18 Successful Businesses Grossing $180 Million Dollars

Speaker 0: Shout out to Steve Trane. Jump on the Steve Trane. We real estate dis

Steve Trang: Hey, everybody. Thank you for joining us for today's episode of Real Estate Disruptors. Our first one of the year today. We've got Preston Brown with Zia Homes EP and Preston Fluent and Premier Jet from El Paso, Texas to share how he's built 18 successful businesses grossing over a $180,000,000 annually in revenue. Now I am on a mission to create a 100 millionaires, and the information on this podcast alone is enough to help you become a millionaire in the next five to seven years.

If you'll take consistent action, you'll become one. And we know that running a sales team is hard work, even thankless at times. You've got to hold people accountable. The things that they said that they wanted to hit, this might make you feel exasperated. If you feel alone, I assure you that you're not.

Ren and I are helping other business owners get through to their sales teams to yield record performance in this shifting market. If you think this might help you, text leaders to 33777. And the show is brought to you by our sister company, Investor Lift. Get access to over 2,000,000 cash buyers across the country. Go to investorlift.com, put in disruptors to get 10% off.

And if you get value today, please tag a friend below, share this episode right now. That way we can all grow together. And there's a live show, so please ask your questions for Preston to answer. You ready?

Preston Brown: I'm ready.

Steve: Alright. So first

Preston: Am I close enough to this thing? Bring it

Steve: a little bit closer.

Preston: Okay. Cool.

Steve: So first question is, what was your life like before real estate?

Preston: What was my life like before real estate? I was, the punk kid. It depends on how far back we go. I was a punk kid, and mom said, I don't have enough money to pay for all of my kids' college, and you're kind of the biggest screw up. So I joined the military.

Steve: How many how many kids?

Preston: There was a sister and brother. Okay. Sister's a year and a half younger. Brother's ten years younger.

Steve: There she is.

Preston: Taller, way better looking. Looks like a Calvin Klein model. I don't know how he got that DNA.

Steve: So it was like an executive meeting. And

Preston: And I said, you know what? I'll do it in the military. And so military guy, gosh. Where are you? Tech school in Texas.

Grand Forks, North Dakota. They like to send the Texas boys up to the coldest layer of Dante's frozen hell. Mhmm. And I volunteered for every freaking deployment that I could get to any desert in The Middle East just so that I could find warmth. And so that was before real estate.

Steve: Right. So you were talking about 18 businesses along the way. What was your first business?

Preston: So the first official LLC or the first business?

Steve: First business. I mean, I think for us to really get to understand, like, you know, the character of an entrepreneur, we know it doesn't start 18 years old.

Preston: So Let me give you the the the brief background. Yeah. My first business was probably lemon juice packs, okay, that I would steal from Grandy's when my mother was in college. We'd go to Grandy's, this little chicken place after, after she had her school, and I'd go with her and I'd steal these lemon packs. I'd take them to school, and they were bitter.

And so it was cool. It made your face buck her up, and I started selling them at 10¢. One day, the manager caught me stealing them, and I wasn't stealing them maliciously. I was young. But he was like, hey, dude.

Like and I you know, it would have been reasonable for him to really chew on me, but maybe he was like that first mentor God gave you. And, he was like, I'll sell it to you. These boxes are a few bucks. I don't remember what he charged me, but my mom bought me my first box. And then I had to start selling them and coming back to Grandy's and buying these boxes of lemon juice.

So I'd get, like, the whole big box of them, and I'd go to school and sell them. That was my first business business. How old

Steve: were you?

Preston: Grade school, third grade.

Steve: Third grade?

Preston: Yeah. How old are you in third grade? I don't know.

Steve: Yeah. Like, you're so old. You started really early. Because I did the same thing in eighth grade. So you started way, way earlier.

Preston: You know, I I like to go into drivers. What what drove me was my dad when I was, seven years old. We lived in this little trailer park in Canuteo. Grew up very poor, and he wanted to do the American dream thing. He wanted to open his business, set our family free, brilliant guy, member of Mensa, engineering mind.

Didn't have the college education. Right?

Steve: Member of Mensa, though. That's way more important than college.

Preston: Yeah. Right? And, you know, at at one point, he quits his job, starts working in our little shed next to our trailer, and this guy could make anything. Like, he was making car parts for people's fancy cars if they didn't wanna buy the actual parts from Ferrari or Porsche or whatever. He was doing everything.

He was a medical metallurgical engineer by trade. And, he didn't know how to bill, didn't know how to charge, didn't know how to collect. This went on for a few months. My mom lost her job. Money gets scarce when you're poor really fast.

The fight happens. This frying pan gets thrown across the room, lodges in the wall, sticks there for a second, clanks to the floor. My parents never fought. Like, I we grew up poor, but tons of love, so the memory resonates. Right?

Steve: For sure.

Preston: I don't know all the words that she said, but I remember these. It was a real man can feed his family. Mhmm. Go collect what you wrote or don't come home. And and my dad is badass, like, freaking star football player, like, caught the football in one end zone, runs it to another end zone.

He's he's incredible. He's at risk, and I'm at risk of losing him. Mhmm. And I get taken as the charity piece. We drive to a house not far from where I live now.

My dad meets with this guy, probably five foot nine. My dad's, like, six four towering over him. I know exactly what's gonna happen. My dad could kill this guy with a napkin. He's gonna demand his money.

We're gonna get paid. We're gonna go home. It's fine.

Steve: Everything's gonna be okay.

Preston: But it didn't. It didn't go that way. We already know it didn't go that way or it wouldn't be a good story. Right? And so it it it goes into this demanding and then kinda negotiating and then asking and asking and negotiating and then begging and groveling.

And I'm sitting there and I'm watching this. I'm seven. I don't understand money. I don't understand a lot of these things, but I can tell that, you know, you know when someone's depressed. Their shoulders don't look like this.

Yeah. Held back, chest high. You could you could see them kinda inching forward. I'm watching my dad, like, go into this this state where here's my hero, only my hero's being destroyed.

Steve: Right.

Preston: And and my dad got some money that night, but it was it was a compromise. It was a tiny amount. It wasn't what he was owed. It was a fraction. And this guy knew what he was doing.

He was smart. He took advantage. And I remember I I felt hatred for my first time at seven years old. It was it was pure hate. I I if I'd had a gun, I'd shot the guy.

Right. We rode back

Steve: For what he did to you then?

Preston: Yeah. We we we rode back to a Smith's. It's in Albertsons now, but I sat with a box of ramen noodles on my lap heading home. That's what we could afford to buy. That's how little this guy gave my dad.

It was it was something like, here's $20 or a $100. The guy owed my dad thousands. K? Which in those days was a lot more money than now. And he got enough to get groceries.

He quit his business that day. He went and got a job that next week, and and he gave up on his financial dream so he could save my father. And it it it drove me into this this understanding that money was the meaning of life. I don't I don't think that now. But But

Steve: it's a reasonable conclusion at seven.

Preston: At seven. Sure. And, it it made me this corporate asshole. Everything was transactional. Everything was give and take.

And and and for Zero sum. Oh god. Yeah. People that maybe don't like Donald Trump would have thought he was nice compared to me in business. I was cutthroat and gangster, and I just I I I I had to solve the money problem because it was I wasn't solving even for my wound.

It was my dad's wound. I had to help that. Right? And 2019, I've made god, at this point, I probably had a net worth of somewhere between 5 and $15,000,000 depending on how a banker analyzes your assets. Right?

And, I get a call. My dad went to sleep in his favorite chair. He didn't wake up. My brother-in-law calls and says you need to get over here. Your dad's gone.

I say, where did he go? He said, no. No. No, bro. Come here.

And I I could feel, like, everything in my body just this thinking. And I drove over there. I don't know how because I cried the whole way there because I already knew. You know. Yeah.

And it was a shift in paradigm. That was the worst day of my life and the best day of my life because it was the most important lesson my dad ever taught me. My dad taught me how to go out and create and build formulas and and and and measure. I mean, my mother was a psychology gal, so I've got some of that too. She used to always say, what is the game and how do you win?

Everybody has a game. If you can figure out the game, you can measure the game. If you can measure the game, you can win. And so that, with the fear that was placed in me with that meeting with my dad, it made me this corporate marauder. And losing him, I finally found something that was immeasurable, and it was lost.

Mhmm. And I looked at everybody around me that I I loved, and I I started realizing, oh, shit. We're not invincible. We're finite. Money is not the meaning of life.

Love is the meaning of life. And and what's happened is all of my formulas have more than proven true to an extent that it's ridiculous because now I have months where I make almost as much as my entire net worth was back then. But I'm no longer driven by a negative emotion. I'm driven by something different now. It's like, how do we create more?

How do we give more? How do we achieve more? How do we serve more? And, like like, the biggest paradox in fucking life is deserve. Yeah.

Anytime anybody's like, I wonder if I deserve. You know? If you make an incision, you cut in. You make a decision, you cut off. So when you're wondering about whether you deserve, it's a negative energy.

Well, why did Christ come? So that you could deserve. Why did he come? Because he didn't deserve. Oh, shoot.

Well and and whether you're Christian or not, you get the analogy. Right? Yeah. But when you start operating from a better energetic standpoint, everything goes exponential. And so 2019, which, god, it wasn't that long ago, I mean, my wealth has grown exponentially.

Mhmm. My businesses have grown exponentially. Like, we've launched we probably have the premier travel agency on Earth right now for high net worth individuals, and we launched it during COVID.

Steve: Yeah. That we'll definitely get to that.

Preston: And, you know, it's it's

Steve: And I definitely wanna talk about the formulas. I I put here, I think, as far as the meat of what we wanna talk about here. We definitely wanna get through the formulas. But, you know, you're saying that you were doing really well in 2019. When did you go from military to your first official business?

Preston: So probably first official business, entity LLC, and I am so bad at the past. There's past focus, there's future focus, and then there's present focus. And I'm I try to be present. I'm probably mostly future. And on past, I suck.

Let's see. First business, I was it was in December 2007 that I got a real estate license, became a realtor. I probably flipped my first home in 2006. 2008, the world was falling apart. 2009, I opened an entity with a man named David Karam called North El Paso Real Estate Investment.

We still have it. It's now my hard money lending company in El Paso, Texas. That was my first LLC.

Steve: So you started flipping houses, and then you became a realtor.

Preston: Yeah. Yeah. Well, I was I was pitching Amway to a guy Yeah. And I was at this coffee shop always pitching Amway. I mean, you know those Amway salesman.

Right? Like, I mean, look. You can make money doing anything. Everything works. There's nothing that it doesn't work, but, like, Amway has a very low margin.

And and but I I had a big dream. I wanted to be successful. They had a good education system. You learn a lot of valuable skills. That's the real value.

Steve: At Amway, if they're still around. But it's not there to make money. It's there to learn skills.

Preston: It is. And and this guy, he was he was buying two houses. He was a wealthy guy. Mhmm. And he he said, if you'll promise to never pitch me again, I'll I'll let you flip one.

And I was like, I don't have the money to buy a house. Mhmm. And he was like, I'll loan you the money. And I was like, And so I said, sure. Yeah.

Y'all, like, dive in. Right? Like, own a house? Like, I'm out of the military. Didn't get out in all the right ways.

I'm kind of a punk, like, selling Amway because I I was motivated, but never had an opportunity like this. I took the house, made $30 on that house, sold it, like, I don't know, a month and a half later. Right? This is when you didn't need a pulse to qualify. Then I was a genius, of course Naturally.

Like everyone. And, I bought two more and lost just a little more than I made on the first one Mhmm. And had spent some of the money. So wound up in debt, but realized, oh, shoot. Like, this is a really good place to go.

And if you can figure this one out, there's a lot of money here. You're creating money. Mhmm. Like, if you go think about, like, the way the world works and and, like, I don't push this on anybody, but I'm a Christian guy. I I I believe that we're made in God's image.

That's what he said. And so, you know, you you don't earn a baby. You make a baby. You create a baby. Right?

And so earning money, in my opinion, is kinda like slavery. I don't wanna go earn. Mhmm. I wanna create. And this this flipping of this house felt so much more like creation on the first one.

Now I didn't know what I was doing. I obviously screwed it up royally two times after that. Right. And and that's when I got my real estate license, went and worked for this broker who also did a lot of home flips, learned from him. He was my mentor at that point.

And

Steve: Let me ask you this. So you got a guy who helped you fill up your first house.

Preston: Right? And Well, he just gave me a deal. I mean Okay.

Steve: So he gave you a deal. Did Did you go back to him and learn more from him?

Preston: Oh, yeah. No. I went back to him, and he was like, yeah, dude. That was a one time deal. Never tell me Amway again.

Oh, I We were both regulars at a coffee shop. He was a great guy, like, a nice guy, but he's like

Steve: didn't enter

Preston: you? No. No. He he was he was a friend that knew I wouldn't say yes to that. And when I did, he honored his word.

Steve: I see. Okay. So then you went to meet with a broker who flips a bunch of houses.

Preston: Bill Walker Realty in El Paso, Texas.

Steve: And you learn more from him.

Preston: And he did he would buy houses, and then he would owner finance them.

Steve: Right.

Preston: And so that's probably where the hard money lending side of me started.

Steve: So how did the February affect you?

Preston: So I went and worked for Bill, and Bill fired me. God rest his soul. He was a great teacher, but he bought and sold a lot of houses. He fired me when I bought my first house. Mhmm.

Steve: He

Preston: said, man, there can't be two swinging dicks in this office. And I was like, okay. And so I, went actually to the guy that had his kid had gotten me into Amway, and his family was a wealthy family from El Paso. And Mhmm. I said, hey, dude.

I have this new skill. I don't wanna do Amway. I'm not interested in that anymore. But I know how to fix houses, and and I think I know how to buy them. And I I understand how to market and advertise and sell it, and I've got this five steps to buying and fixing house.

I got this formula for 70% of ARV. I got all this stuff, and I I go to him and he's like, dude, like, I just loaned all my money on these last two shopping centers I sold. I don't really wanna do it. Have you met my brother? And I was like, no.

Who's your brother? He's like, he lives right across the street. Let's meet at Starbucks tomorrow. We go out there, and I have a deal. And I'm like, okay, dude.

I've I've got, like, the skill. And he writes me a check. This guy writes me a check. David Cameron. He's a business partner of mine in The States in his late seventies, eighties now, but I will never get away from this guy.

When he'll either get away from me in a box or because he tells me I no longer wanna do it anymore, I will never let him out of unless he really wants it. This is one of the best mentors of my life. And he writes me a check to go buy this house. Mhmm. We buy it and we fix it up and flip it.

Make I don't even think it was a big one. $15. Right? But it was my first one after Bill fired me. Yeah.

And, then I I I got it. Let's see. From there, I rolled the money back in because David was like, well, let's take the profits. I was like, no. Let's roll the money back in.

Let's do two more. And it was like, really? And so then I get basically in hawk to this guy for an extra $3.04, $500, but we're becoming one of El Paso's largest home flippers. Mhmm. And he was a real estate broker, a commercial real estate broker, and I had a real estate license.

So I start marketing to all these agents like, hey, dude. Come on. I'll teach you how to flip homes. Right. And I built this army of home flippers that didn't have any money, and I offered them this little profit share deal where I made more than they did.

Steve: Of course.

Preston: And, they but they made a good chunk, like, way more than a commission. Right? But I had my split with David, and they had their split with me. So I got basically a quarter, and they got a quarter, and David got half or whatever, or at least that's how it originally was. And, and we became this home flipper.

I didn't know what we'd done until and we were flipping. We were not wholesaling. I didn't know wholesaling was a thing.

Steve: Right.

Preston: One day we're talking to this franchise. It was a home investors' franchise. We're like, oh, I need you to buy our franchise. We see you in the market. We'll teach you how to do 36, 40 deals a year.

And I was like, we did a 103 deals last year. Holy shit. Why would we I'm not gonna pay you to teach me how to get smaller.

Steve: Right.

Preston: I'm never gonna do that. And so that was kind of the long form entrance.

Steve: I remember Homevestor, had an opportunity, right, back in 2000, like, '10, 2011. Because they went from, like, 30, right, franchises to, like, two in the Phoenix market when everything went to down the crapper. Right?

Preston: Really?

Steve: Before you know, I think they were gonna be out of business Subway, right, bottom. That's kinda funny how that all worked. I was like, yeah. I wanna buy, but I'm already flipping houses. I don't wanna pay you for anything on flipping.

They're like, well, too bad. So, okay. Well, then I'm not buying. Right? So when did you go from all the real estate to starting second, third, fourth?

When did you when did that happen?

Preston: It was always problems. My problems, I property and I'll probably get the orders out of order, but my property management company came when I realized that I paid less taxes on stuff I own longer. Mhmm. And so I rent stuff out on six month leases. Excuse me.

And, I'd rather take that 15% capital gain stack in those tax in those days than an income tax because I didn't need the money. Right. I was living cheap. This point, I wasn't even married yet. Like, I might have been dating my wife, but I wasn't married.

It wasn't that expensive at that point. Right? So I was like, nah, man. Like, I'll just keep them for a while, rent them out. We made money on the rent, and and David was big enough that we got access to really good financing.

There was no need for hard money anymore. So, heck, you make 2 or $300 on 30 or 40 units at a time. You've always got inventory coming up. You've always got inventory going in. Right?

And it just became a pipeline. And some property manager charges me $800 to repair a toilet tank, and I don't wanna say their name even though I kinda want to. Now I won't. And I was like, you fucking crook. That's a $60 toilet that it blows.

Like, I know. Wow. And and and I probably wouldn't have caught it had I not been reading things. And then I started asking questions, and I realized, oh, shoot. There's more.

And I was like, well, how hard can a property manager company be? And I'd I'd been if you can't tell that I'm a nerd, there's really tiny shoulders here and a giant head. So I I'd always take notes on the You

Steve: said your dad's Mensa and your mom was a psychologist. Right?

Preston: It goes with the territory. Yeah. And so I take notes and and and I try to build, like, a replicable system. And I was like, well, maybe I can do a property management company. And so so we took our system that we used to get into home flipping and then brokerage.

And and one day, because we had, like, I don't know, fifty, sixty agents under David's broker's license, he's like, I didn't wanna own a residential real estate company. I never cared about this. That's how I got my second business. He gave that to me. He's like, here.

You can have half of it. I was like, oh, I just built him a company. Right. I never I never gave a shit about the money. Mhmm.

It was never about the money. It was like, I can do more if we do it this way. Mhmm. If you wanna become rich, those who are willing to work for free will always be paid. Yeah.

And if you're here's another one. You wanna get rich, make a rich man richer. You wanna go broke, make a greedy man richer. If you are making a rich man richer, he will make you rich too. He has no problem with you going with him.

If you're making a greedy man richer, he'll take from you. And and and and and you'll know that they're greedy, and then you can run away. But Right. The brokerage came naturally with the wholesaling, home flipping company that became now it's wholesaling. And then the property management came from a toilet tank.

And let's see. Hard money lending came when the market went down, and then, we had a ton of cash. We had a ton of paid off homes. And so we were like, well, you know, one of the banks was like, I wanted to owner finance this house to a a home flipper, and they were like, well, we'll lend you money on your note. I was like, you'll do what?

And I wasn't like this business genius, but that made me realize, oh, a note is an asset, no different than a house.

Steve: Right.

Preston: And banks borrow money from banks, so they understand notes better than they do properties. Oh, shit. And the bank was willing at that particular bank, most of them don't, to loan me a 100% of my notes.

Steve: Really?

Preston: Yes. K. And and be because I was buying at 70¢ on the dollar or loaning at 70¢ on the dollar. And so I built a business model out of it. That bank merges with another bank.

They wanted 20%. So they they you know, if if you're looking at a a 70% loan to value, I would fund 20% and the bank would fund 80%. But that turned into a situation where I think you're 56% on the actual house, which is the bank note. But it became really fun because I could just store my operating cash from my companies in a top 20% note. The bank had no problem with that.

Steve: Right.

Preston: And if the bank was loaning to me at four, I could loan it in at 12%, and I had all of my operating cash sitting in these short term hard money notes at 12%. Like, say you have a million bucks in operating, but you only need 200. Right. Wouldn't you rather leave the other 800 at 12% interest, and it's continually cycling in and out? It's

Steve: It's continually growing at arbitrage.

Preston: And so every business came from a problem internal or external. Like, hard money lending came from an external problem. Like, you can measure mindset, hard set, skill set internally. Right? But you should also measure environment.

If you don't know how to measure your environment, I don't know how good your mindset is. Right. It doesn't matter.

Steve: So going back to I mean, you're you're talking about working in MLM, you learn a skill, get into real estate, and you kept growing that because there was more and more opportunities as you grew. When did you realize that you were a valuable, I don't know, individual?

Preston: I don't know that I'm there yet.

Steve: I I I Well, clearly, someone thought you were.

Preston: But yeah. Okay. So I don't know. I I guess language to me, I need to understand the meaning of the word valuable. Like, god, I think everybody's equal.

Mhmm. Our decisions can change the equality of our pocketbook. Mhmm. I think people should be radically authentic. I think electricity and authenticity are the most valuable things on the planet, and and so I, obviously, I'm not judging you for saying it.

But even the word valuable to me, I'm like, I'm no more valuable than anybody else. Like, I'm not.

Steve: Valuable in a sense of someone willing to invest. Right? I mean, you had

Preston: Yeah. I kinda looked at it as they were investing in the deals Yeah. Mainly. I mean, it was they were investing in the deals. They were investing in the system.

Steve: And you said David was your first mentor?

Preston: Oh, yeah. And he was my main mentor for probably a decade after that.

Steve: What were the biggest lessons you learned from him from him initially?

Preston: So David is this sweet, old, beautiful Christian man, and I was this crazy, radical, high energy. And and the best lesson, slow down. I mean, literally, slow down, observe, think. Anything you solve right now immediately, you probably could have solved a lot better if you took the problem, examined the problem, studied the problem. And and, you know, you'll go to a Bible study to study your God.

You'll study your wife if you love her and you wanna make her feel happy. We don't study problems. We run away from them. And so David would always stop me, and it drove me insane. It was like against every part of my character and core and everything.

I had to, right now, never wait. Patients belong in hospitals is what I used to say. And it was a really stupid statement. And so he would always make me wait, and then we'd solve it on the first go. And maybe the solution might take a day or two or three.

In the scheme of things in business, that's not a long time.

Steve: Right.

Preston: Anything that's got your emotions triggering you to where well, we're talking with your guys about this backstage. If you are having an emotion that you would not choose to have this is the other lesson that David taught me. He never articulated it this way, but but he taught it to me because he lives this way. If you are having an emotion you would not choose, you should not be engaging in anything at that moment except resolving for that emotion. You know?

Fear, it's butterflies in your stomach, tingles down your spine, and you feel like running away from some shit. Mhmm. Excitement is butterflies in your stomach, tingles down your spine, and you feel like running towards some shit. It's the exact same thing. Anger, I repeat something to death.

Passion, I'm gonna forge another Michelangelo. It's it's it's if you have an emotion you wouldn't choose, solve for the emotion. Take some stillness, step back. I probably sound more like a hippie than a businessman right now, but but those two things really do intersect well.

Steve: I mean, it really resonates with me because this is a lesson I learned in the last six to nine months with slowing down.

Preston: Oh gosh.

Steve: Because I and and this goes back to, you know, you're talking about you were a punk before, how, you know, you're talking about your dad indirectly taught you a lesson to to to pursue money

Preston: Mhmm.

Steve: And then directly taught you to pursue love. Mhmm. Right? So, like, you know, a lot of lessons we talked about on the show is, you know, what got you here won't get you there. Going hard, being a hard charge, and going all in gets you to a certain level, but that's also the kind of thing that can blow you up.

And so it's the last six to nine months where I've learned, like, oh, I need to slow down. I need to have some perspective and actually take some time to to to solve that problem.

Preston: And you know what's great about what you just said? That's part of the formula. Yeah. You you wanna know what's beautiful about the formula? Everyone successful has it.

Mhmm. They may not have all of it, but they have aspects of it. And so and and I'm I'm pretty sure I probably don't have all of it. Like, I'm I'm going to try to learn some of the digital stuff because all of mind works really in the brick and mortar space. I mean, brick and mortar, I think we've got it honed down.

But everything you just said is regarding stages in the formula. Yeah. And, like, it's it's I'm gonna say this. It's probably gonna be triggering. Maybe not to you, but somebody in your audience will hate this.

It is really easy to get rich. Mhmm. It's really fucking easy. I don't want you to make a 100 millionaires. I want you to make a 100,000 millionaires.

Yeah. It's really fucking easy to get rich. But you have to understand cause and effect, and you have to have a formula. Like and I can already tell you, I know you're successful, and I'll guess your net worth is gonna be somewhere between the 15 and 25,000,000 range because of what you just said, because of where you said it on the formula. Mhmm.

And I don't know if that's true. You don't have to corroborate that. But, like

Steve: Pretty far from it, but well on our way. I love it. Yeah. So let's talk about some of your biggest victories. Right?

Because we talked about you know, we we always use clickbait. Right? You know, 18 businesses, $180,000,000. Right? Yeah.

What are some of your biggest victories to get where you are today?

Preston: So and and let me say this about a $180,000,000. K? Like, I get more margin out of one company that's doing 50,000,000 in sales than I do around the other ones that are doing the rest.

Steve: Mhmm.

Preston: Kinda It's

Steve: a eighty twenty rule.

Preston: Yeah. Well and and and those are very profitable. K? Revenue is vanity. Profits are sanity.

Okay? So, like, a lot of people clickbait me and they're like, oh, a 180,000,000. He's four years old. Yeah. Fuck that.

Like, go make 1,000,000 a year. Then go make 3,000,000 a year. Then go make 10,000,000 a year. And and that's that's like, there I know guys in the software business that do 10,000,000 in revenue and make $7,000,000 a year. Mhmm.

Like, it's not about the $1.80. The one eighty implies I have a higher level of risk Mhmm. Than most. Not necessarily a higher level of profitability. I am very profitable, But I made these mistakes on on growth, not profitability for the better part of my life, and I would recommend to everybody and look at the 180.

Look. It's something I'm proud of. K? But figure out more the net than the clickbait. Does that make sense?

Steve: What makes total sense? Well, we have to use the clickbait to get people to click. Right?

Preston: I'm learning that from the social media stuff. I'm new to social media, guys. Sorry.

Steve: So So we gotta do that, but then we get to really talk about it. Right? And so, really, it's not about the net. It's not about the gross. It's about it's not even about top line.

It's not it's about I think it's just the bottom line. Really, it's the impact, what you can do with it. Mhmm. Right? Mhmm.

But we have to talk about it. Otherwise, they're not gonna click and watch the video.

Preston: Absolutely.

Steve: Right? So what are some of your biggest victories along the way?

Preston: Biggest victory by far, and she's out there somewhere, is I married my wife. Like, this woman is, like, as you can probably tell, because we've known each other for, what, twenty minutes in one other meeting we had before. I'm not a balanced person, and this woman owns my heart, owns my soul, balances every fucking thing about me. Everybody still has those emotions they wouldn't have on purpose. Mhmm.

And when you find that other person that kinda brings you back to center, that's that's victory number one. Victory number two, you know, and I I would categorize all of family in number one probably. Victory number two is the ability to influence and tell stories. Learning how to influence and tell stories is yeah. There's a tell to win book.

I think it's Peter Guber. And I I read that years ago, and then I watched Tony Robbins on stage telling these articulate, beautiful stories. And I'd always been a storyteller, but I never understood the power. I mean, the way that they can inspire, and you never listen to somebody else's story without hearing your own. So whatever you're doing, learn to tell stories.

And the whole purpose of the formula is to show you the story so that you can make a decision. Mhmm. If if you find every problem is a story, every solution is a story. A solution is just when the problem got married.

Steve: Right.

Preston: No no different than my wife is a huge part of my story. God, other big victories? Learn accounting. For the love of God, learn accounting. I and that's probably because I had a biggest failure.

Like, you ever get to where you know, I I think my first year where I actually made a million bucks in a year, like like, net income, I had that property management company that we just acquired, and I'd I'd generated millions in assets. Because you own homes, and you you have the equity in the home. And it may be on your net worth, but it's not in your pocket. Right.

Steve: And so

Preston: I had millions of assets, but I didn't have a million in income. Right? And what got me there, and it's it's funny, it's always pain always pain that gets you there. So if you guys are avoiding pain, like, stop. You know, get some more pain.

Fall in love with pain. They don't call it falling in love because it's a soft landing. Like, you fall. Right?

Steve: Right.

Preston: So I would I didn't understand accounting, and we hired my wife's childhood best friend who had a checkered past. And this kid was brilliant with the software. We did a software change, which that's always a big risk, guys. That turned into a loss of a quarter million dollars of funds that were my customers, not mine. K.

It was escrow accounts. And it turned into probably another $5,600,000 of, like, disorganization from lost revenue, lost profit. I mean, just you name it. Yeah. And I begged, borrowed, didn't steal, but everything bought.

I went from new money, having assets, just bought a house, like, literally I I I don't know whether we started dating or got married, but it doesn't matter. We'd moved in together, and I'm looking at it. I'm like, oh, fuck. Am I gonna pay my mortgage next month? And and for the first time since being a child, I hated again.

Mhmm. Like, I hated this kid. I hated him. And more than I hated him you can't hate somebody else without hating yourself. Okay?

I hated me because he was smarter than me. He knew accounting. Number three is I learned accounting. Like, I can teach you how to work that income statement, that balance sheet, that statement of cash flows. You learn that.

It's gonna be good for taxes. It's gonna be good for measuring. Like, if you don't learn the language of accounting, everybody you know, I wanna go to France and have them speak English. Fuck you. Wake up.

Like, they're gonna speak their language, and you should probably learn some words. Like, be respectful. Well, I

Steve: think one of the biggest things as far as finances goes is it's not sexy. Right? You don't brag about it. You don't show off your p and l. You don't show off your balance sheets.

Right? It's it's not a sexy topic. But

Preston: But start showing them off if that's what you need.

Steve: The most important skill if you're gonna be building wealth. Right? All those other things don't matter. Everything else is kind of, what's the word? Like, learning sales, learning marketing, all these are all valuable skills, but they're all gonna be for naught if you don't learn the financial skills.

Preston: Absolutely.

Steve: The things we talked about is, like, you know, we had all this stimulus money. Right? And it's great. Like, there's money in everyone's pockets. In five years, where whatever the distribution of wealth was, it will be again.

Because those that are not good with money will lose it, and those that have money will get it. Yep. That's just the kind of the way it works. So

Preston: So can I can I give you a quote? Yeah. And and a new mentor, a friend, Bill Hagen, I hope you're watching this, Bill. If not, I'm sending it to you. He said this, and I thought it was the most brilliant thing, and I wrote it down.

And now I say it as often as I can. Do you know what a recession is?

Steve: I'm sure. I mean, I I go with the textbook definition. Right?

Preston: It's when capital returns to its rightful owners. And so what do you what what you want a better life, ask a better question. What do I need to do? Who do I need to be to become a rightful owner of capital? Mhmm.

And part of that is learning the language of money. But I agree textbook definition, but

Steve: A big chunk of it. Yeah. Right?

Preston: I made more money last year than I did the year before during the boom. Or I say last year. Yeah. No. We're last year.

Okay. Yeah. And so in 2022, I made more than 2021 through all the Fed rate hikes.

Steve: Yeah.

Preston: And I think we we grew by one of my companies, 273%. And 273%. And I'll have my CFO send you all the numbers if you wanna corroborate it. It was it was fun to see. But we didn't just grow, like, sales.

Like, we still sold more, but we also grew revenue. We shrunk costs. So net dollars were 273% more than the year before. Yeah. And and that was when the Fed was not even giving us that ninety days we need to kinda measure, see what the market's becoming because they just kept changing, changing, changing, changing, and we made more money.

Yeah. Recessions are a problem. They are the soil and the seed. What what's good about a recession? You know?

Feedback. Yeah. When I piss off my wife, the problem that I have is I don't get feedback. She's like, I'm like, shit. I know I did something wrong.

I wish I knew what it was. Now in a recession, everybody's complaining. Yeah. All the problems are presented. You're getting shitloads and shitloads of feedback.

It's a gift.

Steve: You know exactly how to respond. Yeah. So, there are a few things that you wrote down here I thought were really fascinating. Living on purpose with purpose. What does that mean?

Preston: Okay. So living on purpose is is kind of my way of saying that you're choosing your emotions. You're not allowing something else or someone else to get in your way and choose them for you. You are choosing. Like, if you don't like feeling depressed or angry, why do you?

If we are in control of our own state and spirit, unless you're gonna say that you're not and then you're some robot and that you don't like, if if you're gonna blame everything and blame, I believe, is an acronym. It's being lazy and making excuses. So if you're gonna blame everything on everyone else, oh, he did it. Okay. Shut up.

Like, literally, dig a hole. Fucking lay down. We'll cover you with dirt. You're done. K?

Like, if if you're gonna blame everything on everyone else, you're not even human anymore. Mhmm. What makes us human? Consciousness. Consciousness is what makes us human.

At least that's my belief. I I'm not gonna tell anybody else what makes them human. That's me. K? Well, what controls our behaviors?

Well, it's not always consciousness. K? In fact, I've heard some scientists say you don't develop conscious mind until you're seven or eight years old. So what are we learning before that? Well, we're learning the subconscious.

The parents are pumping information into the subconscious. Like, you think about the subconscious, it's really interesting. There's 2,000,000 things, 2,000,000 interactions going on in your body at all times. But you're not aware of all of them because those 2,000,000 bits per second of information that your subconscious mind processes are not all there for you to consciously be aware of. In fact, your conscious mind, you know what it operates at?

40 bits per second Mhmm. According to these scientists. So 40 bits per second is not enough to open a doorknob. It takes, like, 18,000 bits per second of information to walk. Meaning, what makes us the dominant species on the planet is mastering patterns.

Right?

Steve: Mhmm.

Preston: Well, the subconscious is what drives behaviors that you wouldn't fucking choose. Well, if the conscious mind is only like it's like a tip of a spear. It's the smallest part, but it's the most fucking deadly. Yeah. My presupposition in life is it is the conscious mind's job to go into the subconscious and reprogram the dumb fucking patterns.

The dumb patterns, the dumb beliefs. Belief is a root word. It means be love. If you have a belief that is not loving to you, you probably need some fucking relief. When you look at etymology and language and how powerful it is, it becomes enormously huge.

So, like, when I'm looking at consciousness, 40 bits per second, like like, let's think subconscious. Everybody has got either shoes on or they're standing on the floor or something, but they weren't thinking about the way that their shoe felt on their fucking foot until I said this. Right? Right. So all of a sudden, oh, well, there it is.

There's a pattern. Our job is to go in and say, okay. Well, what really got me frustrated? What really made me angry? What really did that?

So that we can live on purpose. I believe that we were put here for a reason. I think most of us and and, like, I'm no spiritual guy. I'm probably a little bit of a hippie, but but I'm a business hippie. Like, right now, I'm I'm the guy going out and making lots of money also being a fucking hippie.

And and so I believe that we came here in all probability to learn something. Well, if I can't even operate as myself, as my own conscious sentient being because I'm constantly getting triggered by subconscious patterns from some past experience Mhmm. Significant emotional events create significant emotional events. If all you are is a vent for some previous or past pain, then I think subconscious equals subhuman, and I would ask people where are you living.

Steve: I think, what you were talking about here just lay down, we'll just bury the dirt on you. I mean, it reminds me of a Jim Rohn quote. I'm definitely gonna be butchering it. Right? But something along the lines like, you know, those that complain may as well be hauled off into the desert and buried because there's, because all you've done is waste your breath.

And it's like, man, like, Jim Rohn is like one of those positive people ever heard. That's, like, the only negative thing ever heard. And it's safe for people that make excuses.

Preston: Well, and and Jim Rohn mentored a mentor that I had named Tony Robbins. Yeah. Exactly. Tony Robbins, and I actually have a checkered past, but I would tell everybody here, if you don't understand the things we were just talking about or if they don't make sense, probably the best teacher on the planet of state management and understanding your emotions is Tony Robbins. You should immediately book a fucking event with him because he is the best social psychologist I've ever seen, and I'm saying that as a guy that he's sued before.

Like, I think everybody should go. I mean, look. He's, I think, in his sixties now. Like, he's still healthy. He'll probably do it for some years, but go see him.

And I'm saying that as a guy that he has litigated against.

Steve: So I would definitely say if you guys get your hands on personal power too, I think it was probably one of my best best trainings. So do we wanna get into why you guys do it by Tony Robbins? Do you wanna move on to five foundations coming in concert?

Preston: I I mean, I I I won't tell you the outcome because I signed an agreement not to, but I opened a travel agency. And and some of the clients that were clients of his came and joined me. And I don't think there was enough research and data. They they came after us, and that is it's been settled. Were you part of his, I was part of his platinum group and his lions group.

Steve: There you go.

Preston: Okay. And when they didn't travel as much during COVID, I wanted to travel more. Then they misunderstood that as I wanted to be a competitor, and and they litigated. And and, you know, and that's okay. Like, honestly, like, I look at it in a good way because Tony was a beautiful part of my journey.

If I wasn't part of Tony's world, I probably wouldn't be married to my wife. And I think Tony is probably one of the most impactful, influential people on the planet. He helps tons of people. He's allowed to fuck up. Do I think he fucked up coming after me?

Yeah. I do. But do I hate him? No. I I and, frankly, it's kinda cool to say I trigger the abundance guy sometimes.

So, you know, like, whatever.

Steve: Yes. To say you trigger the abundance guy is an accomplishment.

Preston: That's cool.

Steve: And, you know, speaking about abundance, I I I think it'll be interesting to see what happens. You know? Like, we've all been preaching abundance mindset for the last few years. It's easy to preach abundance mindset when everything's abundant.

Preston: Mhmm.

Steve: As resources become scarce, we'll see who's still abundantly minded. I think it'd be interesting, experiment, for 2023.

Preston: Oh, yeah.

Steve: Now you've got the five foundations in company culture. What is that?

Preston: Oh, god. Can can I take you through the formula, and I'll get you there?

Steve: Absolutely.

Preston: Because I would I would rather just kinda follow the the the the steps of the formula so that people can understand. Because the formula is a filter. K? It's a filter, and you take problems, and you drop it into the top. Before I get you into the formula, though, I'm gonna go over a litmus test because a lot of people like to take a formula and use it on everything.

And there there might be ways where you could apply this formula to your marriage or your fitness, but but for the most part, this is a business formula. It's not a marriage formula or a fitness formula or a how to have a spiritual experience or whatever formula. Okay? It's a business formula. So there's a litmus test, and if something passes through an idea you have, passes through our business, you have passes through these three filters, then this formula will work 100% of the time.

Here's the three filters. It must have productivity. If it's a new start, it'll either have productivity once you start it. Or if it's an existing business, there's productivity. It you cannot measure what's not moving, and the formula's not measured.

Mhmm. The next one is it must have a purpose that is linked to you. K? If you don't love what you're doing, you're gonna fall into a trap that most business owners do. Most people believe in hustle.

They think hustle is real and and it's bullshit. I mean, the best lie the devil ever told was seeded with just an ounce of truth. K? And purpose and passion are are two very synonymous words in this respect. And when something is my purpose, I can be having a horrible day, and I will still show up.

Yeah. Then I have the hustle. Hustle is what germinates and grows out of purpose and passion. Mhmm. So you you you gotta have purpose to it.

So I said productivity. I said purpose. The other one is profitability or an understanding of how you're gonna get there, which is part of why you need to have financials. Right? Like, you need to understand them.

If you don't understand them, go take a Keith Cunningham course. Like, call one of my mentors, Dean Innes. Like, go learn accounting. Like, do you teach accounting? Because if you do, they can call you.

I don't care, but you gotta get it.

Steve: Yeah.

Preston: Let's, for fun, let's take away one of the three from each. Right? What happens if you don't have purpose? Like, I invest. I, what, have 3,000 multifamily units now.

Right. K? That I've teamed up with other people or partnered or invested or whatever, and I have 3,000 doors in the last few years. I have no purpose behind this. So it's an investment.

Steve: Alright.

Preston: K? What happens if there's, no profit? Well, you know what? I like fishing. No fucking money in it.

It's a hobby.

Steve: Alright.

Preston: K? What happens if there's no productivity? You're a con artist. K? So it has to pass through these three filters to get you there.

From there, you need to understand that there are three goals in every business. Three goals. One is foresight. K? You have to have the ability to have foresight.

If your business is doing 25,000,000 more or more in revenue, you need foresight and forecasting. We can get into that later. So that's kind of the fourth goal, but you don't need it at first. K? The other two are alignment and simplicity.

Now why do I say alignment and simplicity? Because these are the twin sisters of optimization, and sometimes to increase path of least resistance and simplicity for your client, you have to break alignment. You have to go and restructure things within your organization. Mhmm. Well, foresight is a very exceptional energy.

K? When somebody says, hey. I'm gonna leave my job. I'm gonna open this business. I'm gonna become really successful.

They're the exception, not the rule. Correct. So it's an exceptional energy. And and and you need it to get you started, to get you rolling. But the problem with this energy, because because there's seven stages of business development and the formula works the same way, but it solves a different problem at every stage, k, is in the early stages, the dominant energy you need is that foresight energy.

And then as you're starting to make some money being exceptional, you'll start adding alignments and simplicities and and and building those two, which are more of the optimization energy. Mhmm. But the problem is people get to that next level in business, and they are trying to stay exceptional. They start managing by crisis. They're going in too many directions, too many areas, this, that, and the other.

But they got rewarded by being exceptional. So guess what they're gonna do again and much more of? And if the engine in your car that you're driving, like, right before we got here, we just bought a July McLaren. My CEO is still doing the fucking paperwork. They don't have that dealership in El Paso, so I figured two birds, one stone.

Right? Yeah. If that McLaren made one exception in that motor, It will not be delivered to me tonight. I won't get it Mhmm. Because it'll pop.

Right? So you need some optimization energy, which is alignment and simplicity. And so these are the three goals. And if if if you wanna look at, like, a business, like a table with four legs, and the goals, each one is like a glass of water sitting on top. Mhmm.

K? Well, this table and those legs rest on this thing called the market. Market doesn't lie, but it does change.

Steve: Right.

Preston: And those legs to create a structure because in a business, we want a firm, not a limp. Nobody likes a limp. Right? It's not productive.

Steve: Yeah.

Preston: K? So if we want a firm, then those legs better be telescopic. They better be able to come in and go out. They better be able to adapt and adjust because the market will change. Mhmm.

You'll have tons of different things that can change. And and so I call those legs the four measurements. You're measuring culture. K? And there's five foundations to culture.

You're measuring clarity, and there that's All of your problems are caused in lack of clarity. You're measuring capacity. All of your problems are found in capacity. K? And then cash.

K? Which which the middle two are kinda stores, but these two are critical to make a business. And so when you take a problem, you drop it in the top of this formula, like, okay. Was this alignment? Is this simplicity?

Is this foresight? Where is it? Okay. Does it flow through the culture, clarity, capacity, cash? And every one of these and and and I'll give you all the documents.

I give this shit away. Yeah. I think everybody should be rich. Everybody should be free. Like, if you wanna work out, like, I feel like you could go outside and run.

Right? Mhmm. Like, the gym that God made you is free.

Steve: Yeah.

Preston: It's a free gym. Run outside. Right. You don't have to pay shit, and you can work out. And everybody knows if I don't eat shit and I work out, I'm going to be healthier.

You said on one of your podcasts, I listened to one and you said there's a direct correlation to how quickly you can get up and how long you live. And I was like, fucking brilliant.

Steve: Right.

Preston: K? I've now quoted that two or three times. It was brilliant. So but most people don't just want to go outside and run. They wanna pay the personal trainer.

Mhmm. Right? You wanna follow the form? I'm gonna give you all of these formula documents, and you can give them to as many of your people as they wanna download them and take it. But when your problem filters through the top, you're like, okay.

Alignment's supposed to be foresight. Then you go in there. Oh, okay. It's always going to hit clarity. It doesn't hit necessarily one item.

It's gonna be multiple because you have to add a process. You have to add something, and you need to make things more clear. Right? But it could be a culture issue. It could be culture clarity capacity.

It could be, cash clarity capacity. It's going to normally affect the two cores and then generally affect one or the other, sometimes both of these depending on the size and scale of the problem. And then you always have two problems. The one that is and the one that caused the problem that is. And you should solve for that one too because you don't ever have just one.

Once you've filtered down here, then there's only six things that can change. You don't even need to go into these because they're so easy to understand. You can change your price. You can change your product. You can change your people.

You can change your place. You can change your promotion, or you can change or add a process. Mhmm. Those are the six p's, the four c's, and the three goals. This is the formula.

Now you have seven different stages of entrepreneurship. And depending on what you need to do in each stage, you use that formula, you solve your greatest problems, and you advance. Yeah. Now every stage in that you're asking culture a minute ago requires lessons. It requires understanding.

Right? And culture, I mean, it's so it's such a fun thing to talk about. Culture, we talked a little earlier. It's not about people. I hear people like, you go ask a 100 people in a room, What's culture about?

They think it's perks. They think it's giveaways. Put a little sleeping chamber in the office. No. No.

No. No. Culture is about behavior. Yeah. It's all about behavior.

And so I like to kinda figure out what creates behaviors. And so the five foundations of culture are what creates behavior. K? Now in a company, which you're dealing with a group, not an individual Right. The number one and probably one of the most important, I think, but they're all critical, is safety and danger.

Do you know so in every cell in our body, we have these things called mitochondria. Right? You know what the mitochondria does?

Steve: Gets rid of waste? Gets rid

Preston: of waste. They think it energizes the cells. They they they have a lot of theories. But do you know why people I I heard this from Dave Asprey. I've got a quote on him.

He's brilliant. He joined our YBL group and came and taught us all this stuff, and this was his talk on mitochondria, so I'm gonna give it to you. Why are people behaving so stupidly? I mean, people are smart. People are really fucking smart.

You talk to a person, I don't care what their behaviors are. They could do dumb shit. They're normally not a dumb person. They're a smart person. But mitochondria is this you know, if you think about it, God created life and said, hey.

I'm gonna make this this thing that will live forever and be able to regenerate forever and pass on these things. But mitochondria is not smart, but it powers every fucking cell in your body. Mhmm. K? And it has four priorities.

K? One, don't fucking die. Don't die. Anything that scares the shit out of you, you immediately have 10 times the energy you had, and it's don't fucking die. Right.

Okay? So how critical would safety be as a key need in a business. Right? Yeah. For, like, the corporate cultures that are always leveraging and creating fear, scary.

Number two, eat everything. Why? Well, if you go back, it still falls into don't die because in forty thousand years of human history, starvation was a big fucking problem. Yeah. Eat everything.

Probably shouldn't eat everything. Maybe figure out what you need to eat, but, you know, that's mitochondria saying.

Steve: But that's what we had. That's what we had. That's how we survived.

Preston: It's how we made it here. Three, reproduce. That's two x energy. You have 10 x energy, don't die. Five x energy, eat everything.

Two x energy, reproduce. Find a mate. And that's why you see people running out, cheating on their spouses, just that and the other. They don't realize there's a need in there. Figure out how to meet your need.

You won't have to cheat. Okay? My wife makes a a real fun statement. She's she's like, you know, I treat my husband like a motorcycle. I ride him so often that he's out of gas.

I can't even think about anything else. Like, she solves for my mitochondrial issues. Right? And then the last one is friends. That's one x energy.

We wanna be included. We wanna be connected. That's what we do. It's why we're here right now being included. So safety and danger in a business is huge.

The leader is like a tip of a spear. The leader must be dangerous. And this is controversial in today's woke world, but if you are a leader, you have to be dangerous. Like, if you go back forty thousand years in human history, what was the leader's job? To protect the tribe.

Steve: Right.

Preston: So you better be dangerous enough that your competitors and your enemies respect you. Don't please don't go kill them. But, like, they should respect you, and they should know that, hey. I'm not gonna go at those guys. Mhmm.

Those guys are dangerous. Those guys are powerful.

Steve: You know, it's funny you say this because I was at at an event.

Preston: Uh-huh.

Steve: And I got to meet someone I've been looking forward to meeting. Right? Just just to get my eyes on this guy. Right? And it's a person that's respect in town.

And my wife's like, what'd you think of him? It's like, yeah. He's soft. And she's like, why are you out there assessing people? Like, I don't know.

I don't know why I'm assessing people, but I'm looking at other people there as, you know, quote, unquote competition. I figure out, is this someone that, you know, is this a worthy adversary? Is this a person that we wanna collaborate with? I don't know why. Sounds like you've explained it, but, you know, I was like, okay.

That guy is not a threat. He's not dangerous. So, you know, we don't we don't we don't have to worry about this in the future. And I don't know why I did this. My wife's like, what's wrong with you?

It's like, why

Preston: not? Well, you're a dangerous person. Yeah. I mean and and there's nothing wrong with that. It's not bad to be dangerous.

It's not bad to be powerful. It's bad to use power improperly.

Steve: Right.

Preston: Like, if you're using danger and hurting people unnecessarily, then then then you're a bad person. That's fine. But if if you're powerful and you're protecting your people Mhmm. Then that's beautiful. Yeah.

Like, the first thing I complimented in here was your culture. What's the first four letters in the word culture? Cult. Cult. What's a cult?

It's a group identity around a behavior. Yeah. Like, I don't care if it's the bad cult or the good cult. It's a group identity around a behavior. That's what a cult is.

So you need to create a cult within your business where you are the leader. They know you're dangerous. You make them safe. They know that they have a better life because they're with you, And they will share their talents and mental treasures with you, and you will share your wealth with them, and you will go out and be more productive together. Like, let's let's look at society.

Let's look at economies. Mhmm. What is an economy? What's the baseline of every economy? It's productivity.

It's always people making things. But don't be dangerous. You might scare people. Go dig a fucking hole. You know?

Like, everybody out there that's looking for safety all the time Mhmm. They're wrong. They're just wrong. And you can go to a biblical reference, take their life, look at over the last five years. Are they in a better place or a worse place?

Oh, it's always a worse place. If they're always looking for safety, it's always a worse worse place. So a leader needs to be dangerous enough to attract other men and women that respect them because they want to be like them. Mhmm. Okay?

And they may not have the same personality, but people follow authenticity and electricity. Well, authenticity may come from the heart, from the soul, all that. Where does electricity come from? Well, it's the brain. Every time you wanna lift your arm over your head, you're sending neural signals.

There's electricity. Right? Yeah. So we're literally the core of that. And if a leader's not dangerous, he's he's just not the leader.

Like, get him out. Next one, production. You need to have production. K? Why?

Because if you don't have production, if there's not movement in the business, it's just not a business. People want to create. Nobody wants to be part of a mission that doesn't do anything. Yes.

Steve: They're doing your bills.

Preston: Production. And and when I say the foundations of culture, when you're, like, forming your culture, you're deciding what is the production gonna be. Are we gonna be Apple and make an iPhone for, you know, 4,000,000,000 people this year? Or are we gonna be, whatever, some small business like like my little travel agency that I have that we cap at a 100 members. We won't let everybody in.

Like, it's 100 members. Why? Because we're about connection. We want a small community. It's very close knit.

It's very loving. It's it's it's not about serving the entire world. It is about connecting and collaborating with the best people on earth, and we do. And so you decide the production. There's not a right answer.

There's not a wrong answer. There's a which one fits your

Steve: So we're talking about the seven stages of a business.

Preston: Okay. I'm gonna get you there. I'm gonna take you through this culture, though. And and especially if you're a start up business, you need to learn this because if you don't know the culture, if you don't know how to build a culture I mean, think about it. The government's gonna build you a culture.

What'd they do with COVID? They scared the shit out of everyone. Did they use safety and danger? Uh-huh. K.

Was there production? Mhmm. I could still drive down the streets in my city and see all the damn signs about vaccines. I don't know anyone that doesn't know about them, but they're spending to this day tens of millions of dollars a month advertising them. So, like, you know, the next one, mission, vision, values.

You have to have, like, a trajectory of mission, vision, values, communication that ties in with the clarity, the transparency. So even though there's four c's, culture must link to clarity, must link to capacity, must link to cash. Right? And and so they do. So mission, vision, values.

People need to know what you're doing, where you're going, how you're doing it, all of these things. They're incredibly important because I don't wanna get in your vehicle unless I know we're going somewhere I wanna go to.

Steve: Right.

Preston: K? So what do we say? We said, mission mission values. We said trans no. That was okay.

We said, production. Oh, quality. You have to have either quality or narrative. Like, look at the political parties today. K?

I don't think we have a good one in this country. Like, I I mean, I'll vote maybe one way or another, but, like, neither party is good. Mhmm. Look at the culture they're producing. Is it Fear.

Quality or is it narrative? They're both producing narrative. Narrative. They're both talking shit the whole time. Mhmm.

Like, if you go buy one of the homes I build, no bullshit. It is the best quality house you're gonna buy, And my people know it. They've been walked through every fucking stage. They've heard every story. Like, they know there's quality.

You go into some people's products, whatever it is, whether it's houses, whether it's this, whether it's that, they'll literally start talking shit about their competitors. Mhmm. If somebody's using narrative, that's a foundation for culture too. So, like, everything has its polar opposite. And then the last one, tribal triggers.

Tribal triggers are so huge because we are all tribal. We are all humans. Like, you're an entrepreneur. Right?

Steve: Oh, absolutely.

Preston: Do you like other entrepreneurs?

Steve: Absolutely.

Preston: I fucking love other entrepreneurs. Like, I walked into your room over here. Like, I I get the whole tour of your office. Badass office, by the way. If you haven't seen this office, get to the fucking office.

Cool. And and all of your, like, wholesale home flipper, like, acquisitions guys in there, that was my people. They're all, like, hustling. They're chasing it. They're selling.

I was like, I feel home in here. Yeah. Like, that was the room where I resonated the most. Why? Tribal triggers.

What's their language? What's my language? What's the patterns? Right? And so you go through those five foundations, design it into your business.

And if you're thinking about your business right now, and you're looking at those five things, and you're like, well, I don't know what this one is. Well, guess what? Neither does your staff and your culture's fucked. Yeah. Make sense?

Steve: Absolutely makes sense. So Goes back to the clarity component.

Preston: Yeah. And and let's get you into the seven stages of entrepreneurship. We gave you the overall formula and and and everything, just like culture. Like, I could teach you about how to put love into a business. You know what I mean?

And it's it's literally probably the most powerful course I do because when you can have a loving relationship, like, brotherly love with your staff like, so many people are like, there is no love in business. It's all transactional. Like, I've heard so many people, like, say, oh, that's just transactional love. That's horse trading. That's prostitution.

Like, it's just an exchange. And I would be like, okay. Well, that's probably bullshit because even unconditional love is an exchange.

Steve: Well, I mean, I think if they feel like the business is transactional, that is not a business that can survive when it gets tested.

Preston: Right.

Steve: I mean, everyone's gonna be jumping ship the moment there's hardship.

Preston: But how many people will tell them that? And how many people believe bullshit that they're told? Like, how many times have you heard the customer's always right? They hear that too, and some of them believe it. Yeah.

Customer's not always right. No. I mean, I will tell you there's a qualifying statement. Company first, staff second, customer third, and my customer is more right than my competitor's customer, but not more right than my staff and not more right than my bottom line.

Steve: Absolutely.

Preston: So you can say a statement, but unless you get the entire qualification and meaning, it's it's not real. So, like and how many people believe that bullshit?

Steve: A lot.

Preston: And they fail, and they don't have to because they're taught a bunch of, oh, before we go into the seven stages, can we do a little economic update? Sure. I would love to dump some information and questions on your audience so that they can best benefit themselves in this recession. Well, I think

Steve: that was one of the last questions here, most recent questions. So, yes, let's go ahead and do

Preston: it. Okay. What should you invest in in any recession? In any recession?

Steve: Yeah. I mean, I know for an inflationary market, you should invest in assets. In a recession, I don't know.

Preston: I'm gonna give you a I'm I'm part of a group of economists, and we we talk and we share and it's it's phenomenal. And we all agree. For the most part, unanimously, I think on this one. I I I don't know if we vetted this one, but we all talk this way all the time. And we say you should invest in whatever the asset class was that was the epicenter of the previous recession.

Steve: Oh, the previous recession? Yeah.

Preston: So, like, 2008, the epicenter was mortgage backed securities, so you should be investing in housing because that's what it affects. Right?

Steve: Mhmm.

Preston: Now a lot of people would be like, wait. What? This guy's dumb. He doesn't know what he's talking about. Also, let's let's go back to 2008.

Okay? And let's say, well, what should you have invested in in 2008? Well, the recession then was the .com boom of the nineties busting in o one. Mhmm. And if you'd bought Apple stock in 2001, after all those .coms died and there were a few guys left that remained that had the strong balance sheets, that had the good business models, that had all the fundamentals, you would have paid a dollar 50 to $2.50 depending on the time of the year per fucking share.

And I don't even know how many times it's split between now and then, but if you invested a thousand dollars, what would you have? A million, $10,000,000?

Steve: I'm not sure, but a lot. You'd have

Preston: a lot. A disgusting amount of money. Yeah. And and so if you invest in the thing that was the epicenter of the previous recession,

Steve: going back through history Previous or beginning of recession? Previous recession. Okay.

Preston: So so we should always, if we're economists, be looking at what is the epicenter of the recession that we're in. And I'm gonna challenge your audience right now. I want the audience to put in the comments what they think the epicenter is of this recession. And then I'll I'll tell them what the epicenter is of this recession. Right.

Steve: You guys have your marching orders? See, 35 of you guys watching right now on YouTube. So put in here in the live chat what you guys think is the epicenter. So if I understand this correctly, and I think I'm butchering it. So in 2001, we had the .com bust.

Preston: Mhmm.

Steve: So you're saying the 2008 is a tend to buy

Preston: stocks for the '21 the right time to buy stocks To buy stocks. The epicenter of the previous recession being .coms.

Steve: Because I would say the best time to buy in 2008, the right time the right thing to do is at the end of the recession, to buy what caused the beginning of the recession, which would have been real estate.

Preston: Yeah. I mean, that so I'm talking about specifically within the recession.

Steve: Okay.

Preston: I mean, I I I was giving, Josh, five steps to investment. Mhmm. K? And the five steps to investment, this is another simple formula. Anybody who wants to be worth a $100,000,000 in the next ten, twenty years, follow this.

Invest in your mindset and your coaching and your proximity until you have filled that bucket. Two, invest in your business. If you need a software, if you need an employee, do not go buy a fucking Bitcoin. Like, just get the software, get the employee, like, improve your business. It's the greatest hedge in any bad market.

Right? Step three, real estate. Why? Inflation hedge, tax hedge, income benefits. I mean, there's just it's win win win.

There's there's three wins. K? And that's not normal. Step four, tax hedges. Like, if you can't control the real estate, invest in somebody else's multifamily syndication.

Go buy an airplane. Go do this. But you better have filled these three buckets first. Like, do not go straight into number four unless you're like, I don't know, Sam Walton's air. Right?

Step five. All the other shit. That's where you have your NFTs and your Bitcoins and your stocks and all this stuff. So so if you follow that formula when you're not in a recession, but in those times between a recession based on the classical, you know, definition of recession. But in a recession, like, specifically in, you should be investing in what was the epicenter of one previously.

Steve: Got it.

Preston: And it's it's just an easy billionaire trick Mhmm. That one of my billionaire buddies said, and I listened. And I will tell you I am stacking so much fucking shit with bedrooms right now. Mhmm. And do you know what my rents have been doing?

Up. Up. Mhmm. And by the way, I'm not doing it in LA, and I'm not doing it in New York. I'm not doing it somewhere where it's a market that has crazy up and downs.

I'm doing it across taxes.

Steve: So we got one brave soul, and the the answer is pandemic. Pandemic was epicenter.

Preston: Nah. So what So the epicenter

Steve: Printing money is the other is the other answer.

Preston: No. Those are those are effect epicenters, not cause epicenters, guys. Very good guesses, though. Like, I like the guesses, and I love that you guys are participating. The epicenter of this recession was misinformation.

Mhmm. K? It was 100% misinformation. We have learned how with AI software to hack the psychology of people. Tell me in the last decade, people are not getting angrier at each other than they ever have

Steve: Oh, for sure.

Preston: Without being at war. Mhmm. Now if you go back to and and let me just give you some some some evidence on it. You go back to the initial Trump election. Whether you liked him or hated him, he hired a company called Cambridge Analytica.

Mhmm. K? Cambridge Analytica went and found 5,000 data points on every human being that was in the subject markets that they were working on, and they learned exactly what to do to trigger people and to encourage behaviors. Yeah. Going back to that five foundations of culture.

Oh, fuck. Here we are. And they learned how to engage and trigger people and get their emotions going because then their EQ would cause behaviors when they couldn't maybe educate you to get your IQ to do it. Right. If intelligence quotient cannot be used, we will use emotional quotient, and we will drive them.

And so since that happened, I remember the 2000 what was it? Twenty sixteen election. And I was like, how the fuck do I get my hands on that software? How do I get that? And and let me tell you, everyone in corporate America did that too.

Mhmm. And so we now have a new unregulated industry. Why do you think Elon Musk bought Twitter? We have a new unregulated industry that is starting to self clean with one of the wealthiest men on earth going and buying one to say, hey, guys. F you.

This is bullshit. This shouldn't be happening. Mhmm. And and that's eventually gonna get government regulation, this, that, and the other. It is not the right time to start investing in all those things because we have to go through that downturn on this new industry as the government comes in and figures out who the winners and losers are gonna be.

And in our next recession, we should be investing in that. But for this current recession, you should all be investing in real estate.

Steve: Yeah. So it sounds like then that we're investing in misinformation really would be the social media and media companies.

Preston: I would I I I think you're probably fairly safe on some of the big ones. Like, you're probably fairly safe on Meta even though there are some concerns that that'll go down. You're fairly safe, I think.

Steve: We're not saying right now. Right? Once the recession like, once we feel like we're we're at the bottom or in the middle of the recession, that'd be the time.

Preston: Yeah. In the next recession, I would and and not just social media companies. Like, remember, Cambridge Analytica is not Facebook. It's not this. I mean, like, like like, the conservative did it one way with Cambridge Analytica in that election, and then the Democrats came and said, how do we do this?

And they did it with, what, Facebook, Twitter, FBI involvement, or at least that's what it looks like. Nobody really knows.

Steve: Well, Cambridge Analytica, if I recall correctly, did well for Trump.

Preston: Mhmm. And the

Steve: only reason why he invested them is because they did well for Obama. Right? So they were involved in the previous election. So they only got hired

Preston: because they And several things in, like, Europe before that where they tested Yeah.

Steve: They had they had track record for success in making elections work through social media.

Preston: So I'd heard that. I haven't verified that, though, but that is cool. I I need to go and spend more time researching that. But I do believe, even though I don't think any economist out there is gonna put, like that that is famous has put their the stamp on it. I believe this recession is caused by misinformation and AI technology is being leveraged to encourage behaviors, leveraging the five foundations of culture and 5,000 data points on people to force their behaviors through emotional quotient.

And now it's not happening just from political parties. It's happening from political parties and large companies and and Wall Street companies and anybody who wants you to buy their stuff.

Steve: Right. Well, the marketers have definitely done

Preston: Driving people.

Steve: Brilliant job of this.

Preston: Yeah.

Steve: So I wanna get to audience questions. Before we get to audience questions, I wanna ask again the seven stages, and then I'm gonna do the commercial.

Preston: Okay. So the seven stages of of business ownership. You know, actually, I I came across these because I was coaching a whole bunch of folks in in my my YBL group. And and it was interesting because I'd be coaching someone on one, and then I started doing this group coaching. And when I do a group coaching, everybody would go do the things that I'd said, but but some of them would fail and someone would succeed.

And it was so you know, obviously, it wasn't it was a it was a success for me because I learned. I was like, oh my god. You can't solve the same damn problem at a different stage. Mhmm. And even though that may sound obvious, and I thought it was obvious, it's not obvious to people.

You need to solve the problems for the stage you're in. And so so I said, okay. Well, I gotta go and figure out the stages, then I gotta go figure out the problems, and then I gotta, like, isolate these groups out and make sure that I have groups with the right people in the right stages so that I'm not because most business coaches can't coach to all stages. Right. They haven't been to all stages.

Some of them are, like, probably 19 year olds that have never been to any stages. And so, you know, what is stage one? Frankly, it's you're a non start. You're a entrepreneur. You're not even a real entrepreneur yet.

You have not taken the risk. Jump made the leap. You have a mindset issue. This is the biggest problem you have to solve. You're still waiting for the perfect time or some other bullshit that ain't gonna come.

Mhmm. Like, there is no perfect time, and there is no imperfect time. I prefer to start things in recessions. I started my real estate brokerage. I got licensed in December 2007.

And when everybody said I was gonna get rich, there were 5,000 realtors in the market, no pass with that point. By December 2008, if you wanted a realtor, you'd be like, waiter or can I get a lap dance and can we talk? You know, like, that was you know, it went from 5,000 to 1,100, like, what, 80% decline? Yeah. And and I loved it because it the deals didn't go down by 80%.

No. Deals went down by, what, twenty 25 maybe? And and the people in there went down by 80. Got it. Cleaned up the mess.

Mhmm. So one is the mindset people. Get over it. Like like, figure out what you need. What book, what seminar, what person, what coach, what mentor, and go invest in it.

If you're not spending money on that, you cannot succeed. You either have to spend money or time or something, but do something, get the mindset. Number two, the startup phase. Why do most startups not not most, half of startups fail? But half is too big of a number.

Right? Well, the startup normally comes because they haven't figured out the the litmus test. K? Oh, okay. So, you know, I need to pass profitability.

I need this to do and and and they've got the purpose went down, but they don't realize it's their purpose. And there's nothing wrong with it being their purpose, but they better find out who their damn customer is Mhmm. And what their product needs to be for that customer. Like, do you want to have any customer on earth find out what that customer wants.

Steve: Right.

Preston: Go get it and give that to them. Like so they need to find out what they're going to go give to that customer to make their product offering exactly what solves the pain point for the customer. Like like, what is a sale? It's a fucking solution to a problem. It's really easy.

A sale is a solution to a problem. So if you have a problem and I know exactly what the fucking problem is in your specific niche, then I can come say, hey, Steve. I got this shit right here, and you're gonna run to me. Mhmm. K?

And and so stage two, that that that second stage, the the startup stage, it's it's the reason you put custom in the word customer is you have to customize your shit to your customer. Mhmm. K? Stage three, okay. You've found a customer or two customers or three customers who are your your ideal clients.

But, unfortunately, you're so in this process of finding new customers, you're gonna keep doing that exceptional energy shit, and you've you've you've graduated the stage of operational entrepreneur, which I also call slave labor. K? It's it's just slave labor because you've got a business. You've got some customers. You're making money.

You're probably not keeping very much the bottom line, but you're you're moving. And you're in business, and you're you're stable. So now we need to build a team and start becoming optimized. So you need to go into the optimization steps here. Don't worry about the optimization steps till before this.

Go sell the right product, find the right customer, get out of your mindset issues, all that shit for step one and two, and get into operational entrepreneur. And now you start hiring that second person. Learn how to train people. Learn how to influence people. Learn how to sell using a story.

Learn how to get the right software. Start figuring out some of your financials. This that and the other. Your next step there is entrepreneur. Entrepreneur is a problem step because you're doing all the same shit that you did in operational entrepreneur.

Mhmm. Only now you got all these new people and all these new softwares and all these new things, and they all cost money, and your revenue hasn't changed that much. And you better learn the art of scaling. Mhmm. Because if you don't know the art of scaling, this is the new problem, you never get to the next level.

And so you see how every level kinda has these these steps that you just gotta go master. And and when people wanna scale there, I'm gonna scale everything. No. You're not. Okay.

Literally to get into entrepreneur, what you did even though you didn't realize it was you just scaled capacity. Mhmm. You scaled your capacity, so now you must scale your sales. Once you've scaled your sales, now you must scale your brand. Once you've scaled your brand, now you must be scale your margins, meaning raise the fucking price.

Mhmm. K? Once you've scaled your brand and your margins, scale capacity again. Guess what? Welcome to a new stage.

It's called operational megapreneur. It's where the fucking home flipper becomes the home builder. Yeah. I did 30 units. Now I'm doing 200.

Great. Whatever. Operational entrepreneur continues doing this and continues doing this and then eventually gets too big and has to do another thing. They have to start doing it's it's similar, but it's not the same because you're hiring a different professional now. You keep scaling and scaling grow, grow, grow, grow, and then you find all the leaks and you're like, fuck, man.

I need professional management. I need a leadership team. I need to go get that COO. I can't be doing the books with a bookkeeper anymore. There's a lot of leaks.

These people are stealing this way. There's so many ways to steal. Right? Yes. And and so now you're getting that COO, your CFO, your CEO, and this is and and and please, I hope everyone of your listeners hears this, not at 10 employees.

If you have 10 employees, CEO is chief executive officer. The other nine are not executives. Mhmm. Do not have a fucking CEO at 10. So so at operational megapreneur, once you've hired and well aligned and trained and fully optimized your high level leadership team, now you're at a new phase called megapreneur.

But at megapreneur, you start having this new problem. Shit. Everything's going well. You're making millions or tens of millions of dollars. You're rich.

Only you find out that in the last several stages, there was this magical thing called expenses, which was the best tax write off you've ever had, and growth solves for taxation. Mhmm. And you've optimized probably hit your market cap where you where you're gonna get to. K? At least in that market because because there's a law of diminishing returns.

Like, I can probably go build 350 homes a year in El Paso. I cannot build 3,500 Right. Because there's not that many homes built there every year. You know? Like, so if I wanna go to 600, I'm I'm gonna it's gonna cost me so much more to go from $3.50 to 600 Right.

Than it did from 0 to $3.50. And that's in every market. So if you wanna scale more, you can go to more markets. You can do this. That's fine.

But once once you're at megapreneur, you have this new problem, and it's called the US government. And they love you because you are giving them half of your shit Mhmm. And they are regulating the hell out of you. It's like having a wife that comes in and tells you all the stuff that's wrong with you and never puts out. You should probably divorce that woman.

Like like and and and you can't because you gotta live here. So then you're like, oh god. There's another stage. And this is where you hear all those people saying, oh, the rich don't pay their fair share in taxes. Well, that's true, Like, because of the tax code.

Mhmm. And then you start learning how the tax code works and how politics works and how how really rich people, not you at this level, because because you can, at this level, still do that if you want, but, like, I'm talking to billionaires that have hit this level and then kept going still. Why do you think they make campaign contributions? They're not doing that because they like the people. They're doing that because those people are gonna do shit that they want them to do.

And call favors. Yes. And then what are those people gonna do? They're going to put complex things in the tax code and say, oh, you know what? We do need a little more housing.

You know what? All of these, you know, what what's that called? That rent control crap that that that has really incentivized people to let buildings get dilapidated all over the world and all these liberal areas. Like like, that's kinda gone bad. What if we gave people a tax break for buying these buildings and rehabbing them and making them rentals again?

Mhmm. Oh, so if I put my money there that I already have, that I've already made, or the cash flow that I have this year Mhmm. And I still live under or within or beneath my means, I don't have to give you half my shit anymore. And you do this for a year or two or three, and then you have enough capital to keep redoing it forever. And and, like, you don't have to keep paying taxes because you're investing in the shit the government wants you to invest in, and you're helping them.

But you know what you shouldn't do? Don't do that at this stage. Don't buy the airplane here. Mhmm. You know, it's do the right thing in the right stage.

Most entrepreneurs are doing the right thing in the wrong stage. And we do the right thing in the right stage, and they solve the problems aligned to that stage. And and there's more, but we don't have eight hours.

Steve: I think it's fascinating because a lot a lot of what you're talking about here is very much to, like, you're building your first few businesses. Yeah. It was like, okay. Here's this problem right now. Let's fix this problem.

Oh, we can make a company solve this problem. Yeah. Oh, we've got this new problem. Okay. Here's how we fix this problem.

So it was a steady growth versus it's like, hey. Let's fix everything all at once, which means we fix absolutely nothing. So I wanna go start

Preston: new businesses too. Like, find a problem, start a new business. Once you've automated something do you know what happens when a man retires? He dies in two years. Like, I'm 40.

I'm not ready.

Steve: I would say they go crazy.

Preston: Yeah. They either go crazy or die in two years. Insurance companies can corroborate that data. So start another one. Like, if you've automated all these, have another kid.

Like, not literally. I mean, unless you and your wife want, but like a business child. Right? Yeah. Last year, I got annoyed with pool servicers.

So this year, I now have a new baby company. We've got about a 100 pools. I don't know exactly where we're at, but I have a baby company. I probably put a $100 in, and I partnered with the best pool manufacturer in town. And we went out, and we started servicing everybody's pools.

And I got mine done, and we built a new company. And so I got to repeat

Steve: Well, so there's

Preston: the phases.

Steve: Two things here. There's someone in town I know who retired. Right? He got comfortable. Everything was good.

So he's able to retire. Mhmm. He immediately developed a drinking problem and a gambling problem. Mhmm. Got divorced.

Right? So that was not a good solution. So you're going back in the business, and everything's okay again. Where was I gonna go with the second thing? Second thing is, for me, what you're talking about here is that's what's exciting to me.

Right? Because I'm a serial entrepreneur with shiny object syndrome. Like, once we learn sales, when once we learn marketing, when we learn culture, we learn optimization, we learn finances, we've learned a lot of the key pieces where we can just rinse and repeat. Yeah. And that's that's what I'm most excited about.

So I wanna go back to Adi's questions. They've been they've we got a bunch of questions here. They've been extremely patient with us. But before we do that, quick commercial break, and then we'll go answer all these questions. Right now, you might not be hitting your revenue targets.

Your acquisition reps have gotten complacent being able to pay darn near retail without having to buy deep, and your dispo guys have been able to just post deals without having to sell. Do you have closers or order takers? Your training might have gotten a little lackluster. Your management might have gotten a little complacent. Right now, we are all facing serious headwinds.

Are you prepared for this upcoming new market? Get prepared by texting leaders to 33777. Alright. So going back to the questions here on YouTube, Philip Jordan. So he's gonna go spend some time to take an accounting class.

So it should have done a long time ago. That's a really smart move, Philip. So you mentioned Keith Cunningham. So one of our things for our list, our bucket list for 2023, is to send our our our, controller to the Keith Cunningham four day event.

Preston: Four day MBA. Yep. Yeah. And and I've sent one of my accounting people there. It's brilliant.

Yeah. The best person in the world, if you can get them, is a man named Dean Innes. Mhmm. He's hard to get. He was one of my main mentors, brilliant guy, and and but, I mean, look him up.

He's on LinkedIn or anything else, and reach out to him. I think just because he's very direct. But Keith is up there as well, and that four day MBA, it's gold. If you don't understand it, go.

Steve: Alright. And there is, what was his book? The the ultimate blueprint for an insanely successful business.

Preston: And the road less stupid.

Steve: Well, the road less stupid is a much better book for business, but for finance, the ultimate blueprint for an insanely successful business. I learned a lot of lessons, from that book from both books. Like, The World That Stoop is one of my favorite business books of all time

Preston: so far.

Steve: But the blueprint is great for finances. Brandon Flores, Valencia, going to sign for any kind of classes. That's awesome. You're inspiring people to say, I've been talking about money for years. You're the first person here to inspire people to go take accounting classes.

I mean, that's something.

Preston: If I can inspire somebody to take an accounting class, like, you know what? I'm feeling good. Thank you, guys. Like That

Steve: is inspirational. That's something that's never been done in the show before. AJ on YouTube, would you recommend paid masterminds to a new investor? I've only done two deals. I'm not sure.

I should wait until I have more cash.

Preston: No. Bullshit. Give your money to somebody. Like, can I can I talk real quick about transactions and how they work? Sure.

K? So anytime that, you know what? Let me I'm gonna give the brief explanation of love in a business. K? So Tony Robbins teaches this, and I need to cite him because I think he's he's mostly correct even though I I don't agree with all of it.

There's four levels of love. He teaches that there's dependent level, and and he justifies it by saying, if a child doesn't receive love, they will die. K? Like, they'll choose They're missing a lies. K?

Yeah. It's it's true. I mean, I looked it up. It's there. Then there's conditional love, and he calls that horse trading and prostitution, and I actually disagree with him there.

Then there's unconditional love, and then there's divine love. Divine love is an extension effectively of unconditional love. Hopefully, I'm explaining it right. Where you love even those that hate you, like Christ on the cross, like, literally brutally murdered being brutally murdered, and he's looking down at the men casting lots of his clothes and saying, father, forgive them. They know not what they do.

Well, it's it's funny because because love is a it's it's it's a paradox. Okay? And the word transaction is a transfer of action. Mhmm. So then the presupposition to this thought is what's the difference between unconditional love and conditional love if for you to create a magic moment for your wife, you had to do something, there had to be a transfer of action.

Mhmm. Well, then the only difference would be the expectation of reciprocation. Is that fair? Yeah. So I believe that the expectation is where often the pain comes from.

So if you have a transactional business where you have expectations that have not been agreed upon with people, then, of course, that's gonna cause pain. It's horse trading. It's prostitution. Whatever. Right?

Like but what if we make an agreement? What if you said, hey, dude. I want a thousand dollars for this. And if you give me that thousand dollars, I'm gonna give you this, and I see the value in that, and you see the value in my money. Mhmm.

We've made an agreement. Yeah. So then then one is not an expectation. It's a standard because we had an agreement. Like, you want a better life, have more standards and less expectations.

Like, don't expect something from the guy in fucking traffic that you don't know, that you've never talked to, and don't let him ruin your day. Yeah. But, you know, if, you know, when you got married, like, you have unconditional love with your wife. Is that fair?

Steve: Absolutely.

Preston: Like, I heard you talk about her on a podcast. I thought it was brilliant. I was like, man, I really fucking resonate with this guy because he loves his wife. And anybody who wants to make their wife's life better is a good person in my book. So so unconditional love, I would tell you, is built on the foundation of conditional love.

Do you know why? Why? Because in your marriage, it's your wedding, there were vows. Mhmm. And vows are conditions.

Yeah. They haven't to hold in sickness and health till death. It was part like you you made agreements. Mhmm. So there was a standard implying an agreement.

Right? And there was and and I'm gonna get to the answer to his question right now. There's there's a beauty and a paradox in love. And any anywhere where there's a paradox, you can find truth. So say I say, you know what?

Steve, I'm gonna do something for you here on your podcast. I'm going to cover the cost of your trip. K? Like or at least your ticket. You can pay your own fucking flights.

I don't care how you fly. To either my next event Mhmm. That we're doing with YBL, and you can come hang out with some of the most incredible and elite people on Earth. I'm gonna cover your cost for the next event, which is in, the fact that I think it's in Colorado, or the next one we're doing in Rwanda where we're gonna go on a gorilla track. Mhmm.

And I'll cover the cost of tickets. Normally, $510. And and I mean that. I am. I'm gonna do that.

Like, you had me on your podcast. I'm gonna give you a fucking gift. And you know what? I don't want anything in return. There there there needs to be nothing in return.

So here's the paradox around love. Anything where there is a transfer of action is aligned beginning with you and ending with them. Mhmm. Now say I do an unconditional transaction. I'm doing something for you.

I just did. I'm gonna do another thing for somebody else and another thing for somebody else and another thing for somebody else. I've created several lines. What happens if you're the first guy or the only guy that comes back and says, you know what, bro? Just give me a fucking hug and says, you're awesome.

Thank you so much. What did you do? You took my transfer of action. Mhmm. And you made it a circle.

Does a circle have an ending? No. There's no ending. There's no beginning and there's no end. And so this this paradox of love and relationships, because it's called relationship because you sail it together, is a paradox because if you're not willing to invest in somebody else, brother, you're never going to get something in return that is unconditional because there can be no reciprocation.

Reciprocation in an unconditional offering creates relationship. So when you're going to take that risk, no different than you did with your first kiss where you leaned in. She could have embarrassed your ass. She could have said fuck off. Or she could have leaned in and said, you know what?

You took a risk. I'm with you. You're leaning into that mentor, to that coach, to that person you fucking believe in. You're gonna test whether they're real or whether they're not. But if you didn't give anything and your expectation is to gain something without giving anything, if you have no willingness to transfer your action, how are you gonna benefit from theirs?

It doesn't fucking work. It never has. It's a fundamental law of human nature justified by a paradox, and always where there's a paradox, there's truth. So I hope that that answers that question.

Steve: Is this the reason why, like, you have I don't know, you know, what products you have. Right? I understand you're giving a lot of things away. If you a time earlier in your career where you had courses and products and this and that, and then you had your friends, like, hey. You know what?

You're in a bad spot. I wanna help you out. Come take my stuff for free.

Preston: They never did anything. And they

Steve: never did anything.

Preston: I used to coach all my realtors at my real estate company. I would do one on one sessions. We do fucking breakthroughs for people. Like, I'm a good enough psychology guy, and I I I got to spend time with Tony. Like and so I learned shit from him too.

Like, I I can help people, and and we would help them. But when there's no give, there's no gain. Like, I would give, and you know what? I learned. I got better.

I did all this stuff. But there was no gain for them.

Steve: Right.

Preston: It was an entitlement, not an opportunity. There was an entitlement as op or an opportunity. It's something you're entitled to, you already deserve, you already have. Remember, deserves a paradox. Mhmm.

If you're not willing to pay for it, do you really deserve it? If you're not willing to give something for it, was it really worth it? And so because they never saw the value because they never paid. Well, now, like, we've got this YBL group, and there's fucking billionaires in the group. Like, you're you're you're dealing with the highest level players on Earth.

I need no reciprocation for it from you. I'm I'm not looking for it. If something comes, great. Whatever. That's fine.

And I'd love to have a friendship with you. But, like, I just think that you should go experience that because I think that if you wanna get to a 100 millionaires, that's gonna elevate your career, and I think what you're doing is beautiful. That's the only reason I'm gonna give that to you. And if more comes, whatever.

Steve: Right.

Preston: This guy, should he pay for coaching? Yes. If you're starting your career, pay for fucking coaching.

Steve: And I would just, you know, add on to that. You know? That was one of the one biggest shifts in my career because the first three years of my career, I was above coaching.

Preston: We all were. We all were. Yeah.

Steve: Yeah. And the biggest changes in my career was when I actually had to humbly submit and admit that I needed help. Claudio on YouTube, where do you see the opportunities in 2023 in a single family residential space to capitalize in this upcoming, reception, or I'm sorry, recession owner, capital transfer given the rate market, and fewer transactions?

Preston: I mean, it depends on your stage of business, but let me let me answer it in several ways. Okay? If you're a start up, get into any of those fields because there's going to be an opportunity in all of those fields where there's still gonna be, you know, seventy, eighty, 90% of the customers. You're just not gonna have seventy, eighty, 90% of the competitors. So, like, more customers or less competitors is always a win.

I'll give you an example. I build a larger product than than my competitors, my home building business, and and this is fun. We're selling more now. Like, we sold 42 homes last month. Like and and and we we want to sell 20 a month.

Like, that's our goal. But the reason we're selling more is not because there's more sales going on in the market. The reason we're selling more is all the other builders got freaked out and said, oh, we'll we'll all go build 1,300 to 1,500 square foot products. And so since we said, oh, no. No.

We're not gonna change. We think we know what all the other builders are gonna do. Well, if the market was 60 units before and the market shrank by 20%, then what? Now the market's 48. Yeah.

Okay. And I got 42 of that 48, which is better than the fucking 20 I wanted before. Right? Like, so so now I've gotta go figure out, okay, do I increase the size of my company because all the other guys left? I could capitalize on that for a while.

Weird, and and so if you're a start up, just get in. Just just get in the fucking water. Go swimming. Learn to swim. And and get in and learn because right now is the best.

Like, I started a travel agency during COVID, and it worked. I started a real estate brokerage basically in o eight, and it worked. Like, now is the best time to start. If you're in a business, if you already had a business, this is the best fucking time to hire talent. This is the best time in history, like, ever, ever to invest in anything with bedrooms.

K? You have and and to go into some economic data, if you're like, so so I'm hitting startups and I'm hitting existing businesses and I'm a hit investors. Economic data, and this is just a fact. There were 5,000,000 too few houses before the pandemic. K?

5,000,000, too few. New construction in America onboards about 1,200,000 new housing units annually in America. The problem with that is 1,700,000 new households are formed in America every year. So that's a half million unit disparity. The reason COVID took off as an acceleration in price was not because of a fucking virus.

The germ didn't do that. It was something that has been pent up, pent up, pent up that has been artificially held down and recessed. Since Bill Clinton repealed the Glass Steagall Act during his presidency, which combined, like, commercial banking and depositor banking, which gave every banker that didn't understand mortgage backed securities a Ferrari when the only thing they were used to was a fucking Hyundai. Mhmm. And they didn't have rails on that train, so they went off the fucking rails.

And then, of course, we crashed the market under George Bush, and everybody blamed it on him even though we deregulated after the dot com bust, which increased production, blah blah blah. I mean, so, like, look. If you're an investor, you should be buying things with bedrooms. I don't care if it's multifamily. I don't care if it's single family.

But over the next twenty years, it is not sustainable to have that housing shortage. Now let me compound the housing shortage because it's compounded a shitload, and you guys are feeling it here in Phoenix, Arizona, I'm sure, by everybody doing a migration across this country and leaving high tax states to go to better tax states? Mhmm. Weird, You felt that here? We felt it in El Paso.

Let me tell you, when Californians are moving to fucking El Paso, it's bad there. K? Like, it's it's it's it's a crazy thing. But let's let's compound it further. The border's open.

Like, I don't like, I live in El Paso, like, and I have to not hit migrants on my way home. And I don't care what your political opinions are on this. Like, poly means multiple and ticks means bloodstucking arachnids. Okay? So politics is a fucking root word.

Get over it. These people coming here are probably not leaving. Like, we we can we can just gauge that they're probably not leaving, and they also probably don't wanna sleep on streets. So roofs over their head are gonna be important, which is going to further compound the housing shortage from 5,000,000 units to where we expect it might be right now as close to 10,000,000 units. I think it's a little above nine.

It just passed the 9,000,000 mark based on what we estimate is coming across, and we don't know that. So if I'm an investor right now with some level of liquidity, I'm gonna say I may be loyal to the product, but I'm not loyal to the rate. And they have to stimulate housing. They have to. Like, the government has to stimulate housing.

Maybe not this year, maybe not next year, but at some point, they have to figure out a way to create more housing because the problem is gonna be so big that they will be in danger. And if you think they're not thinking about that, there's been more attempts at political violence in the last few years than in the previous, what, 50? Mhmm. Like, oh, okay. That's crazy.

Right? Lee Zeldin, Kathy Hochul, like like Nancy Pelosi, January I mean, political violence, political violence, political violence. Luckily, it hasn't ended in, like, horrible tragedies yet, but the politicians are watching this, and they're saying, fuck. We better start solving some problems.

Steve: Well, I haven't thought about that as far as perspective, but, yeah, they're gonna need a place to live. Mhmm. And they're not going anywhere.

Preston: And if you're in the housing business, shit. So we hit investors, buy more things with bedrooms. We hit businesses, hire all the great people that the dumb businesses that slowed down got rid of. And if you're a startup, start now.

Steve: I'm actively recruiting someone that's a super talented person. Right? Because they're available right now because their previous company got closed. Yeah. And then as far as, you know, you've got less competition now.

So we have Brandon Bateman coming on next week, and he has said to me, like, now is a great time because lead costs have gone down so much because so much of my competition has left. It was a really, really great time. Sharde on YouTube says straight to it. Ron uncut. Preston or president.

So, Gary Sanchez paid our last dollars to get trained by Preston to 10 x our company within the first six months. I've never started profit negative businesses. That's powerful, powerful endorsement. There was someone here earlier. I I saw it was, let me go back here.

It was they would love to find out how you juggle all the businesses successfully. Now I think in going through

Preston: Well, let me answer it real quick. I don't. Like, I I I don't have my hands in every pot at all times. Like, businesses are like people. When you have a start up business, the the person asking this is a start up business or they're an operational entrepreneur or they're a want entrepreneur.

Right? Mhmm. And and that's not bad. Like, I love that they're even thinking about business or they're in business, but they're still in that exceptional energy. Guys, once you have optimizations, you don't have to run your company.

Like, I left my house, dropped my kids off at school this morning, then I will pick them up. I jumped on a fucking private jet. I flew here. I'm hanging out with Steve. I'm not running my company.

Like, I I have great people running my shit. So I don't have to be there. Businesses are like kids. When you're a start up, you don't tell the baby when to take a shit so you can change the diaper then. Like, they take the shit when they want to.

Mhmm. Right? But when you've automated it, it's a grown ass adult. Like like, you know, I'm not I'm not worried about Steve or me crapping our pants right now having this conversation. Like, it's it's just not a risk.

Like, so we don't have to juggle that. Like like, you don't juggle businesses. Once a business grows up, it's it's sort of like that 40 year old brother-in-law you have. Like, if they're getting married, go see them. Like, if, you know, if something happens, the economy changes, they get sick, like, that's the equivalent of them getting sick, then maybe go help them.

But but you don't have to be in all of them at all times. I don't I don't juggle shit. I probably do less than most of you. And and the reason for this formula is to teach you all how to do that so you can have the life that you watch on TV instead of falling in with all the bullshit propaganda that everybody teaches, which 9090% of what people teach is is bullshit. Okay?

Like, 90%. Like like, there's great teachers. Like, I have listened to a bunch of Steve's podcasts. Like, if you're if you're following him, you're following somebody good, like, I I could probably name on two hands people that I would fucking listen to. He's one, and I could probably give you nine others that I'm I'm gonna go through.

But, like, if you if you're don't listen to everything. Like, find the right people. Be very loyal to that content until you've mastered it, and and go out and build it. But you don't have to juggle. There's no juggling once you've automated.

Steve: Yeah. And then, another question here I think is a fascinating question. Have you been pay have you been paying attention to chat GPT? To what? Chat GPT.

So, basically, it's a it's a AI, right, where you ask it a question. It didn't give you, like, a well thought out, like, probably freshman and college level essay

Preston: from a question. Interesting. No.

Steve: I I

Preston: don't know about this.

Steve: Yeah. So, so then we'll have to skip that question. Now I normally have more questions to ask, but I would like to ask you some additional questions that you put in here. So six returns you expect in a business. So this is something you had put in earlier.

Preston: Ah, okay. Cool. Yeah. Let's go over that really quick.

Steve: Are the six returns you can expect in a business?

Preston: So so people always talk and this is this is from the cash portion, guys. And and there's all of you guys on here should should reach out to to Steve or me. Like, whatever. Like, you can reach out to me too, and I'll I'll I'll have my team send it to you. But you want all the documents with all the formulas because every single one of those fees, the culture, clarity, capacity, cash, each comes with several different teachings behind them, and and you need all of them.

But let's go let's go into the the six returns. K? Everybody talks about return on investment. And and return on investment is it's it's it's important. Like, say, I invested about a $100 to get that pool servicing company.

Oh, with a 100 clients, it's, I don't even know how many it has. Maybe it's a 110 or a 120. But all of a sudden, it's making $3.04, $5 a month like it's a startup. Like, it's a one year old company, so it's not where I'm getting rich. Right?

But at $36 a year or $40 a year that's coming in, I'm making a 40% return on my ROI. Right? Well, what happens in two and a half years assuming no growth ever? Well, if there's no growth ever, is a 40% return good, and in two and a half years, did I get all my fucking money back? Yeah.

Yep. So once you have a 100% of your money back, stop talking about ROI. Like, your return on investment is infinite at that point, so you're literally stroking yourself. And it's about as productive as masturbation. Like, you wanna have a kid, you need a partner.

Right? So stop talking about something that's unproductive. Like, now we need to move to ROM, return on marketing. K? Because if you're talking about the wrong thing and you wanted to get to the right direction, you're never gonna get there.

Like you can't find what you're looking for if you're looking in the wrong place. Like if I'm like, hey man I really wanna find the right girl. I'm in love. I wanna fall in love. And I go to a gay bar and I'm not gay, I'm I'm I'm probably in trouble.

K? You're not gonna find the right thing in the wrong place. So ROI goes away then, and you need to go to ROI, return on marketing, cost of customer acquisition. What does it cost me to get my customer? What is my process?

And you really gotta get into a science here and get detailed. But then once you refine that down, you can rinse, repeat, rinse, repeat, rinse, repeat, repeat. Like like, we had one of the guys from Shark Tank come on and, teach this. And it was one of the most brilliant teachings, that I'd ever seen. And and I had already had ROM on my list of returns, but I I'd never heard it in the way he presented it.

And it just made it so simple on on the cost of customer acquisition and and building that because that's sort of like the ROI on your marketing, which is the ongoing investment that you're doing. Right. Next, you start saying, okay. Well, let's look at some other returns. Like and and you have return on emotion.

Like, if you don't love what you're doing, stop. Go find something you love. You know? You have, return on time. Like, is it worth your time to be doing what you're doing?

Like, that pool servicing company, you think I run it? No. I built a sales program where we go find and if you're a pool servicer, use this. We go find everybody who just bought a house in El Paso using the real estate data that we have that has a pool. You know what we know when they move in, they're disorganized.

So we drop off flyers at their door. We get leads all fucking day because here's people that bought a house to have a pool, and they're so busy moving their furniture and doing all this and doing all this that their pool looks like shit. So they all call us. We give them all a free month of service just so they can try us out. 90% of those people hire us because they then trust us because we did a good fucking job the first month.

And I have no sales team, no salesman. I use MLS data, and I'm blowing up a fucking pool servicing company in less than a year. And and you guys can all do that here and completely fuck the bad pool servicers in your market. And so cost of customer acquisition. Okay.

It's flyers and MLS data. And then I go hire more pool servicers, and I make them go to at least 10 units a day. And if they don't have 10 units a day, they drop 10 flyers a day. It's that simple.

Steve: Simple KPIs.

Preston: It it grows fast. K? So, you know, return on time, I'm not doing it. So what's my return on time? Well, it's fucking 40% of my $100.

I'll be paid off in two years. Alright? Well, what are the other ones? And and and these are the ones that I like the most because they're they're fascinating. There's return on balance sheet equity.

You need to reinvest in your business. Like if you're not reinvesting in your business, you know, then then your business is never gonna have a structure. Like you can't have a structure if you don't reinvest in it. And then there's also return on debt, which some people call risk. I call it debt because it's a very specific type of risk.

When return on balance sheet equity and return on debt are the exact same number, you are at that point scaling at the maximum possible safe trajectory for your industry. So I look at return on investment, return on marketing together. I look at return on time, return on emotion together, and I look at return on debt and balance sheet equity together. And and I'm looking for the arcs. And then I track these on what we call a strategic driver analysis, and then the strategic driver analysis is just basically an Excel sheet or software that gives you a lot of KPIs, which go into the KPIs.

I think KPIs for people. I think the people do a greater job description, and that's what your COO, CFO, and CEO should be doing every month. And and by the way, I'm in the market for a good CTO. So if you guys know a technology officer, I fucking need one.

Steve: So explain to me. I have never heard return on balance sheet.

Preston: Mhmm.

Steve: So I've heard, you know, you said return on marketing. I've heard it as return on ad spend. Right? Return investment. Like, that's obvious.

Return on balance sheet is a newer concept to me. So elaborate on return on balance sheet.

Preston: So so check this out. Say, you want to grow at an accelerated pace. Mhmm. You need debt. Debt is a good thing.

Mhmm. Right? And people will take a risk on you. They'll they'll they'll say, hey. You know what?

I'll loan you half 1,000,000. I'll loan you a million. Whatever. Whatever. Like like, for a business.

And, like, my my home building company, I think at any one time, we have 20 to $30,000,000 in debt. Mhmm. K? Now that 20 to $30,000,000 in debt, it's not a not a risk outside of you know, because I've got the ability to pay the notes, and there's assets backing it. And and, like, I shouldn't say that.

I need to I need to be less esoteric. It's a risk, but it's a marginal risk. Does that make sense? I don't know what you

Steve: said risk.

Preston: Not a risk.

Steve: It's a mitigated risk.

Preston: Yeah. It's a mitigated risk. So that debt produces me a certain amount of cash flow. Right. But do you know how I got to that level of debt?

I took my earnings, and I left it in the company. Mhmm. I either bought other companies or started other companies, or I bought other assets and put them in the companies, or I bought vehicles, equipment, things like that for the company. And then the banks saw that, oh, look. He's not just taking his money and going to Vegas and partying, and it's not cocaine and strippers for this guy.

He actually has some staying power, and that's what they want. So so you remember what we said about the customer? Find out what they want. Go get it. Give that to them.

Like, well, guess what? Your banker is also your customer. What do they want? Look up the five c's of credit. It's pretty critical shit.

Like, they're looking for that, you know, and cash flow and collateral. Like, they'll loan a business money. Banks loan way more money to businesses than they do on real estate. Like like, the the idea that you can only borrow money on real estate is bullshit. Like and people want to invest in growth, whether it's banks, whether it's investors.

So but they wanna see a balance sheet. Like, if you go look at my balance sheet and you're like, oh, shit. Like, you've got millions in equity. Okay. Save fucking loan.

Mhmm. K? And so when you align your return on debt, like like, the debt, the the risk portion to return on balance sheet equity, when I started the company, it was a couple of bankers saying, hey, dude. You know, we'll give you 5,000,000 in loans. We've seen what you've done with other businesses.

Well, that 5,000,000 in loans turned into a million dollars in profit that all of a sudden, a company that I bought with no balance sheet because it was a failing company had a balance sheet of a million dollars. They're like, well, you basically took all your fucking profits in. Like, the idea that you're gonna open a business and take all the money out year one is sort of like the idea that you're gonna have a baby and send the motherfucker to work year one. Like like like, wake up. Like like, that and that's part of the reason why you automate a business and have two and three and four.

Like, my business is how do I say this in a maybe controversial way that'll get people to think about it? Slavery never went away. It changed. K? You can no longer own people, and you should have never been able to own people.

That's wrong. But a business, according to the IRS, is another human being. It's a human being without a body. Well, my businesses are just people that work for me and send me all their money. But I don't make them send me all their money when they're a toddler in diapers.

I make them send me all their money when they're a fucking megapreneur so that I can be an investor philanthropist.

Steve: I love the way that you made that controversial. That's fantastic. So, I wanna ask you before we wrap up, a few questions here. So, what is your biggest struggle today?

Preston: Mitochondria. Like, so many really smart people are doing really stupid shit. Mhmm. You know, honestly, the reason I got into coaching was I got I got mad, and I didn't like getting mad because I saw a lot of beautiful people over the last five, six, seven years really start blaming each other and hating each other and and and, like like, my life's good. I don't I don't fucking need anything.

I'm I'm sad. Yeah. My biggest problem today that I wanna solve, like, I I want a solvable problem, is I wanna find a way to help leaders get out of the woke stupid bullshit that they're stuck in and and step into who the fuck they are. And and I think the best place in the world historically ever for people to live has been America. And if you look at America, it was built on small businesses, and some of those became big businesses.

And we were a production based economy, and we've moved away from that and and away from an entrepreneurial ideology into a service and real estate based economy. And this recession where we're now onshoring more manufacturing and we're bringing back production to the country. Like like, if if we take some of the young minds, the people that are not my age, maybe not your age, we get some of these 20 year olds and 18 year olds and 25 year olds to be like, oh, wait. If I can wake up instead of being woke, which really means asleep and stupid, and go out and create shit. I can go out and multiply.

We don't have to worry about addition or subtraction. They're not real. We can worry about multiplication. We can have as much as we want, and there is no successful person that I've ever met that's truly successful in in in all four course of life, faith, family, fitness, finance, that doesn't become a philanthropist. Mhmm.

They all go out and give. Nobody who has everything they fucking want is like, I'm gonna keep it all for me. No. Because you're gonna die just like everybody else. You're dead.

So so they all go fucking give it away. And I want people to get in the small business entrepreneurship journey because history has proved what that will do. You will create a replica. And and look, not that America's perfect, and I know there's some dumb dumbass out there that's gonna be like, oh, America did so much bad shit. Yeah.

So did every other country on earth. Hello. K? So but I wanna go and give this information away so that the ones that are truly leaders, the ones that truly, truly, like, have it in their heart, have it in their soul, they've got an ounce of fucking courage, and they're willing to step up, they're gonna go create. They're gonna go lead.

They're gonna go give, and they're gonna change the fucking world. And we're gonna go into, I think, a new cycle where what America was, you know, at its highest point is going to be globalized into more of a beneficial human understanding regardless of government or municipality because in in a sense, they're all the same. America was built by its people, not its government, so I don't know why we keep trusting the government. Do you guys know what a government is? It's it's literally a corporate entity with a monopoly on violence.

Why the fuck would we go trust that? Like, America was built by its people, not its government, and and we were the first government of the people, by the people, for the people that actually did that right for a while. Mhmm. We've we've moved away from it some on on both sides of the aisle, not just the current dumbass administration. But I I would like people to get good business information and go use it and and set themselves and their families free and lift everybody else in the world.

I think that's my purpose.

Steve: I mean, it sounds to me like this is the biggest vision I've heard, you know, where if we can have a situation where everyone is operating like America was in its peak globally. I mean, for me, I've been wanting I've been preaching the gospel, right, of capitalism, entrepreneurship. Right? Because I think that it's been so much for me. It's been so much for my family.

It'd be great if we can get this everywhere. But, yeah, I've never thought outside the borders, but I think that would be pretty incredible. Like I said, I think that's the biggest vision I've I've heard here. What is your superpower?

Preston: Honest. I don't think I got one. I think I got several. I think I got a lot of them. So I don't know.

Steve: Let's take a step back. What would your wife say?

Preston: I don't know if we should talk about that on air.

Steve: Okay. What's the piece? What's the PG version?

Preston: You know what? I think my superpower is the ability to explain things to people and influence them to help themselves. I think that is my biggest superpower.

Steve: I would say given today's episode, that was I absolutely wholeheartedly agree with that.

Preston: And the second biggest is I can hear something once, and I can learn it. Like like, if there's one skill you should learn, even before influence, learn to learn. Like, learn to learn. If you can learn to learn and retain information, oh, I mean, that that nobody's a genius unless they can learn. And and when you can learn one piece of data over here and another piece of data over here and you can start synergizing these things together, That that synergy, it's the juice and the squeeze in making a beautiful and meaningful life.

And and, really, that's the point. It's not the business. It's not the money. Most entrepreneurs that I know that are in the decamillionaire on up, they don't really give a shit about money. They they they give away more money every year than they used to earn when they were on their journey.

Like, it's okay.

Steve: Yep. And then there was a question here. So we'll go we'll end it with Michael Kennedy's question. What are the top three books?

Preston: Top three books. One I'm gonna recommend is the one I'm coming out with in a few months just because it's literally everything you've just heard that get dumped out. And it's I think it's gonna be called your first million. I know I'm I'm I might give you more than three because everybody gives the same ones that I've heard. And I've even given some of those because I think they're great.

All the ones that everybody gives you, like, where you're talking about Grant Cardone's book, the 10 x rule, those are all great. They're all amazing, and they're all relevant, and you should always be reading. But I think you should also go read Titan. It's a thirty hour book about John d Rockefeller. I think you should go read biographies and autobiographies of the great men of the time before our time because this time that we're in now is more similar to that than it's ever been.

I mean, if you look at all these tech entrepreneurs that there are now, the Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, all of these guys, what what they are is they're the great men of a previous age literally duplicated. I mean, it's it's it's fascinating how they're following the same story. Pierpont Morgan, who was the Morgan Bank dynasty, go read his book. He's phenomenal. All the other moguls thought he was broke at $60,000,000 back in the day when he built that and basically created Wall Street.

You hear their stories, but Pierpont Morgan literally bailed the government out multiple times before we had a central bank. And and and they formed the central bank because they didn't wanna be regulated by a capitalist, which probably was a better idea come to think of it now with all the debt we have. And what what's what's fascinating is he locked them all in a room at one point. It was part of his story, and he forced them all to come up with a plan to build roads and bridges. And you still hear politicians talking about roads and bridges to this day.

And and and the only reason why is he was a banker, and he had the foresight to know that if he were to connect all of the communities in America that were not connected at that point, he would increase trade. It would increase revenue. He could put a small tax. He could get his loan paid back. And he created trade.

And the roads and bridges now that they talk about is only because they did so well a hundred years ago, and the politicians just aren't smart enough to figure that shit out. So if you go learn about Pierpont Morgan, Vanderbilt, Rockefeller, Carnegie. Oh, fuck. Tom Scott, Carnegie's mentor. All of these men.

Like, read about those men. You know, that may be the books that will change your life more than any of the others because what what it was for me, and and I started reading them young, is I could see aspects of my character and their characters and my ideas and their ideas. And every single one of those books that I read compounded the identity that I had in finance and business and everywhere else in in those ways. And so you're not just a human being, you're a human becoming. And when you go find those mentors, even the ones that aren't living today, you become those people.

You are the five people you spend the most time with, whether they're alive or dead, and and you can change the whole fucking world if you hang out with a bunch of people that did.

Steve: Yeah. It's incredibly powerful, and I've gotta pick these up. I mean, for me, I I watched the the men who built America. Right?

Preston: That

Steve: it was a it was a special, on, I think, on PBS. I think it was on Amazon for a while. Man, that gets your blood pumping. Right? Like, you find out, like, what these guys did.

And these guys were hardcore capitalists. These were, these guys would get torn apart today. You know? But they they were what they were able to accomplish in their time is absolutely remarkable. So I want you to think about what you wanna leave the listeners with as far as last thoughts while I make a couple of quick announcements.

Guys, if you have any today, please like, share, subscribe, comment below. We do have our sales leadership program coming out here in seven weeks. If you guys are interested, again, text leaders to 33777. And we do have part in the disruption tomorrow and talks on Friday. Be sure to check that out.

And we got Brandon Bateman coming out next week to talk about marketing. Right? We've been talking about, you know, return on ad spend and so on. So what are the last thoughts you wanna leave everyone with?

Preston: You know, I I I I'll leave them with an ask. I'll leave them with an ask. My mission is for the entire world to have this information. So I would ask you, if if this has added value to you today, please share this podcast. Like, make sure somebody else has it because the likelihood that it will help them if it helped you is very high.

The other ask is if if you have information or questions or anything like that. You know, message me on social media. Give me a follow if you need to speak or to speaking engagement. This is what I'm making my time available to right now is to go and to help others learn this shit. So my ask, share this, get this out there, and help another entrepreneur.

Steve: Awesome. Thank you very much. Appreciate it. Thank you for coming on. See you guys next week.

Speaker: Shout out to Steve train. Jump on the Steve train. We real estate disrupt us.