I absolutely am passionate. What fulfills me is not the money you make from wholesale. What fulfills me is coaching and teacher that process. It does. Because, I see I get texts every single day of people sending me the checks that they made from picking up and making one phone call. Now, of course it was more than that, but initiated by that one phone call, they made $25,000.
Brent: I had a 17 year old kid that’s just been listening to the podcast and heard me talk in Salt Lake City, and he did $14,000 in two deals. He’s a senior in high school. I mean, I was the dumbest person alive when I was a senior in high school, and this guy’s TTPing in North Carolina. I mean, how incredible is that? So, that’s my superpower, for sure.
Steve: Oh, that’s cool, very cool. Then, what lesson would you want to teach today’s young entrepreneurs?
Brent: So, we talked about it before we got on here, is reading. That’s not the answer to this question. So, I have a 52 books in 52 weeks challenge. I do a video on it, and I just go through a business mindset, personal development, whatever it is, but the common theme on all of those is take action, fail a lot and fail forward and don’t stop, talk to people. That’s it. If you do those three things as a newbie, I don’t care if you’re 60 years old or if you’re 16 years old, I mean, how do you lose there? I mean, there’s gonna be a lot of tough times. There’s gonna be a ton of rejection. There’s gonna be a ton of doubting yourself. There’s gonna be a ton of all of these emotions that go through us. That’s good. That is phenomenal.
Brent: I mean, how many other people do you know just sit around? They go to work. They go home. They just sit around. They don’t do anything, you know what I mean? They’re not taking action. In one of the books, it’s, “You don’t drown from falling in the water. You drown from staying in it.”
Steve: Powerful.
Brent: I hate to be the quote guy, because I think it’s cheesy, but I love that quote, so whatever.
Steve: Well, I think the other thing, too, is there are a lot of people, they are saying, “I want to get into this. I want to do this.”
Steve: How long is it, “I want to do this,” until they actually do it? They just need to do it.
Brent: That’s it.
Steve: It’s unbelievable how simple it is. You were talking about quotes that we’re just throwing around. One of my favorite is Zig Ziglar. “You don’t have to be great to start, but you have to start to be great.”
Brent: Yeah, love it. I would also advise this. I would also advise that if you can do it by yourself and don’t … I see a lot of people going into partnerships, 50/50, and I think it’s great, but one plus one has to equal three. It can’t equal one, you know what I mean, because I have had a business partner for forever, and we separated in September, and he is absolutely the happiest guy in the world crushing it, and I’m doing the same. It’s amazing. If you want to start that way, I get it. You want to hang out. You want the support. You don’t want to feel like you’re on an island. I get it, but if you’re that type of person that can just do it yourself and get going and get a mentor or get somebody to keep you accountable or network with, I would highly suggest you do that, because you’re gonna save and keep so much more money.
Brent: You don’t have to be worrying about what somebody else is doing or what you’re doing or, “Can I go on vacation?” And, “They’re gonna be made at me?” Or, “They’re on vacation, and now I’m mad at them,” the whole thing.
Brent: So, I would suggest that you really look inside yourself, see if you can do it, and if you do partner up, have an exit strategy or a time when you guys will separate and do your own thing after you feel the confidence to do it.
Steve: Right, and I think that we recommend to people all the time don’t do a partnership, unless you absolutely must and have, like you said, have an excellent exit strategy in your articles of organization or operating agreement.
Steve: Okay, well, I want to go back. You talk about the 52 books in 52 weeks. Tell me about that. What compelled you to do that?
Brent: It is something that I had thought about since high school. You hear this, and he says it on almost every interview that Tony Robbins has ever done. He tells about the liquid soap going down his throat and how he read 700 books in high school, and he became this self taught, the most motivating guy on the planet. Presidents call him. Kings call him, this whole thing.
Steve: A gigantic clap.
Brent: Yeah, sure, he’s phenomenal, and I always thought that that was incredible. I think he talks about it, and he says, “If somebody took 10 years of their experience and put it into two hours or three hours of reading, why wouldn’t you read it?”
Brent: So, that was the thought that was going through my head. So, I just wanted to make a public announcement that I was gonna do it and then do a video every week just talking about the book that I did, and it’s been phenomenal. The main reason I do it is because there’s so much shit in the world. There’s so much negativity, whether it be on social media or political or around the world or whatever it is that it clouds your mind, books are a plunger, man. Whenever you’re having a bad week, a bad day, you had a bad argument and you lost a deal. You tripped over something, and your dog bit you, whatever. Whenever you’re having a bad day, you take a book, you read it, and you get inspired, and it plunges out your brain, and it’s phenomenal.
Brent: I got practice. I read the book, The Go Giver, every single week for 2016.
Steve: Really?
Brent: Yeah. And that really changed everything up for my business for sure.
Steve: Okay, and I think one of the things … I can’t remember where I read it, but I liked it a lot, was that Tony Robbins, Jim Rowan, Darren Hardy, all say, “The average is five people you spend the most time with,” and man, if you could just read the books and be inside the minds of some of the great people that have accomplished massive success, where are you gonna end up?
Brent: Oh, for sure. Oh, 100%. And then, plus, I mean the people that you want to be like, those people that are highly successful, they read, man. They read. So, how do you relate to somebody like that? You read the same book. You can have a conversation with them. You’re on the same wavelength. You’ve been educated the same way that they have. You know what I mean? So, it’s huge. I mean, it’s helped a ton. Yeah, I love it.
Steve: So, going through what we’ve talked about, all the books, what book have you read that everyone should read right now?
Brent: Go Giver.
Steve: Go Giver?
Brent: 100%. The five stratospheric laws of success are phenomenal. I mean, the book will take you literally two hours to read. It’s a parable, so it’s easy to read, and it’s perfect. It’s just the perfect business book to jump start everything. It really is. If you understand that your income is determined by how much value you bring to the marketplace, then you’re gonna take action, man. You can’t bring value to the marketplace if you’re not doing anything.
Steve: No, that makes complete sense. What is the greatest lesson that you’ve ever learned?
Brent: That’s really good. The greatest lesson, I think it would probably be that. I think every day you have the ability to provide value or not. You have the ability to go on vacation and not provide value, which you need, right?
Steve: Right.
Brent: But you just know that … I think that we go through that big why, right? What’s your why? What’s your why, and people put it up, and it’s their family, and it’s their kids. That’s not my why, man. That is not, no. Dude, my family would love me to death if I was in a van. If we lived in a van, my kids would think it was the greatest thing ever. My wife would be cool. Well, maybe not, but you know what I mean? [inaudible 01:01:02] The stuff that I do is not like, “I need to go and provide this for them and that and this and this,” and I get it. It provides opportunities, and I love that, totally get it, right?
Steve: Right.
Brent: It’s not why I do it. The why is, and Warren Buffet put it perfect in that documentary. I don’t know if you’ve seen it on HBO. He said, “I hit the lottery being born a white male American.” Right?
Steve: Right.
Brent: He hit the lottery. That’s exactly right. So, with that is all the potential in the world. So, what am I gonna do, waste it? Nothing’s worse than that, man. I mean, you talk about going towards pleasure away from pain. That’s the biggest pain that I can even imagine is not living up to the potential, not doing anything, not providing value. You know what I mean? That’s the why. This is America. You know what I mean?
Steve: Yeah, tremendous opportunity. I mean, it’s silly, sometimes, when you think about it, but I go through it. What are things I’m grateful for? One of the things I put in there is I’m grateful I’m born, not born, but I’m in America, land of unlimited upside. So, no one gets to decide my future but me.
Steve: Okay, so, how has failure shaped your life?
Brent: Well, the biggest failure I had is I signed a 10-year office lease for a real estate brokerage in 2008 in January. In October 2008, the economic world collapsed, and what happens when you don’t pay your office lease is they sue you for the remainder of the lease, right? So, I’m 25 years old with a $742,000 judgment on me, right? So, it was, I mean, talk about … It just doesn’t even register. It just doesn’t even go. So, I think that with that a couple of things came. I got a really big chip on my shoulder, for sure. I had to get out of it. Now, I didn’t start at ground zero. If anybody’s out there that you’re young. You’re getting new, and you’re just starting at zero, you are head of the game, because some of us had to start way below that, because we’re idiots.
Brent: So, with that feeling came a chip on my shoulder to get out of that, get everything paid off, settled it, got it behind me, paid taxes, all these things that you have to do as an entrepreneur. Then, I think the second thing is it made me very, very conservative with my operating costs. It made me conservative with how much of this is profit and how much goes into my family’s bank account, because I think a lot of times entrepreneurs sacrifice their family’s bank account to keep a business going, and they just keep bringing on expenses, because money’s coming in, and then all of a sudden they sign that thing for 12 months.
Brent: Even if it’s 300 bucks a months, 12 months, and then it’s an office, and then it’s that, and then it’s this, this, this, this, and I get it, but how much are you taking home? How much of this is going to your family? How much is it going to you, Bill, buying assets? You know what I mean? Because in wholesale, we are not investors. Wholesale is not investing. We are a pawn shop. We are selling paper. We are the go between. You know what I mean? Investing is when you actually buy property 100%. Wholesale is hitting the lottery. What do you do with the money? What do you do with your winnings? Are you gonna be a jack ass and lose all of it in what is it, the lottery curse, right, where you lose it all or whatever and it’s usually gone? Or are you gonna save it, put it into investments, and really build something? You know what I mean? So, I think that that’s a huge thing that I’ve learned from failure is watch your expenses and put as much into your family bank account as you can.
Steve: And I think that’s a great note to end on. So, for our listeners-
Brent: We did it.
Steve: We did it. They didn’t cancel it.
Brent: Facebook tried. Mark Zuckerberg, not this time.
Steve: So, if a listener wants to learn more from you, who wants to get a hold of you, sign up for the courses or whatever, what do they have to do?
Brent: www.wholesalinginc.com/TTP
Steve: That’s capital T, capital T, capital P.
Brent: I mean, it doesn’t matter.
Steve: Oh, it doesn’t matter? Okay, sorry.
Brent: I mean, when you type it in, but in there you can book a call with us, and it’s a phenomenal conversation. It’s worth whatever, 15, 20 minutes you’re gonna be on the phone. If it’s the right program for you, if you’re gonna take cold calling seriously and get them really implemented into your business, you have to join the TTP program. It’s already laid out. Everything is absolutely laid out. You know what I mean?
Brent: So, it’s been incredible. The students have been doing awesome. So, yeah, the wholesalinginc.com/TTP, and I hope I talk to you.
Steve: All right, cool, very cool. All right, thank you, and then again, guys, if you like the show, please share this episode, and don’t forget to join me. We’ve got a special guest on Friday, 3:00 p.m., Lizzie Hoeffer. She’s the number one female loan officer in the state of Arizona. She’ll talk about how she went from fired to 100 million in sales volume in 2016, and she’s doing even better this year. And also, visit our website, realestatedistributors.com, to find out about our upcoming events. Until next time, thank you, guys, and thank you. It was awesome.
Brent: Thank you. Thanks, Steve.
Tim Hodges
Posted at 19:09h, 01 SeptemberHello, I was just watching and was wondering if I could get the link for the full cold calling script.
Thanks,
Tim