Steve Trang shares five critical lessons from 2025 that real estate professionals must implement to dominate 2026. Through conversations with Pace Morby, Cameron Herold, Jason Palliser, Ian Ross, and Barrence Toth, he reveals how AI is creating unfair competitive advantages, why business struggle is normal, the power of simple systems, AI-enhanced sales training, and wealth protection strategies.
Use AI to automate workflows and scale operations - companies using AI for cold calling are generating 400 leads per day for $1,000 versus $18,000 monthly for traditional VAs
Master the 'plan, brief, execute, debrief' framework to systematically achieve goals and develop your team effectively
Focus on process over outcomes - make more offers than anyone else and master multiple ways to bridge price gaps rather than worrying about individual deals
1:55:06Josh Stech, founder of LendingHome and Sundae, shares how he built a billion-dollar real estate lending company in just five years, scaling to 14% market share. He discusses the venture capital playbook, hiring at scale, maintaining culture with 500+ employees, and his transition to solving the property sourcing problem for investors through Sundae's marketplace model.
1:47:49Tommy Mello, founder of A1 Garage Door Service, shares his journey from massive debt to building a billion-dollar company. He discusses critical business lessons including the importance of systems, hiring for attitude over experience, and how he scaled from a local garage door business to a nationwide operation that sold for $570 million.
Get a free AI-powered review of your sales calls. See exactly where you're losing deals and how to fix it.
Get notified when new episodes drop, plus a free AI call review.
Implement AI role-play bots for daily sales training and automatic call scoring to identify skill gaps immediately instead of waiting weeks or months
Target affordable housing, RV parks, and mobile home parks as economic shifts create more demand for budget-friendly housing options
”“AI doesn't replace effort. It multiplies it. And if you're not learning how to use it right now, someone in your market already is.”
”“Complexity slows you down. Clarity creates momentum.”
”“If you can become incredibly good at your workflow and your process, and you can attack a city 34 ways, and just do your job, then the deals happen on the back end.”
”“The teams that win in the future won't be the ones working harder. They'll be the ones using AI to execute better.”
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Steve Trang: 2025, we had some incredible conversations on disruptors. And when I look back, five lessons kept showing up over and over again. These aren't theoretical. These are lessons from people actually building businesses, scaling real estate, closing deals, and creating real wealth. If you wanna crush 2026, these are the five lessons you need to copy.
The first lesson came from Pace Morby. Pace is constantly on the road talking to operators all over the country, and what he's seeing is clear. AI is no longer optional. If you're not using it to save time, automate work, and move faster, you're already falling behind. That episode really hit me because AI isn't about replacing people.
It's about giving you leverage. Then we had Cameron Herold, and that episode quickly became one of my all time favorites. Cameron shared the brutal truth about business that it's way harder than anyone wants to admit. The reason that episode went viral is simple. Every entrepreneur could relate.
If you wanna build something real, you have to accept the grind, the pressure, and the ups and downs that come with it. After that, Jason Palliser showed us why simplicity is what actually allows you to scale. Jason has 34 different ways to buy real estate. But what impressed me most was how he breaks everything down into simple steps that anyone can follow. That episode reinforced something I deeply believe.
Complexity slows you down. Clarity creates momentum. Then Ian Ross, my partner in objection proof AI, broke down why sales is still the fastest way to financial freedom, especially when you combine it with AI. Sales gives you control over your income, and AI accelerates your growth faster than ever. That episode made it clear.
Mastering sales is still one of the highest leverage skills you can have. And finally, Barrence Toth reminded us that earning money is not enough. The wealthy think about how to protect it, grow it safely, and make it last for generations. That conversation completely reframed how I think about long term wealth and security. These five lessons define 2025 for me, and if you apply them, they'll help you dominate 2026.
Let's start with lesson number one. Because you miss this, everything else gets harder. Pace Morby says AI is the new leverage. One of the biggest lessons I learned in 2025 came from Pace Morbius, and it completely changed how I think about leverage. When Pace came on the show, he made one thing very clear.
AI isn't something that's coming in the future. It's already here. The most dangerous place to be right now is doing things manually while everyone else is using AI to move faster, automate work, and scale without adding any more people. We talked about how AI is already handling workflows, marketing, decisions, support, and deal analysis, letting operators do in hours what used to take days. This episode hit home for me because we're already building AI ourselves.
As we've worked on objection proof AI, I've seen firsthand how fast things change when you give people leverage. AI doesn't replace effort. It multiplies it. And if you're not learning how to use it right now, someone in your market already is.
Speaker 1: And we turn it down, and here we are five years later. I'm barely able to sell it for a million bucks. Mhmm. Why? Because the 300 people that I have in The Philippines that are physically calling are so limited compared to companies like Prop dot ai, for example.
One of the companies we use there's a bunch of companies, but the company we use for cold calling is Prop dot ai. And I don't have an affiliate code or anything. I don't get paid to, like, promote it. But Prop will this is crazy. We have one customer that was spending $12,000 a month with my virtual assistant company, and they were getting an average of three leads a day.
So that's 36 leads a day for 12 VAs. Pretty decent. It's kinda run of the run of the mill. And for those 12, they were spending about $18,000 a month. Okay.
$18,000 a month for 36 leads a day times 20, so you're, like, 700 leads in a month Mhmm. Worth the $18. Yeah. Two years ago.
Steve: Mhmm.
Speaker: Now it's like you spend a thousand dollars at Prop, and you can generate 400 leads in a day. Yeah. It books the appointment for you, has the full on conversation. What's weird about it now is the seller or even the agent depending on who you're calling, and now Prop will even call private money lenders, which is scary. It will call them, and you can listen to the call, and the agent, the seller are both preferring to talk to nonhumans for their first introduction call.
Speaker 2: Mhmm.
Speaker: Because they can be a lot more honest. Right? Because people haven't learned how to be good on the phone like they should with you.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And so that whole business decimated my cold calling business. Like, within the last eighteen months, I had a $10,000,000 business. Now it's worth a million.
Speaker: I
Steve: was talking to someone about this
Speaker 3: a couple weeks ago.
Steve: If there was a way I could short a country and this sounds terrible. Philippines. I would short The Philippines.
Speaker: One day all day long. Sadly, I have 300 employees there, and I would also short The Philippines as well. Because what's their number one, you know, product is sales and, like, customer service
Steve: and Virtual assistance. Virtual it's
Speaker: a virtual assistant. Not really sales. It's like the warm up process to give it to a salesperson who's actually trained. But even the the monotonous redundant tasks.
Steve: Yes. Like, that for sure is gonna take into AI.
Speaker: Yeah. We this is what we this was interesting, dude. Like, recently, we go, alright. Well, let's reposition all of our virtual assistants to be people's executive assistants because that's a lot harder to replace with. And now all of a sudden, AI agents are coming out and people just buy one $5,000 AI agent that lives lives forever.
And it does literally every executive assistant task all night, doesn't sleep, and it's a one time fee for $5,000. I'm like, okay. We're toast.
Speaker: Mhmm.
Speaker: Like, that business is toast. It's gone.
Steve: Yeah. So what are your what are your plans?
Speaker: Well, there's just a lot, like, to to think about. Right? Like, you have kids. What are your kids gonna do? So it's funny.
Steve: So What
Speaker: are you gonna tell your daughter to do?
Steve: So she's right on the other side of that wall. Right. Last week was her first day First started. Summer job. K.
Right now, she's working on all my websites
Speaker: Mhmm.
Steve: Right now with the intention for her to learn how to use AI to really do all the websites.
Speaker 4: Okay.
Steve: The skill I want the skill I want her to learn is to be excellent with AI.
Speaker: There you go.
Steve: Whatever she wants to do, I don't care what she wants to do.
Speaker: Mhmm.
Steve: She needs to learn how to do it well with AI. She needs to be on board, learn things from it. Right? We don't know what the future holds. All we all we can do is stay ahead of the curve.
Right away, stay ahead, pay attention. There's a quote that I I learned, from one of my other mentors. I can't remember who he quoted. It was go as far as you can see and then see further.
Speaker: Yeah. And
Steve: that's all I'm asking her to do. Like, just take AI as far go as far as you can with AI and just keep your head up Yeah. And you'll be fine. If you don't
Speaker: You're toast.
Steve: Everyone's passing. Anyone that's not doing it like, we've said this with our, with our tool. If you're not using our tool in a few months, you're just gonna get passed. Because, like, to your point about, like, you know, your VA's, someone right now paying 4 or five, cold callers versus what our tool is gonna do, you just pay us a few $100 a month Yeah. And you replaced all your all your cold callers.
Speaker: It's not even like, think about this. This is just to add on top of this, guys. Like, let's talk about where this is going. For the people that are not on x, you're not on Twitter, you're not on these places, you're not consuming this content like I am, it is happening at such a grand scale that we can't even imagine until you go and actually watch and see what's happening. So, people I've been on stage.
I I was on a Tony Robbins stage recently, and I had a guy stand up and go, you're fear fearmonger. You're telling I go, dude. Okay. Cool. DM me, and I'll give you some proof.
This is a couple of quick stories. I'm in the Montana Airport. I'd I'm there. I live there in summer. So I am on Floor 1, and I see this floor cleaning robot walk like, zooming through.
And I walk up to it. I'm like, let me kick the thing, and let me just play around with it. And it's like, hello, sir. I'm an AI. Can you please get out of my way?
But and it pauses and has a full conversation with me. I'm like, okay. That's cool. Yeah. So then I go to the 2nd Floor, and I see another one of these cleaning robots.
And I walk up to him, like, maybe I kick it in the back. Mhmm. It won't and I'm just messing with it. You know? Yeah.
And I get up there. I'm like, why is this thing not moving? Oh, it's not moving because this is a man operated floor cleaning machine, and the human is in the bathroom, which it's parked next to, on a break. I'm like, that if that's not telling you exactly what's hap gonna happen with the economy, that one downstairs ain't going on no breaks. Yeah.
It's not asking to be unionized. It's not asking for a raise, a bonus, a this. And more importantly, it doesn't need to be onboarded. It doesn't be need to get a pep in a step. It doesn't say I got a flat tire.
I can't show up to work. It doesn't say any of those things. So any of those excuses, if that exists in any of your world I don't know if you guys saw this. Amazon just deployed a 100,000 robots in their warehouses this week.
Steve: Oh, really? I understand. This
Speaker: week. Because what happened was you saw this big unit union thing swelling up on the East Coast with Mhmm. With, Amazon. And within six months, bro, they went and just bought a 100,000 robots. Like, you're toast.
Bye. See you. Yeah. Okay. So I go to a barista.
People go, oh, I wanna have a human experience. No. You don't. I think in sales, when you're talking about, like, I wanna buy a house. I wanna sell my house.
I think that those are very protected, places for a while, at least ten, fifteen years.
Steve: For a while, I don't think it's that long. But anyway Okay.
Speaker: I'd love to have that that conversation. Baristas. Let's look at baristas. K? Korea already has seven Starbucks that have baristas fully automated with robots.
It's already happening in Starbucks. What do you think is gonna happen in the next three years here in America? I go to Starbucks the other day. I go through the line, and I order a tall vanilla bean frappuccino. I don't know what's on the thing, but my wife asked me to order it.
The person says, would you like whipped cream on there? I go, yeah. Hell, yeah. I'll have whipped cream.
Speaker: Mhmm.
Speaker: Cool. Next day, I come back, and I go, oh, I'll make the barista's job a little easier. Tall vanilla bean frappuccino with whipped cream. Yeah. The barista comes back.
He's like, it already has whipped cream. It's already one of the ingredients. You don't need to tell me that. I'm like, do you have any robots I could talk to? You know what
Speaker 5: I'm saying?
Speaker: Like, people I'm telling you the
Steve: You're looking at that. For myself, I have I can't drink milk.
Speaker: Mhmm.
Steve: No. For myself, every time I get something from Starbucks, I ask for coconut milk. Milk.
Speaker: My wife too. And guess what they do? They mess it up.
Steve: They mess it up. It's like you take a sip. It's like, damn it. I gotta go back in or throw it out.
Speaker: I I gotta go back in and take a dump immediately because I'm gonna I'm gonna blow my brains out because I have lactose intolerant or whatever it is. Same thing with my wife. If she has any a drop of milk, she is has a stomachache for three days.
Steve: Yeah. So it was like a robot, I can rely Yeah. Is gonna make that right. Human, they get busy, they get overwhelmed, they're overdue for break. I I don't know, they didn't sleep last night, whatever it is.
Right. What about operate a 100%.
Speaker: The other thing is people will argue with me and they'll go, no. No. People want the human experience. I'm like, bro, people are having less sex. People aren't getting their driver's license.
Kids nowadays are not us. They have completely different desires
Speaker: Mhmm.
Speaker: Or lack thereof, right, type of thing. Most kids. Not your kid, not my kid. Yeah. So I I look at the job environment.
I go, what is my one year old child, Phil? What is he going to do in ten years, fifteen years, twenty years? I know one thing. I know one thing that I've come up with, maybe two. K?
I think people that can actually persuade the storyteller, somebody who can actually move people, like a person that can move people. So a salesperson, a, you know, a coach of some sort, like an actual personal development leader. A leader. Right?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: You can't replace those people. That's gonna be really hard to to replace those people. Number two, an owner of real estate. An owner of real estate, and I'll tell you why. When all these people don't have jobs and the government is just flooding money through HUD, section eight vouchers, and all that kind of stuff, I've got a big project right now, 102 unit.
I I'm calling it my super sec you know, the super eight motels. Yeah. This is my super section eight. I bought a 100 so I bought a 102 unit, mo motel, and we're converting it into an apartment building, all creative finance, which is awesome. Yeah.
And section eight is coming in and paying for all 102 doors, $1,400 a door right down in, like, the worst possible area. If you are not focusing on affordable housing where the government will literally just pay your your bills, I don't know what you're doing. Like, I'm in RV parks, mobile home parks, and affordable multifamily is where I'm primarily focusing. And then in single family, I'm mostly selling my single families I bought since 02/1615, all the way through, and I'm ten thirty wanting those into single family that are co living or shared housing, like, split or what have you, or I'm rolling into the other three asset classes. I'm staying away from anything luxury.
Mhmm. I'm not saying luxury won't exist. I'm saying luxury will exist at a big level. That's just not the game I'm gonna play.
Steve: Right.
Speaker: It's gonna become the haves and the have nots. And I think the have nots are gonna be so much more of a surplus of opportunity that I'm that's where I'm attacking I'm attacking that. So people that are focusing on Airbnb, you're cooked. Like, goodbye. Mhmm.
Airbnb is out the out the window, and it has been. You've seen the last two years. Like, most been
Steve: a struggle for sure in Scottsdale.
Speaker: Oh, yeah. Everybody nationwide. I had 75 Airbnbs, in Atlanta, Georgia a couple years ago, then they outlawed it. The Marriott group comes out and just fries everybody, right, almost overnight. So I sell a bunch of assets.
I reposition them into midterm rentals. I do a bunch bunch of other things. And I'm like, okay. I'm not gonna focus on luxury housing. I'm not gonna focus on anything that pisses off the hotel industry.
They have a lot more money. Yeah. They do. I'm gonna go focus on affordable housing where government will literally give me grants or give me the things. And so that's where I've been focusing my time.
And I look at it and go, and in five years, if you right now, watching right now, I think the AI revolution is possibly the greatest thing that could happen to people that have been sitting on the sidelines going, I just need think about the your coaching clients. Right? Think about the people I've I've coached over the last several years. You get people that come to you. Why?
Not everybody, but let's say 15% of people come to you and they go, Steve, I've been watching your stuff. I know that there's money on the other side of my action, but I really just need the accountability to get over that hump. Right. Okay. So I think the AI is the is the cat in the maze, and I'll tell you what that means.
So, there was a study being done on rats, and they were going, alright. Well, we need to come up with the best rat poison on the planet. So let's change out the food that is on the other side of the maze, and let's time how fast the rats move from the beginning to the end of the maze where the food is. Mhmm. And let's switch out from salami to sardines to this to that.
Like, what's the stinkiest thing that we could get those rats to run their ass off to go as fast as they possibly can because they have this compelling future. Right? I know there's a something in the trap. Well, they had tested hundreds of different foods, variations. Let's put sardines on top of this, and let's mix it with tuna.
Let's let it rot for five days. Like, they did all of those things, and they found foods that ultimately turned into the rat poison that we see today.
Steve: Mhmm.
Speaker: K? But what was interesting is they this one of the scientists there were seven scientists on the project. One came in and he goes, hey. You know what? I got an idea.
Let's put the scent of a cat in the maze Mhmm. And let's just see what happens to this rat. Yeah. And so they put the scent of the the rat in the center of the maze. What does it do to the rat?
It freezes the rat. It does not move. It will not go. Even though it can smell the food, it freezes the rat. Nothing at all?
Nothing. Does nothing. Analysis paralysis. Where's the cat? Where's the cat?
I know there's cat. There's cat. There's cat. I don't know where the cat is. Oh my gosh.
Right? So it's a lot of people trying to get started in sales or real estate or wholesale or fixing it, whatever. There's there I don't know. I don't know what's gonna happen, but I know there's danger out there, so I better not do shit. Mhmm.
Right? Okay. Well, here's the thing. That same scientist is like, you know what we should do? We should take that cat scent and put it behind the rat Mhmm.
And see how fast it runs now so we it knows it's behind it.
Steve: Mhmm.
Speaker: And that cat scent being pumped in behind the rat made that rat run twice as fast towards the other side of the maze than any food ever did.
Steve: Right. Of course.
Speaker: And so the there's that old quote that I I remember, and I know you two do too, is that people are more afraid of loss than they are motivated by gain. Right. And so there's the people. They're like, I know real estate will change my life. I know sales will change my life.
I know these things will change my life, but I'm afraid. Okay? But that's because the cat was in front of you. Mhmm. I'm telling you with AI, the cat's being put behind you.
You are being given a gift. You have five freaking years before you are cooked. Yeah. And so this does not push you forward as fast as humanly possible. You're gonna be stuck in this maze.
You're you're you're cooked. The rat the rat the thing the rats are all gonna die.
Steve: I completely agree with you except for one thing. What? I don't think it's five years. I think it's, like, a year at most.
Speaker: You think a year?
Steve: I think this recession we're gonna have is gonna be catastrophic.
Speaker: I think you're right. I'll tell you a couple of things.
Steve: So The only reason why I don't think it'd be the only reason why I think it'd be longer is because there's not enough people playing with AI. I think that's the only reason
Speaker: It's adoption. Yeah. All day long. Like, there's people I hang out with. I was just I just spoke for Brandon Turner, in Austin on Monday.
And shout out Brandon Turner. Have you had him on the show? I haven't. I should get you to get him on the show.
Steve: Love to have him on the show.
Speaker: Awesome. Awesome, dude. So I speak for him in Austin, and I'm talking to some people in the hallway, and I'm like, do you realize how AI is, like, gonna cook all of us? Bro, they're not even they they would have to know something about it to be in denial. They are so far removed.
They're in, like, twenty nineteen mindset Mhmm. Of, like, they're still scrolling on Zillow. They're still manually cold calling. They're, like, writing things down. And these are people in their thirties.
These are not sixties and 70 year old people. Yeah. Right? So I think that you're right. The adoption is actually what's going to prevent people it's like the human beings are going to stop the adoption, and what's gonna happen is the world's gonna change around them that they were gonna be forced to adopt it like Circle k.
Look at Circle k. You go into Circle k. Do you need to talk to a human to buy some shit?
Steve: No. I got a scanner. I got a scanner. In fact A scanner is amazing.
Speaker: I've tried to trick that son of a thing. I'm like, I had a donut one day, and I stuck a thing of gum under it. And I was like, this stupid robot can't it caught it. And I'm like, I coulda I coulda tricked the human. I coulda put the gum under need the donut, and I coulda gotten some free gum.
Yeah. Not that I'm trying to jack gum, but I'm just trying to point out a thing that these robots are better than the humans. And it's slowly slowly integrating into our life.
Steve: So we launched Objection Proof AI. Yeah. It hasn't been two months. We literally have hundreds of people in there that are going through using AI to review their sales calls automatically, role playing with the bots. The people that aren't using it Getting left behind.
They're getting crushed by the people that are working with us. Right. I don't know how else to put it. Like, I don't wanna sound cocky or arrogant. It's just, like, if your worst sales guy is getting better every single day because they're practicing with their role play bots and they're reviewing every single call, you know, like, most sales teams, they've got, like, one or maybe two good sales guys.
Speaker: Yeah.
Steve: Right? Everyone we're working with, everyone on their team's gonna be good.
Speaker: It's like the there's a story. I won't go into the whole story. There's a story about two farmer brothers, and they hated each other. They were both gifted the same size of land from their father across the street from each other. And they would continually compete with each other.
Like, who's gonna wake up earlier? Who's gonna produce the most grain? Who's gonna make the most money? Like, f you, bro. I should've gotten that piece of land.
Your dad should've never you know, all of that. And they went back and forth, and the only way that they can compete with each other in any sort of meaningful meaningful way was at the time, was wake up earlier, stay out later. Right? Get another horse. Mhmm.
Right? Spend more money on a living, breathing animal. Yeah. Then one brother brings home a tractor one day, and he saved up his money. He didn't get it.
He he spent his money on on the tractor, and he was done literally. This is what's crazy about this. This is a real story, by the way. He gets done now by noon versus what he couldn't get done by, let's say, say, 08:00 every single day. So he just goes to his brother and goes, you can't compete with me.
Yeah. So how about you just sell me your farm?
Speaker: And that's what he did.
Steve: It's where we're at.
Speaker: That's where we're at. And so the people that are, you know, spending the money on the tractor, which would would be your guys' app or your guys' software, those people two months ago, three months ago had the same competitive advantage. Now they have a tractor. You're gonna gobble up everybody else. Yeah.
And they have no choice but just go, it's yours. Right? I see it all the time right now in our in the wholesale industry. I see people that are not adopting AI and not adopting efficiencies, and they're bloated. They have way too large of teams, and their payrolls are huge.
And it's like, man, for one per person on your team, you gotta get an extra wholesale deal every single month just to pay for that person, which means that person has gotta get two deals every single month. Okay. But AI can bring in three deals, and it cost me the same amount of money whether it gets one deal or three.
Steve: Right. Right?
Speaker: And it's a thousand bucks. So you're right. It's, it's an unfair competitive advantage, and the people that are jumping into it and waking up early and staying up late and doing the weekends and, like, actually researching it are winning. And that's what's gonna I think it's a gift. For the people that are using it as a gift, it's a gift.
Steve: Yeah. For
Speaker: the people that are not, that are, you know, ostrich and head in the sand, they're you're cooked. You're freaking cooked. So I I look at the Airbnb people. This was me three years ago. I was telling all our friends that are Airbnb people.
Some of them were like coaches saying Airbnb is the greatest thing. I'm like, this that model is gonna be gone. AI is coming out. This is when ChatGPT was, like, not really quite a thing, but I knew about it. Really?
Yeah. It was like nobody was talking about ChatGPT three years ago. Yeah. I knew about it. I was on Twitter watching all this stuff happening.
I'm like, oh my gosh. Is this real? And so I told him, I go, dude, here's what's gonna happen. The economy's gonna crash. There's nobody gonna be vacationing.
Marriott Group is gonna come here and gobble all this kind of stuff up. Airbnb is gonna be gone. Not, like, a 100% gone, but what's gonna happen is the top 10% will rise to the top. The 90% will it will be so bad for them that they will just have to leave the industry out. And that's exactly what happened.
What happened is Airbnb comes in and goes, man, 400,000 people on our platform are not performing properly because they're so overwhelmed with their nine to five job. They're, like, solo operators. They're not using systems and processes and AI and all this kind of stuff. The experiences are so bad. They took 400,000 houses on the platform four months ago.
Did you see that?
Speaker: I did
Speaker: not. 400,000 houses off the platform. The luxury vacation market, all of that kind of stuff, it's going away. And so if you are in real estate or if you're wanting to get into real estate, I would suggest focus on affordable housing. RV parks, mobile home parks, they're there's not just they dominate in down markets.
They are superior in every possible way. Somebody asked me the other day, what do you do for a living? I go, I rent dirt. And what do you mean? Well, I buy RV parks and mobile home parks on seller finance and sub two.
I then just rent the dirt to people, and I make income. Like, my I have two RV parks in Montana. That just those two RV parks, I could never worry about money ever again.
Speaker: Mhmm.
Speaker: And the majority of the people living in the RV parks are who? You think, oh, they're recreational vehicles. Right? They're RVs. No.
They're people going, we tried to retire on Social Security. Inflation went up so bad that we cannot live a normal life. So we had to hit the road and live in an RV because we can live in your RV spot for a thousand dollars a month utility. And now we just live here for every single month. There's a thousand bucks to live.
Steve: I've been hearing more and more about people just living in RVs. Yeah.
Speaker: I saw
Speaker: it happening five years ago when COVID hit. I saw that you could not get an RV and go, oh my gosh. Where's the world going? Mhmm.
Steve: Oh, I remember because you were trying to buy, you're you you eventually bought it, but what was it? An Airstream.
Speaker: Yeah. Yeah. Laura and I Laura and I, five years ago in 2020, COVID hits, and, I go, oh, kids are out. Let's go see what the RV park world looks like. That's when I started getting to RV parks.
Steve: Mhmm.
Speaker: And
Speaker: so we went and we went to, like, 40 of them. We spent seven or eight months on the road, and I was like, this is the wave of the future. It's RV parks, mobile home parks. Now, of course, like, Grant Cardone is going after hyper luxury Mhmm. Because the rich are going to get richer, and they're gonna need a place to live.
Miami. Look what happen is happening in Miami. It's crazy.
Speaker: Mhmm.
Speaker: But everywhere else is getting poorer. Right? There's, like, seven pockets where people are getting, richer, but the majority of them, like, Scottsdale was just rated the number one hub for entrepreneurs, people moving in in The United States. So Scottsdale, you look at Paradise Valley, they're selling 30,000,000, $40,000,000 homes, and big tech people are coming in here because TSMC is coming. It's it's crazy what's happening.
There are people making a lot of money that are leaning in on AI, and then there's the people that aren't.
Steve: Everybody else.
Speaker: And and what are they gonna do? That's what I'm saying.
Steve: I think this recession is gonna be bad in a year.
Speaker: It's not and it's not a recession that we will recover from. It will be a new world. And what I mean by that is let's look at truck drivers. Right? You're a Tesla guy.
Steve: Mhmm.
Speaker: Elon has these trucks that are cruising on the roads right now. All truck drivers, in my personal opinion, are gone within three to seven years. And when I say all, I mean 90% because there's obviously the random one off route that's hard to get a robot to do or whatever, or they're doing construction sites from Home Depot to here. But the long route truck drivers, 7,000,000 people live in that industry. 7,000,000.
Our current unemployment is, like, 2,000,000 people. We're gonna literally quadruple the unemployment rate just from truck drivers. Yeah. What about software engineers? What about you know, you went to school to be an engineer.
Right? I did. Why? All engineers.
Steve: Yeah. Right? Most engineers. That's what what what I'm seeing is I was talking to somebody, and they had their own software development team. And they had senior developers and junior developers.
Mhmm. And he was thinking, man, like, I could just let go of all the junior developers and just have just empower the super the the senior developer with all the AI tools, whatever. Right? No. That's what he was thinking.
Speaker: He went it was the opposite.
Steve: It was the opposite. Mhmm. He only needed one junior developer. He didn't even need a senior developer anymore with AI in place.
Speaker: Yeah.
Steve: Like, if you look at everything I've built out, I've built it all out with the assistance of AI.
Speaker: The reality too is, like I I actually was just listening to this this morning. Peter Dumanda's awesome podcast, Moonshot.
Steve: Mhmm.
Speaker: He was talking about AI will amplify the creators. Right? And you're a creator. So you went out and created a product. It's like AI doesn't know what the environment needs.
Exactly. You do. Yes. So you have to go out and take the AI, develop it, make it happen, and then implement it into the market and obviously do the marketing, and you're the human spokesperson behind that.
Steve: Right.
Speaker: So personal brand, ideation, creating, and application. Like, where is this thing actually going to be applied is where your tools are best suited. If people don't have that, what what are they gonna do?
Steve: With Cameron Herold, we learned that business is brutally hard, and that's normal. This episode with Cameron Herold might be the most honest conversation we've ever had about business. Cameron didn't sugarcoat anything. He walked us through moments where his companies looked incredibly successful from the outside, awards, media, massive growth. While behind the scenes, they were close to falling apart.
Payroll stress, banks saying no, leading hundreds of people while carrying the pressure you can't show publicly. What really stuck with me was when Cameron explained why entrepreneurs never talk about those moments while they're happening. You still have to lead. You still have to show confidence. That's why so many people think success is easy because no one posts about the fears.
This episode was a reminder that struggle isn't failure. It's part of building anything real. And then what happened after that? What were the what was the next stop?
Speaker: So after that, I I that's when I was clinically redlining. I was burned out. I had a nervous breakdown. I weighed heavier than I do today. I was drinking a lot.
I was smoking. I'm really unhealthy. And, I moved out to Canada. I was getting married, and, I didn't know what I was gonna do. I met with a bunch of guys in my forum group from EEO, and I talked to them about not being sure of what to do.
And Brian, who was the founder of what was called the Rubbish Boys at the time, later became one eight hundred Got Junk.
Steve: Those are the Rubbish Boys?
Speaker: Yeah. It was called the Rubbish. And the term Rubbish Boys didn't make any sense in North in US. It made sense in Canada, but no one understood what rubbish was. It's junk.
Steve: Yeah. I mean, I think of that as, like, an English term.
Speaker: Correct. But Canada was part of the English company also. So it made sense for us. We under like, I could give you a bunch of Canadian phrases you have no idea. Chesterfield and Touke and,
Steve: you know Yeah.
Speaker: Great. Yeah. Downspout. You have no idea. Yeah.
So we're different. So we had to he so he had to change the name of that company to market into The US. And, anyway, so I sat down with four or five of the guys in my forum and said, here's my case. I don't know what I'm gonna do. I don't know what I should do.
I don't know what I love. And they said, you should coach entrepreneurs. And I'm like, all I know is barter and house painting. Hate auto body. And Brian said, well, you know how to hire people, and you know how to train people.
So why don't you train franchisors?
Steve: Mhmm.
Speaker: I'm like, I don't even know any franchisors. And he goes, I'm starting to franchise. You could coach me. And I'm like, you could never franchise junk removal. Like, it's a dumb idea.
Steve: Talk about limiting beliefs. Very, very, very limiting belief.
Speaker: Anyway, short long story short, he hired me to coach him and to coach his head of operations at the time, a guy named Jesse Corzan. So I started coaching them and doing some consulting work for them by the hour.
Speaker: Mhmm.
Steve: I was
Speaker: billing them a $120 an hour. This was back in 2000.
Steve: Mhmm.
Speaker: And, but I was stacking fifteen hour days. You know, I was just cranking it because I needed the cash to come through, and I was a workaholic. And and then he's like, I can't afford to pay these crazy hourly wait. I'm like, well, you need to get all this stuff done. He goes, I know.
Why don't you come full time? So I joined him full time. Mhmm. His head of operations quit because he couldn't do the job. We're still friends.
And, I then became the the chief operating officer of the business, and we went from that was I was employee number 14. Mhmm. When I left six and a half years later, we had 3,100 employees system wide. We were operating in 330 cities, 13 corporate locations, four countries, and, I scaled it from 2,000,000 to a 106,000,000.
Steve: So it's pretty good. 106,000,000. Yeah. So employee 14, you said? Yeah.
And it's over 3,000.
Speaker: 3,100 system wide.
Steve: So I imagine you learned a lot while working there.
Speaker: A little bit. So Failed a lot too.
Steve: Okay. So let's start there then. Let's talk about some of the biggest failures while you're there.
Speaker: Not delegating fast enough. It was amazing how that was not something that I'd learned yet. Mhmm. But I was still pretty radically self reliant, and I would still try to crank through things and brute force my way through stuff. I was often like a fly trying to bang my head against the window.
If I tried harder, I'd get out the window. Mhmm. I learned how to delegate finally. I went in and got junk, but I think I needed But
Steve: you already had all the people reporting to you prior to this.
Speaker: You had a
Speaker: lot
Speaker: of relevant variance. Did too much. I see. And I think I because we doubled the revenue of our company six years in a row. So this was the first true hypergrowth company that
Speaker: I did.
Steve: Doubled. Yeah. Six years in a row.
Speaker: Yeah. From 2,000,000 to a 106,000,000.
Steve: I think there are a lot of people that would kill for those numbers to double six years in a row.
Speaker: Yeah. To double to double to double once every three years is is, 27% growth a year. You You double every three years. That's what people would think is good growth. Mhmm.
We doubled every year.
Steve: Yeah. Okay. So, yeah, your major
Speaker: It was actually by design because we went from 2,000,000 to 6,000,000 in year one. And Brian and I were meeting with our lawyer, Andrew Sherman, and he said, where do you guys wanna be in five years? And I said a 100,000,000, and Brian said a 100,000,000. And we kinda looked at each other, and we're like, I don't know. I don't know where I came up with that number.
And he's like, me neither. And Andrew goes, well, that's the number.
Speaker: Mhmm.
Speaker: Okay. So that night, we sat down and reverse engineered in rough. We then did it very formally.
Steve: Mhmm.
Speaker: But
Speaker: we reverse engineered a 100,000,000 back to 6,000,000 in the five years, and we did it. We got to a 106.
Speaker: Mhmm.
Speaker: Okay. That was by plan. Yeah.
Steve: I think there are a lot of engineer a lot of entrepreneurs have plans, hopes and plans. There's still a lot of They're different. Discipline.
Speaker: Hopes and plans are different. Yeah. So with a plan, you have to have a lot of rigor around focusing on the critical few things versus the important many. Mhmm.
Steve: You have
Speaker: to really understand your skills and your weaknesses. You have to really understand kinda where to deploy people and cash and time. You have to reverse engineer everything Mhmm. And stick to that. It's like a lot of plan your work and work your plan.
Steve: Mhmm. We used
Speaker: to have a at 100 GOT JUNK over our whiteboards, a saying up on the wall that said plan, brief, execute, debrief. We learned that from the from the Air Force. So there was a lot of rigor around our plans and around execution.
Speaker: Mhmm. I
Speaker: think a lot of people have goals. They don't break it down. They don't reverse engineer it. And then or they set some that are so big and so lofty that there's no possible way they're gonna get there.
Steve: Mhmm.
Speaker: Right? We had we definitely had possibility around every goal. We we really agonized over making sure it was possible. Got it. We even decided, like, that week or two after that we said that we'd do the 100,000,000, we said, like, what what are we willing to compromise?
Will we compromise our core values? No. Would we kill someone to get there? No. Would we steal to get there?
No. Will we compromise our health? To a point, not really. No. Right?
So there was all these, like, we we figured out what our boundaries were gonna be. And then it was just a series of, okay. Well, what do we need to do to get there? One of the things I did is I raised our prices 40%. Mhmm.
And if we won't be able to get there, we're not gonna be a little profitable charging what you're charging right now. So I rate and everyone is like, we're gonna go bankrupt. I'm like, you're going bankrupt anyway. So those kinds of things were things that we executed.
Steve: What was it? You said plan? Brief. Brief. Alright.
Can you dive deep real or at least in the brief?
Speaker: Sure. Well, so the plan is the leadership or the or the manager coming up with some kind of a plan that needs to be executed. Then it's sitting down with the people that are gonna do the work Mhmm. And briefing them on that work, walking them through it, explaining it, making sure they have the skills, the confidence, and the connections to execute on that plan. Mhmm.
Right? And then kinda stepping back and coaching them. And then it's the execute. Right? So plan, brief, execute, letting them do it.
Again, sitting back observing. And then the debrief is coaching what went well, what didn't go well. So it's stuff that I even cover at my invest in your leaders training. It's like it's it's these skills around growing and developing people, around execution, around priority management, time management, time blocking.
Steve: So I would say
Speaker: And I learned all that at College Pro Painters. That's really where I learned to do that. Like, there's no way you can build a 9,000 person company from scratch Mhmm. Without reverse engineering every single aspect of it.
Steve: So I would say that the part I would definitely I definitely struggle with is the briefing. Yeah.
Speaker: So Often, entrepreneurs do. Because we have it in our mind, and we dump it on people's laps when
Steve: we Here's what
Speaker: I want. Right. Go do it. Right. They don't understand why, what it looks like, what finish is like, how much time you want them to spend, how little money you want them to spend.
There's a skill around delegation that people
Steve: So let's dive deeper into that. So we got this plan. Mhmm. 100,000,000 in five years. Yep.
How do you brief your company about this?
Speaker: K. So let's say that let's say that there is a plan, and I need to get something done. I'm gonna decide what are all the steps of the things that we need done. How many hours will each of those steps take? Who will do each of those steps on the project plan?
Step one is gonna get done by Kelly. It's gonna take three hours. Do they have the skill to do it? Do they have the confidence to do it? And then I'm gonna use situational leadership to apply the right style on that.
Mhmm. Step number two is gonna be done by Bob. It takes eight hours. Does he have the skill or the confidence? I'm gonna apply situational leadership.
Speaker: Mhmm.
Speaker: So you you come up with a plan, who's gonna do it, you assess the style, then you coach and develop them. Stuff that, again, comes off so easy for me, but it's stuff that I learned at College Pro Painters. It was the rigor of it was my real world MBA.
Steve: Mhmm.
Speaker: I'll give a really good example of this. My first summer at College Pro Painters, they said to me, how much money do you wanna make this summer? I said, well, the flyer said 10,000. They said, what would you wanna make? I'm like, 15?
And they go, do you wanna make a goal of 15? I'm like, yeah. Let's do 15. They go, do you know how to get there? I'm like, I have no idea.
They said, do you want me to show you how much revenue you need to do to end up at 15,000 in profit? I went, sure. So they showed me the math. I'm like, okay. I'm gonna do 70,000 in revenue.
They said, do you know how many houses you need to do seven I'm like, I have no idea. They said, well, your average job size in this area is about $748. True number. So you have to do about 90 jobs that end up at $70,000 in revenue. I'm like, then I'm gonna do 90 jobs.
They go, do you know how many estimates you need to do to land 90 jobs? I'm like, I got no idea. They go, well, the average franchisee lands 50% of the jobs. I'm like, then put me down for 50. They go, what if you miss 50?
I'm like, then I'm screwed. Put me down for 45%. But coach me just closed 60%.
Steve: Mhmm.
Speaker: We budgeted on 45. They coached me to get to 60. Well, where are you gonna get a 180 estimates? I'm like, I got no idea. Here's the marketing you'll do.
So we backed it all the way up to all the mark and then every week, I knew how much marketing I needed to do to get how many estimates to land the jobs. I maniacally focused around those critical few things. And at the end of the summer, I ended up making 15,000 in profit doing $69,600 in revenue.
Steve: So you have a plan?
Speaker: Brief. Brief execute. Debrief.
Steve: It's fascinating.
Speaker: The debrief is coaching. Mhmm. Right? The debrief is consulting. The debrief is cheering them on.
Steve: It sounds so simple.
Speaker: It is.
Steve: And it's, it's when you put it this way, I mean, it's kinda how we have goal planning with our salespeople.
Speaker: Correct.
Steve: What do you wanna accomplish this year?
Speaker: Oh, let me give you one on there.
Steve: Oh, go ahead.
Speaker: Do you know that if you have 10 salespeople
Steve: Mhmm.
Speaker: And you ask them what their goals are Mhmm. As a company, you'll end up at 87 of the sum of their goals. Right? So if you've got 10 salespeople and they're all a million dollar goal, you're gonna end up at that's 10,000,000 in total. You'll end up at 8.7.
I don't know why. It's called the 87% rule.
Steve: I haven't heard of that.
Speaker: The way I was and and it's true. If you go back and look at all your data, you add up your employees' goals for a week, for a month, whatever, you always end up at 87% of the sum of their goals. The way I was explained to it back in 1986 at College Pro Painters was you need coverage. You need buffer. If I'm a high jumper and I wanna clear six foot six, I gotta get most of my body at six foot eight, six foot ten so that my butt just grazes the bar.
Mhmm. But if I aim to hit six foot six, I'm gonna knock it off with my shoulders. Right. You always have to have a little bit more. So you have a budgeted number, and then you have a goal, and then you have a stretch goal.
Mhmm. So the budget is what we're going to freaking hit. Mhmm. The goal is what we're gonna drive towards. You need your salespeople's goals to be higher than your company's budget because you're gonna end up at 87% of what their goals are.
Steve: It's it's fascinating because I was actually doing a coaching call earlier today, and
Speaker: we're
Steve: talking about, like, standards and this and that. And, it was the the coaching client's a vendor, and then they have their their, clients or people that buy buy houses. Right? And they were talking about, like, you know, the challenges that their clients were having. And then what I was saying is, like, well, the problem is they have these standards that just aren't enough because they're expecting that their clients are ex they're expecting their salespeople to hit their numbers all the time.
I was like, well, that is a lousy expectation. Correct. You can't run a business Correct. Assuming all your salespeople are gonna do everything.
Speaker: Exactly. So that's why you committed to 7%. So I took that idea, and I figured out at College Pro Painters, they had the goals of all the franchisees Mhmm. Stretched to be a bit higher. Yeah.
So the reason that I came in at $10,000 and they thought, what about 15? He then had coverage.
Steve: Mhmm.
Speaker: Because his budget was 10.
Steve: Right? He He was doing.
Speaker: Bingo. And so when I became a general manager and had to go out and recruit, hire, and train Mhmm. When I sat down with Kimbal Musk the first day, I'm like, how much money do you wanna make this summer? And he said 15,000. I go, what would your year be like next year if you made 19?
He goes, game changing. I go, you wanna do 19?
Steve: Mhmm.
Speaker: Talk about that. But you learn those skills. Right? So I think that's what people need to remember is that if you're gonna be an entrepreneur, your success is gonna be accumulative, like, this accumulation of all the list lessons you learn along the way. So go apprentice for some company for six months and and take a bunch of ideas.
Go apprentice for another company, take a bunch of ideas. Just keep learning the ideas. Yeah.
Steve: So going back to, like, your your your your briefing is kinda like when we go with our salespeople, like, what are your goals? Alright. For for you accomplish those goals, how much money do you need to make? Mhmm. Alright.
To make that much make make that much take home, how much how many do you have to do in sales? Correct. And then appointments. Alright. So closed sales, contracts, appointments Correct.
Conversations, and backwards.
Speaker: And then you and then you can coach them at every level where the gears are biggest. Yeah. Right? So one of the big gears is are you talking to enough people? Mhmm.
Another big gear is are you saying the right things to the people? Mhmm. Are you learning how to handle objections? Right? Yeah.
Sometimes we focus on the wrong things. Focus on the biggest gears that, like, turn the biggest numbers. Mhmm. So I had I had an opportunity with when my success ratio or my closing ratio, when I was starting to close 65% of everybody I did estimates for, I raised my prices. Because I knew I couldn't really probably go from 65 to 70.
Mhmm. But if I charged 20% more, right, that was easier than than lending 20% more clients. Right. So all all that it is is plan, brief, execute, debrief. And then on the leadership side is making sure that when you're coaching people, that you're helping remove their obstacles, give them the confidence, give them the connections, give them the skills so they can do
Speaker: more. Mhmm.
Steve: Okay. So amazing. Yeah. So what were the other, big failures at one hundred Got Junk? Jason Palliser completely changed how I think about scaling real estate.
Jason shared that he has 34 different ways to buy real estate, which is impressive in his own right. But what stood out most wasn't how many strategies he uses, It was how simple he makes them. Jason breaks everything down into clear steps so people don't get overwhelmed or stuck overthinking. During the episode, Jason talked about how he used to struggle with analysis paralysis. That resonated with me because most people don't fail from lack of information.
They fail from confusion. This episode reinforced a key lesson. The best operators win because their systems make action easy.
Speaker: Yeah. So, I mean, there's some culprits, you know, between the ears that usually pop up. Fear, self doubt, all those things. So what I've done over the years, I'm like, is, so I teach some nonnegotiables when we kick off a training. I'm like, let's just spend a half an hour on some nonnegotiables.
This is who you are, how you operate before we even talk about getting deals. And what I tell them is simply this, if you can become incredibly good at your workflow and your process, and you can attack a city 34 ways, and just do your job, then the deals happen on the back end. So what I I tell them, I go, I'm personally relieving you of worrying about getting a deal. Mhmm. And and I what I like to do is say, hey, the moment you say, let me run some accounts, I wanna make sure I'm doing a deal correctly.
The moment you do that, I usually smile and we go, hey, good news. I just locked up that contract. Try again tomorrow.
Speaker: Mhmm.
Speaker: Because you overthinking and so I tell them, if you just get good at the process, which is he or she makes the most offers, wins Mhmm. I go, if you understand that, you need to get to the disagreement in price as fast as possible because that's just a natural flow of creating a relationship. And then if you know multiple different ways to bridge the gap and find common ground and get a contract, which is how contracts end at the end up at the title company Mhmm. Then all of a sudden, I'll I'll show you a person that's actually running a predictable business. So what I do is I tell them, you don't have to worry about getting a deal because that's what everybody does, and that's what people getting started do.
Mhmm. I don't want you to live in that world. Let's live in a world where no one's gonna run my process better than me, and no one's gonna make more offers than me knowing that, I won't get every offer accepted. Yeah. But I know 14 different ways to bridge the gap.
And, like, one example, I guess, a good example for everybody that watches this would be if you if you understand that a seller's I'm a use easy numbers. Seller always wants a 100 and you're at 80. It's gonna happen every time. Mhmm. Most investors will say, I'll follow-up with you.
If anything changes, could you call me back? I'm interested. That's all they got. Right? So if you understand nuances and wrinkles that it's natural to be divert, apart on price, but you do little things like, I just appreciate you're not using a realtor to save money.
In fact, I don't buy your house. I'll help you market your home for free. All I ask is, if anybody you know ever wants to sell easily, quickly, just think of us.
Steve: Mhmm.
Speaker: And then when they say yes, I will market their property, get three or four people interested at above what they wanted. Mhmm.
Speaker: So
Speaker: now I'm making money out of thin air and pro property I don't have under contract yet. So Right. When somebody's getting started, I just simply say, you're so worried about, you know, for lack of a better phrase. And for those of you who know me, you know, I speak in these terms. You're so worried about hammering a seller on why they need to accept your price
Steve: Mhmm.
Speaker: Versus becoming the most valuable to them, which is when they decide to do business with you. If I can just relieve you of that and worrying about stop worrying about getting deals and just master the process, then I'll show you somebody that can do this full time because this doesn't have to be hard.
Steve: Yeah. So we've detached emotions from this. Oh, yeah. Right? Just do the activity.
Do the activity. Let's just focus on doing the activity. Correct. Everything else take care of itself.
Speaker: 100%.
Steve: Yeah. Yeah. Yep. So then which is fantastic. Yeah.
I think there is a lot like, a lot of the burnout, a lot of the fears happens because they're overthinking it.
Speaker: Oh, yeah.
Steve: So then I'll take it one step further.
Speaker: Why don't we develop a pill that says, take this overthinking pill, and you just don't overthink anymore, and I'll show you tons of people that are gonna do it full time. Right?
Steve: I mean, one of the things that we've said before is, like, there are so many people way dumber than you, way more successful than you.
Speaker: I say the same thing. I'm like, it's not the smartest person in the room. Yeah. It's the person that's gonna do their job and not overthink.
Steve: Right.
Speaker: I go and some of us, you know, there's classic process, over thinkers, and they wanna they wanna make sure they're doing it right, which I applaud. But the person that'll just do exactly what you teach them to do or I teach them to do and just follow it will end up winning.
Steve: Those are my favorite people, by the way.
Speaker: By far. Yeah. By far.
Steve: So you have also become a master of processes.
Speaker: Mhmm.
Steve: How did you become a master of processes but not be an overthinker? Because I think, like, there's a lot of overlap between being good at processes and thinking too much.
Speaker: Yep. 100%. So the way I solve that, because I am a classic telling on myself, I'm a classic over thinker, folks. And, so it's just how I work. And, so what I did was I mapped out the process, and I would have a meeting with my team Mhmm.
Once a month. And it was just a half an hour meeting called not good enough. And so what we would do is we would look at a process, like, how can we make it better? Mhmm. And at the risk of failure, we would test things out that we didn't know if it would work or not Mhmm.
Just to see if we could streamline the process. Got it. And some of it failed, some of it worked. Mhmm. What the byproduct of that was that I I told him, I go, effective immediately.
None of us overthink. We just throw stuff out there, and we'll see if it works or doesn't work, and we'll let the chips fall.
Steve: Yeah.
Speaker: And so what we started doing was tracking things in a hundred and twenty day increments all the way down to with 34 different lead flows, like, I you know, from some of these larger companies, I get paid to track the performance of diff not all lead flows are created equal folks. So some are follow-up with people for four years. Some some lead flows come to you and say, make me an offer right now.
Steve: Mhmm.
Speaker: And so we started tracking all that. And the byproduct of us saying, throw caution to the wind and let's just add one or two little wrinkles is that the process became better. Some things failed. We know not to do that for the rest of our careers.
Steve: Right.
Speaker: Right? So and then we document it. We built out, mind mapping systems before it was sexy or even popular. And we just follow we just follow that path every single time. This type of transaction goes down this corridor.
This one goes down this corridor.
Speaker: Mhmm.
Speaker: And and, you know, and we still do that today.
Speaker: Yeah. Period.
Steve: So, talking to we were we detached emotions. Right? Just do the processes.
Speaker: Mhmm. 100.
Steve: So then if they go one step further in offending, you know, the processes and not doing it, what do you do then?
Speaker: So if they don't follow the process, what do we do?
Steve: Yeah. Like, hey. Like, you're supposed to do this much activity every single day. Right? You paid me for coaching.
I showed you the processes, and now it's not like, hey. I didn't go do these things. Like, you're not even doing the processes now.
Speaker: Correct. So conversation like? Mine's pretty straightforward. So even on the front end, when we I'm like, hey. We're gonna put this in place.
We're gonna do things the right way. So you've asked me a question that in a manner that no one's asked me before, so this will be the first time publicly I say this besides that training, which happens every single time, is that I tell everybody, I'm like, great news. I've mapped out a perfect investor day that you can get done in two and a half hours. It doesn't take all day to do. You can get more done in two and a half hours, and most investors can get done in one week to two weeks.
Mhmm. If you don't follow the process and I find out, great news, I'm gonna make you famous. And so I tell them all, I'll go Facebook live and say, hey, follow Charles around. Do the exact opposite of everything he does and you'll be wildly successful. And, and everybody everybody's like, well, I guess I better follow the process.
But we still have people who fall off the wagon. Right. I have a I have a gentleman, Jaime, out of Houston. Hey, Jaime.
Steve: Famous?
Speaker: Yeah. Making him famous. He'll he he likes it. He goes, anytime you can make me famous, do it. Because the byproduct was now he's doing it full time.
Speaker: Mhmm.
Speaker: So he said, hey. Admittedly, I wasn't doing and this was eighteen months later. He came back to me. He goes, hey. I'm gonna tell him myself.
I didn't I haven't been following the process. And I was getting in my own way. I was overthinking it. He goes, would you help me? And I go, absolutely.
And so I said, here's what we're gonna do. You're gonna meet with somebody on our team. We're gonna put a what a work week looks like. You're gonna do it. Expect not to get a deal, but at the end of the week, I just need you to check every box.
And then week two is what you're gonna do. So we did that for a three week runway, and I think you got one under contract that actually closed. But the bigger thing for me was that we clearly saw that he was getting his rhythm. Mhmm.
Speaker: Because I
Speaker: was like, hey, if everybody in town, even the biggest player makes a 100 offers in a week, which to a lot of people that watch this back, if I can make a 100 offers without freaking out, that'd be great. I go, well, if we can get you to a 150 offers, what do you think is gonna happen? Mhmm.
Speaker: I
Speaker: go, if you stop worrying about getting a contract, what happens is some will, some won't. Who cares?
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And I tell everybody that will listen, you're gonna make the most money, and I know you know this, you're gonna make the most money on the some won't, which is an initial disagreement of price. Everybody likes some will Mhmm. Where they say, let's do it, and you make money. But you're gonna make the most money on the some won't Mhmm. If you if you create the best relationship with them.
Because when they're ready, those are some of the most profitable deals you do. But if you but if you understand that my process dictates I will make the most money on an initial difference in price
Speaker: Mhmm.
Speaker: Then wouldn't you love to just get to the disagreement on price at that point then?
Steve: Right.
Speaker: Because we know the outcomes when done properly. So, just dust it him off. He's been doing it full time now.
Speaker: Mhmm.
Speaker: And,
Speaker: but yeah.
Speaker: So that's what we do. Like, we expect that people are gonna still overthink. Like, I removed them from running comps. I go, if we handed you a good deal right now, what's the first thing you do? And I don't say anything, and I button and invariably, almost every time, somebody will start flying out of their way.
I run some comps and make sure it's, you know, make sure it's going well. And, I'm like, well, if I handed you a good lead and you run comps, somebody else is already talking creating a relationship with them. Try again tomorrow. Yeah. You run comps later
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: To make yourself feel better. Your process dictates that you always get to the appointment first.
Speaker: Mhmm.
Speaker: And when you teach people that the order you do stuff in truly matters, then then you can watch them, start to master this process and just realize that this is really just a do my job game.
Steve: Yeah. I mean, Bill Belichick, Nick Saban, they've had pretty good careers.
Speaker: Yep.
Steve: And their mottos were both the same. Do your job. Yeah.
Speaker: I mean, three words, do your job.
Speaker: Yeah. Do your job.
Steve: If you do things we know work. Mhmm. The results will take care of themselves.
Speaker: Correct.
Steve: Yeah. So I I heard you say perfect day, two and a half hours. That's more productive than most investors do in a week.
Speaker: Correct.
Steve: What am I doing in that two and a half hours?
Speaker: Oof. How long do we have? So we have it documented. So so sir so certain things we're like, hey. If we're gonna help you attack a city 34 ways and most investors have one or two lead flows Mhmm.
I already know what I, like, I already know what that looks like. They lose, you win. But how do we deliberately map out a path to do that? Because when you say that, some people would be like, oof, I wouldn't know where to start. So that's what a perfect investor day looks like.
Steve: Mhmm.
Speaker: And so we we lay we lay out for everybody a perfect investor day is centered around what things do we do consistently when we get hired to do 50 properties a month for a company Mhmm. That other investors are not doing that produces again and again, contract opportunity, contract opportunity, contract. So in that perfect investor day, what we tell everybody is that you add one new lead flow at a time. So there's certain things that we do over and over and over and then add one new one new lead flow. As an example, just one example.
I tell everybody, no matter how good you are. So and I really hope this sinks in. No matter how good you are, somebody can always beat you to a deal. And so then, where training and mentorship comes in is, if someone even though you're good and you can beat people to most things, if someone can always beat you to a deal, you can't control that, because it's just that's the universe that happens. Right?
So if you can't control that, we teach control what you can control.
Speaker: Mhmm.
Speaker: I can't control that
Steve: I can get
Speaker: to everything first even though it's been my job for a long time. But what I can control is that on the number three, four website in the world, Facebook, in the real estate groups, I can still verify every morning that nothing's there, that I might want or I might know somebody else that wants it. So I can't control if somebody beat me to a deal, but I can control every morning that while my coffee is still brewing, that I've already gone through each group, which is this fast.
Speaker: Mhmm.
Speaker: Just like that because there's 20 posts. You're done in ten seconds. I'm verifying, and I and I my mindset stuff. Right? Stop looking for a deal.
I just verified there's nothing today. Mhmm. Because then I did I did my job properly. I'm every single morning, without fail, we verify if there's nothing today. And what happens, and I tell everybody, in a calendar year, in all these Facebook groups for real estate, there's easily eight lay down deals.
Speaker: Mhmm.
Speaker: The ZIP code you want, price point you want, you didn't even have to negotiate. But if your process doesn't dictate that you go there first every day, then you're never gonna get those deals. Right? Yeah. So that's just one.
We we teach people that, again, tracking the thirty, forty for lead flows. Driving for dollars is always a top four, five, or six, out of 34 ways that we grab properties. We do little wrinkles that are a little bit different than just a regular skip trace and cold call. Right? But we say, hey.
Get 25 a week. Here's why. Somebody owns a house and it still looks like that. Somebody owns a house that still looks like that, which is a very good lead, and other investors would probably try to reach out to them. No fruit for their effort.
That's why they still own it, and that's why it still looks like that. So by process of elimination, that's a good lead. Plus, if I do 25 a week at the end of a year, I have a list of a thousand plus on a list that no one else can buy because, I mean, we're we're here in Arizona. I could buy the same vacant list you did. Neither of us have a competitive advantage over each other.
Exactly.
Speaker: But if
Speaker: I have a list that no one else can buy Mhmm. And every single one on that list is a house that has something going on or needs work, that's the most valuable list I have.
Steve: Right.
Speaker: And then we then we do little things that are just 1% different. Again, tracking this for years. We'll add a note to the property on top of just doing the regular. And I'm just giving you example of our process. We're like, hey.
Once a week in our perfect investor day, just get 25 houses. It'll take you half an hour. Right? But we'll tag the door with a note. By the way, suffocated in a city without a budget takes you cost you 2¢.
Speaker: Mhmm.
Speaker: Everybody's like, oh, my marketing budget's we tag the door with a note that says, call me about your neighbor. Call me about your neighbor, Steve, phone number.
Steve: Mhmm.
Speaker: Because we know that we'll get a 15 to 20% response rate versus folks you drive for dollars, skip trace, text call, text call, text call. Nothing wrong with that. You'll get deals. But we wanna elicit them to call us.
Steve: Mhmm.
Speaker: Right? So, hey, call me about your neighbor because it burns a hole in their brain, and we'll get a 15 to 20% response rate, and we just flip it. Yeah. Call them about my neighbor. Oh, we talked to a neighbor.
Couple of streets over about a house. They said that your street might be a good street to talk to a homeowner. I saw your house. Thank you for calling me.
Speaker: Mhmm.
Speaker: Whether you wanted to sell now or ten years from now, I would love to give you a standing offer. Thanks again for calling me. I didn't have I didn't have to skip trace. I know it's the right phone number.
Steve: Mhmm.
Speaker: Now they know why I wanted to call about the neighbor. We flipped the script on them. We have one gentleman that when I got to that spot where we were teaching, let's do this 1% different and explode our response rate, he stopped class. He goes, hey, I have 11 contracts. I asked Jason one thing to do before I showed up for training.
I have 11 contracts. I'm a broker in North Carolina. His name's Chris Collins. And, Chris is like, please pay attention. I have 11 contracts.
He he put on 20 doors, got one contract. And the other guy goes, yeah, you know, I do need to sell. I have nine other properties. So he's like, I spent less than $20, and I have 11 contracts. It's just a perfect investor day workflow on stuff that we do consistently, and then we add one of the new 34 lead flows at a time.
When that one's running, we do our perfect day and add one more. When that one's running, perfect day, one more. And then you wake up several weeks from now, and you have all these lead flows that lead back to your doorstep. The game's over at that point.
Steve: Yeah. I mean, the thing I, I love about this is that there's no thinking required, which prevents overthinking.
Speaker: Correct.
Steve: And, also, the it's unique, but it's it's different enough. And how do I put it? You're competing as people that have marketing dollars. Right? Like, they're they're
Speaker: Mhmm.
Steve: Out there. They're doing it, and they're all highly effective. Right? But if you're starting off, these are things that you could check check off, and every single one of these that hurts so far is a revenue generating activity.
Speaker: Absolutely. And I was single one. Without a big marketing budget.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Like, do you have to start your car to dominate Facebook groups on real estate? No. Do you even have to get out of bed? No. Mhmm.
I'm like, how fast can we do this, folks? Right? And then people start to see, wow, if I have monumental crop coverage over any market I choose, that this doesn't you you can do this without a big marketing budget. Right?
Steve: AI is changing how sales works forever. In this episode with Ian Ross, we talked about how sales teams used to grow by adding more people and more managers. But now AI has stepped in and changed the game. Instead of babysitting your team, AI can act as your sales manager, setting appointments, following with leads, and making sure nothing falls through the cracks. That matters because the data is clear.
Over 70% of your sales are closed during follow-up, and most teams simply don't do it consistently enough. What really stood out to me is how AI creates accountability without emotion, Sales calls get scored. Follow ups actually happen. Appointments get set automatically. Managers can see exactly where their people are winning and where they're falling short without any guessing.
This episode made one thing obvious. The teams that win in the future won't be the ones working harder. They'll be the ones using AI to execute better. Sales isn't being replaced. Sales is being upgraded.
Speaker: We've got a role play bot Mhmm. That not only are we making sure that it can adjust depending on the personalities, and we're literally developing this right now. Like, this is being developed as we are recording this. Gonna have different personalities based on the disc profile, so high dominant, like, medium high kind of thing. But, also, you can adjust depending on what the industry is, what objection you wanna give it, what objection it wants to do, some variation there.
But the AI tool will be able to not just role play effectively with a salesperson whenever they wanna use it, but will also score that role play. Brad Chandler talked about how do I know if a salesperson is ready? Like, how do I know if they're actually ready? Well, if you can have them role play with every personality type
Speaker: Mhmm.
Speaker: And every role play is scored, you can see, oh, they got above a certain score with all these personalities and overcame all the objections, they're ready. Mhmm. Like, there can be some variation on performance in terms of I'm in a role play environment, and I'm actually doing the sales call. But it should be relatively minimal in a good role play
Speaker: Mhmm.
Speaker: Environment compared to the actual actually being on the sales call. It's a greater variation if you're role playing the way some companies do, which is just like, here's one line to be your one canned response. That's a that's a memory, demonstrating memorizing rather than actually having the skill. Yeah. So as long as you're actually going towards skill, it's I just think role play is the most underutilized tool
Steve: Mhmm.
Speaker: In sales training because it's the closest you can get to show, don't tell, which is how most salespeople actually learn the concept anyway. Yeah. And it's when they get better. It's like you get better from learning the concept through the role play. I always say all the time, like, when if you I ask if anyone plays sports.
They're like, oh, yeah. Yeah. I played whatever, basketball. Mhmm.
Steve: Okay. If you only time you
Speaker: ever shot free throws was when the game was on the line. Would you get better at free throws? When you when you get better at free throws, it's when it's during practice. Yeah. Practice drills, that's when you get better, and so the game is easier.
Like, I love the Michael Jordan concept. Practice is hard, so the game is easy. Yeah. That's what we're trying to do with a role play bot that can score every call, that can make sure it can give variations of the objections so salespeople can get better when revenue is not on the line for the company.
Steve: Yeah. And we have someone a client right now that's using it. I was talking to him earlier, and he's actually still using it. He's still using our role play bot. So our very first iteration that I created, a few weeks ago, they're still using it every morning.
Like, that's awesome. But we're gonna build a more robust one with multiple different personality types, multiple different situations. Yeah. As we feed more data into the system, we can have even a better role play. But one of the things I'm most excited about there's two things I'm really excited about.
One, having to ask a salesperson to role play takes energy, takes a little bit of, like, alright. Ian, let's go role play. Having AI just call your salespeople at 08:30 every single morning to role play. Yeah. That's the easy button.
Right? So the vision here is to have it call your people whatever time you set every single morning so that they're ready to go. But the other thing too is we're hiring salespeople right now. Right? What we're missing at this exact moment, like, I can't wait to have done, is, like, right now, if you want to work for us, you gotta go to you know, you look one of our ads.
Right? You go to disruptorsjobs.com, and you fill it out, and then you have to do the PI test. Right? We're gonna keep harassing you to take the PI test until you take the PI test. Now instead of having taken a whole day out of your schedule, my schedule, Ashley's schedule to interview this person, and then only to watch them fail the role play later on, is we're just gonna have a role play with our bot.
And when you role play with our bot, it's like, hey. Is this person worthy of coming in to take Steve's time, Ian's time, and Ashley's time? Or let's just go ahead and disqualify on the role play before Yep. They even come into the office. So I'm super excited about that.
And I look at again, going back to, you know, technology, I I had not a fax machine, but a fax number my entire career. Right? Starting in 2007, I've been using, what is it, RingCentral as a fax machine. Right? Still have it.
I wanna say the last time I actually received the fax, five years ago Yeah. Yeah. Seven years ago. Right? I actually received a fax, right, at my number.
It's only because banks like to fax, like, short sell paperwork. So looking at this, right, like, we got here's what we're gonna be using role play to train our people. I think the people that aren't following along are gonna be, like, the people that are still using fax machines. Or, like, there was a lot of people, that made a lot of money doing text blasting in 2018, 2019, 2020, and then, you know, and further. But, like, '18 and '19 is a freaking land grab.
Yeah. Right? I'm looking at this. The people that aren't keeping up with this development, whether with us or with somebody else, it's gonna be like those people like, direct mail is back. Yeah.
But there was a period of time. I was like, I am spending a lot of money
Speaker: on direct mail, and
Steve: no one's answering because everyone else was texting them before they actually picked up your postcard. Yep. That's kinda what I'm seeing here. And then there was a situation here. Like, we come back from CG.
I'm going crazy with this. We build it out. Right? And then we turn on our own internal AI review bot. And we're having lunch at Gus's World Famous Chicken.
World Famous. By the way, you know, we're looking for sponsorships, Gus.
Speaker: For sure. Please.
Steve: It's the best fried chicken.
Speaker: Yeah. It's we've been texting about, like, this is ruining fried chicken everywhere else for us.
Steve: Best fried chicken if you guys are in Phoenix. Anyway, we're having lunch at Gus's, and Ashley pulls out his phone, and he's like, hey. Our AI bot is up and running right now? I said, yeah. I told you this morning.
I turned it on. It's reviewing every single call now. And he looks at it and says, hey. So and so is saying these things on the call. Right?
Because it's calling out Yep. What it's not supposed to be doing. And I was thinking, like, man, lunch, the day of, he caught a mistake. Whereas, you know, maybe we do our role play weekly. Not role play.
Call review weekly. Might be a week before we catch that mistake. If we do our, our our call reviews monthly, might be a month before we catch that mistake, or we don't do call reviews at all. Who knows when you catch that mistake?
Speaker: I mean, also, is the salesperson submitting the call review? Are you picking it? Like, you're also only reviewing one call. There's the other aspect of the automation of every call. Like, it it could have been a month.
It could have been a week. It could have been six months. We might have not have known until we'd realized, like, why why are we missing money that we should be having coming in based on what we've projected? Yeah. The idea of the AI tool having immediate feedback, catching a mistake so we could update ourselves first and be like, hey.
Reminder, you're not supposed to say that. Like, oh, yeah. That's right. And make adjustment day of. That is a mini version that we accidentally discovered.
I have a story about now internally
Speaker: that
Speaker: I'm sure we will hear more and more about because, like, the idea of managers listening to every call, what calls to listen to, it now we in insert an accountability to every single aspect Mhmm. Whenever someone picks up the phone. It's super powerful to think about.
Steve: Yeah. I mean, I remember, like, you know, mid chicken. And I say, like, hey. Like, message her right now.
Speaker: Yeah.
Steve: Like, we're not finishing lunch. And I'm generally not, like, a higher urgency person.
Speaker: No. I know. Right?
Steve: But I was like, that is unacceptable. Fix this now, like, before lunch is over. And, again, like, kinda what you're saying. Who knows when we're gonna do the call reviews? But even though say we do, like, often a lot of businesses, they look at, you know, like, conversations, contacts, contracts, and this and that, and it's good.
Right? But those are more or less lagging indicators. They don't give you the visibility as to what was happening on that conversation. So it could take they might be doing the numbers. It might be weeks or months before you know what they're doing on the call.
It's harming because they can pick up the phone. They can have conversations, but if they're not quality conversations, what's the point? So and I think the, another component of of that as well is that you can't so we hired Larry Yatch years ago before you joined. Mhmm. Right?
Navy SEAL. Do you guys haven't watched the episode?
Speaker: It was right before I joined.
Steve: Yeah. Like, complete badass. Right? Like, the guy just loves shooting. Right?
So I remember he came into our organization, and it completely transformed our company. And multiple people quit. Important people quit. And I was like, Larry, like, what's going on? I paid you a lot of money, and, like, people are quitting.
And he said and they don't disagree
Speaker: with him.
Steve: He's like, well, Steve, when you hired me, you know, things were happening, but, you know, there's kind of some shadows here, some shadows there. You can hide over there. Once you hired me, there was sunlight everywhere. There was nowhere safe to hire in your company. Like, actually, that kinda makes sense.
Accountability increased True accountability. Increased dramatically. Now that we're reviewing the call on every single call, every call matters. There's if your guys hungover on Monday mornings, like, we're gonna see a trend. Hey.
This guy sucks on Mondays. We can have a conversation about that. But we can track, every single call. And, like, let's just say, for example, our average salesperson typically scores 75, 75%. If the guy has two days in a row of 55%, when do we wanna know now versus again weeks later.
Speaker: Just looking at the lagging indicators.
Steve: Yeah. Right? Like, if the guy's maybe he's had a major fight with his spouse. Maybe there's someone sick in the family. Right?
Maybe he's got some collections that he doesn't wanna talk about. His headspace isn't right.
Speaker: And, also, like, there will be other tools that transcribe. You can always look through the transcription
Speaker: Mhmm.
Speaker: And figure out. Part of why I am so excited about what we are building with this objection proof AI tool in particular is because of the knowledge and nuance it has around what to look for
Steve: Mhmm.
Speaker: Determine what actually is a success is a successful call beyond simply did they get the sale. Mhmm. The problem with most sales tools that are built off of data is that a lot of salespeople get deals in spite of what they did, not because of it.
Speaker: Mhmm.
Speaker: As a result, it will take so much data for AI to effectively sort what should have been said and what shouldn't have been said. And it's hard. It's like, I look at you submit a transcript to ChatCBT or something.
Speaker: Mhmm.
Speaker: You will see how bad its advice is. And the reason for that is its advice is built not on ChatGPT, but on the data of how other people sell. And so it's defaulting to what I consider suboptimal practices.
Speaker: Mhmm.
Speaker: The ability for AI to not only catch things and have accountability, but then give advice around how to get the prospect to feel more emotionally certain. To give advice on how to take control sooner and more efficiently at the same time as shedding a light on every single corner and putting a spotlight on every shadow is, in my opinion, one of the most it it's almost impossible to value at scale yet. Yeah. Because when you actually see this in real companies with big teams, I think we're gonna see some pretty profound transformations. Yeah.
It gives real advice on what to do differently and how to explore that, what went wrong. I'll give you a quick example before we move on that just floored me. We had someone on our team who sold and and also our AI tool, everything we roll out, we are using internally. To be clear, there's nothing we roll out that is not being battle tested by our sales team and our process. So we actually use this.
We don't make it for novelty. We make it for our use and then provide it to the rest of the world. We had a new salesperson who sold one of my a a sales training program, and that person ended up, canceling. And requesting a refund. Requesting a refund, like, after, you know, less than a week, basically.
And I looked at that transcript the the call score within the AI scoring tool, and it had a pretty profound insight, which is it it realized that our new salesperson had done an old habit of selling from his enthusiasm Mhmm. Rather than the conviction of the prospect Mhmm. Is he didn't strategically hesitate and pull back and pull away to get them over the line. Excuse me. So that meant, like, at like, the AI realized there was a risk of cancellation.
Mhmm. Like, it was not shocked.
Steve: I basically asked the AI tool, would you be shocked
Speaker: to know that this lead canceled? Oh, no. Not shocked at all. Like, it made perfect sense to the AI that that lead would cancel
Speaker: Mhmm.
Speaker: Based on how they were sold. Right. Like, that is a pretty profound difference from just reading a transcript.
Steve: Well, this is what you trained for over the last two years Yes. Where I recognized, like, hey. There was too much enthusiasm on the salesperson's part that we risk losing a sale when this person changes their mind because they were buying from the salesperson's enthusiasm versus their own conviction.
Speaker: This this is the nuance of what I've been teaching it for two years. Yeah.
Steve: Right? Getting the prospect to sell themselves versus you selling the prospect. Right. Right? We don't convince the good clients to sell themselves.
Ference Toth reminded me that making money is only half the equation. In this episode, Ference shared how wealthy people think differently once they accumulate capital. We talked about the strategies like property structured life insurance that allow money to grow in good markets while staying protected in bad ones so that wealth isn't wiped out when things turn. Now Ference explained this in a way that wasn't just for the ultra wealthy. He showed how people can start thinking about protection early even without massive capital.
The core lesson was simple. Real wealth isn't just about how much you make. It's about how long it lasts.
Speaker: The owner the owner and the manager of this station said, we heard your interview. How long have you been on the radio? I said, this is my first ever. No way. So I've been speaking.
Oh, okay. It shows. How would you like a radio show yourself? Yeah.
Steve: They had
Speaker: a guy retiring, you know, that kind of thing. Said, we love your content. It's unique. It's different. They've been there thirty years.
In fact, that's where Robert Kiyosaki got
Steve: started with
Speaker: Rich Dad
Speaker: Poor Dad. Same guy, the owner of the Money Radios who still owns it. He he told the story. A guy walks in the book with this nobody heard of in the late eighties called Rich Dad Poor Dad and wanted to promote it. That's where he started.
Steve: Gotcha.
Speaker: Yeah. Anyway, I've gotten a chance to meet him. He still does stuff occasionally. Anyway, started doing this radio show. At first, I was hesitant.
I was like, where am I gonna find the time? Mhmm. Talking to my wife, and it's like, because I'm traveling, I'm speaking, I've got clients, I got a family. She goes, it's a whole new audience. So I said, okay.
Year and a half later, COVID hit.
Steve: Mhmm.
Speaker: All the speaking stuff disappeared. Right. I'm on the radio now, and I'm thinking that was a bit of a shock to the system, to our business, because I understand I've been in the financial world about twenty years at that point. Every single client I've ever met, I'd actually met in person or at least in a workshop before they became a client. Yeah.
I'm thinking, how am I gonna get paying clients without ever actually physically meeting them? The radio came in. Mhmm. People started calling, and the radio numbers just jumped. A lot of people started listening to the radio more.
Steve: Mhmm. They're at home. Right.
Speaker: Right? And then other stations, they had they added a second hour. They they were, they said that time, I was their second most popular show.
Steve: That's phenomenal.
Speaker: Yeah. And I was at one of the newer shows. Right? And so then other stations started reaching out to me. Hey.
Would you consider us on your? Show? We heard your show. Love the content. It's unique.
It's different. And so now we're on over 20 radio stations nationwide. I'm 20 of the 30 largest markets in The United States.
Steve: That's pretty phenomenal. Yeah. Probably getting a little more business from that than Yes.
Speaker: Yeah. And I don't travel so much. Yeah. That part's fun.
Steve: So you were saying they asked you to go to Seattle because she thinks it's more important for her investor group talk to you versus self directed IRAs.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Because there are some limitations with self directed IRAs. So let's not go.
Steve: Yeah. I'm gonna step on some you want me to step on some toes? Yeah. Let's bring some baseball bats around.
Speaker: Alright. Well, as we all know, there's some limitations with self directed IRAs. One of them is, you know, the the prohibited transactions. Mhmm. I'm sure you've gotten into all that kind of stuff.
Very annoying. Yeah. There are more fees, plain and simple. Mhmm. As I tell people, if you're gonna do a self directed IRA, you have to actively use it.
I have a lot of people I see that have them, and they kinda sit on them. And they're just paying a whole bunch of extra fees Mhmm. For no reason. Right? And then regardless of what you do, unless it's a Roth, you're ultimately what are you doing?
You're gonna pay the tax eventually. Yeah. You're doing what the government does. You're kicking the can down the road.
Speaker: Mhmm.
Speaker: Now one of the things about taxes, I'm not I'm not saying to avoid taxes. I'm saying to limit them and do it strategically. Yeah. Alright. We are forget the politics.
Speaker: Right
Speaker: now, we are in the third lowest tax bracket in the history of the income tax. Coolidge was the lowest bracket. Reagan first term was second. And the Trump since 2018 Trump is the third lowest tax bracket in history. Mhmm.
When do you wanna pay taxes, when they're low or they're high? When
Steve: they're low.
Speaker: Why are you deferring them when they're low? Mhmm. And then later pay them at a potentially high higher level at an certainly unknown future rate. And, yes, we're fans of Doge and all that, but what if all that doesn't work out as well as we hope? Mhmm.
Well, our taxes potentially be higher in the future with increased debt.
Steve: I think there's only one direction it can go.
Speaker: I don't think it's going down No. To be fair. So my point is, why are you paying why are you kicking the can down the road to a potentially higher or worse tax situation you have now? Why not pay the tax now strategically when it's low? And let it grow tax free for
Steve: Mhmm.
Speaker: Why Roths are so famous? They're fair. So Popular. Popular. Thank you.
So she and there's no positive arbitrage with self directed IRAs.
Steve: Yeah. And there's a limit to how much you can put in there.
Speaker: And limits on how much you can put in. There's limits on what you take out.
Speaker: Mhmm.
Speaker: There's required minimum distributions. You gotta and the congress changes these rules all the time. Right? I mean, I do this full time, and I have a hard time keeping track of this rule changes year to year. Yeah.
Okay? And so every I can tell you just about every single client I know who is 72 plus now, who built a sizable IRA, traditional IRA, they are very unhappy campers. Mhmm. They're getting creamed on taxes. Yeah.
Because now their Social Security is getting taxed at higher rates.
Speaker: Mhmm.
Speaker: If they receive in pension or other investment income, guess what? Because of the required distributions, they're getting hit higher tax brackets there. Fact studies show the argument is you're gonna be a lower tax bracket when you retire.
Speaker: Mhmm.
Speaker: 85% of the time. Do you know that's not true? That's the stats. Yeah. The stats, Wall Street's run these over and over again.
85% of Americans, when they retire, are in the same bracket or higher in retirement than when working. Because guess what, folks? Social Security benefits are taxable.
Steve: Mhmm. And that's a
Speaker: Among other things.
Steve: Relatively newer deal. Right? I think that's, like, the last thirty, forty years.
Speaker: 1980s. That was Clinton administration.
Steve: Yeah. And then we're talking about insurance policies. Yeah. There's a very popular, radio guy. I think he's got a bigger name than you.
Speaker: Yeah. Dave Ramsey.
Steve: And he does not like insurance policies. And anytime someone talks about insurance policies, he goes off. He flies off the handle.
Speaker: He does. Now that should tell you something. He's he's responding emotionally, isn't he?
Steve: Yes. So
Speaker: when somebody is being emotional, are they being logical? No. Alright. If you I've read his books. I've read his stuff.
If you read the story, he there was his his mom got screwed over by a bad insurance investment. By the way, I would never have recommended that for his mom to to invest. So he has colored a paintbrush. The entire industry is bad because his mom had a bad experience with a bad product.
Speaker: It
Speaker: was a bad fit. However, she needed a she wanted to cut wood, and somebody sold her a hammer. Yeah. Alright? One of my pet peeves, and I've done this forever.
There's no such thing as a bad financial tool. They're bad fits.
Steve: Mhmm.
Speaker: Absolutely. I see that all the time. Yeah. They all have a purpose. Like, I hear this all the time.
People say, oh, I hate annuities. K. Let me ask you a question. You have a a recent widow who her husband had a pension. She counted on that pension.
He now has a chunk of money she can invest in an annuity that'll create a private pension for her, and that's her comfort zone.
Steve: Oh, well, that's probably a good idea.
Speaker: Yeah. Even people hate annuities say that to me.
Steve: Yeah. That's what I was gonna say.
Speaker: Yeah. Exactly. Right? There's there's a time and a place. Yeah.
There's a fit. My point is simple. If you paint if you if if a financial person of or any stripe says, I love this unconditionally or hate that unconditionally, That's not financial advice. Mhmm. Probably doesn't apply to you, and they're responding to some emotional reaction they have.
And as one of my biggest pet peeves with agents, advisors is, dude, yeah, the gal, it ain't about you. Mhmm. It's about the client. Right. It's about them.
Listen to what they want. What do they need? Mhmm. What are their goals? Where and now let's find the tool, the hammer, the saw, whatever Mhmm.
That'll fit them. So sometimes annuities make sense.
Steve: Yeah.
Speaker: Sometimes life insurance makes sense. By the way, you can buy life insurance far different. Life Life insurance will do a lot. There's five different kinds of life insurance. There's five different kinds of annuities.
That's the other thing. If you won the lottery Mhmm. Would you be upset?
Steve: Of course not.
Speaker: That's an annuity. If you have a pension from the government, is that a bad thing? No.
Steve: Not at all. That's an annuity.
Speaker: Yeah. Okay. My point is there's five different kinds of annuities. Don't pay it all under the same brush.
Steve: Yeah. That makes total sense.
Speaker: Yeah.
Steve: Yeah. So I guess Dave's got two really, really passionate things that he's really wrong about. That one and then the debt. Obstacle I hear from newer wholesalers is finding buyers for their deals. Because unless you've built a massive buyers list or have a huge dispo team, you might struggle to move your deals.
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Speaker: Well, here's where I agree with him. General, do you wanna be out of debt? Absolutely. Mhmm. You know, being Generally.
Yeah. Generally speaking, debt free. I mean, that's a good thing.
Speaker: Mhmm.
Speaker: But I teach I do a whole thing in my workshops where I talk about the difference between strategic debt versus consumer debt. Mhmm. Here's a bit. If you have to go to work, Steve, to pay the bill, I don't care if it's a business, you're an employee, it doesn't matter, but you gotta go to work. So you're a doctor or you're a ditch digger.
Well, that's the kind of debt you wanna get rid of. Exactly. Because if you can't go to work,
Steve: you can't pay that bill, you got problems. Mhmm.
Speaker: But can you buy a rental property? Long long term buy and hold, or take a mortgage against it. Yep. And as long as your cash flow, your income is greater than your expenses, can you build wealth?
Steve: Mhmm.
Speaker: Of course. Yeah. So I get these Dave Ramsey aficionado.
Steve: That's what I'm saying. Like, that's the other thing where he's
Speaker: Yes. I see that to them. So I see what I just shared with you right there. Like, well, yeah. You can do that.
Well, then is all debt bad? Mhmm. No. Right. Stop painting things in broad brushes and saying, this is bad.
This is good. Mhmm. No. It depends on the situate. The answer is it depends.
Steve: Yeah. And I think that's what every accountant says is Yeah. Hey. What do I do about this? Well, it depends.
Speaker: It depends. And, really, what they're trying to say to you is, well, what are your goals? Right. What's your what's your fact pattern? The term we like to use in our industry, what's the fact pattern?
What are your what's what's going on? What's your goals? What are your dreams? What are you trying to accomplish?
Steve: Where are
Speaker: you at? Mhmm. Let's try to find and sometimes I'll say to people, you know, that they hear me on the personal bank show, and they'll contact me. They're all excited about it, and they wanna do they've been listening for months, sometimes years even. And their financial position and situation is not right right now for them.
Steve: Like, they got a lot of debt, this and that. I said,
Speaker: well, here's what you need to do first. You're not ready yet. Mhmm. We'll get you there. You should do this or that first.
And they get disappointed. I'm like, well, do you want me to tell you what you need to know or what what you wanna hear or what you need to hear? I'll get you there. You're not ready.
Steve: Yeah. Gotcha. And then you're speaking on tell me more about that.
Speaker: So, John Burley, probably many of you on this show are familiar
Steve: with all times.
Speaker: Yeah. Yeah. I was on we've become good friends. We were on a bank board together, got to know John quite well. And he's been on my radio show a number of times too, and I've been through I'm a Black Card member too.
I've been through hell his training. He reached out to me about a year ago about doing a joint event together. I was honored by that. So we are doing January 18 Mhmm. 2025.
We're doing a master your money. First time ever, the two of us, he's gonna be speaking about seven money secrets for the rich. Obviously, all about real estate.
Speaker: Mhmm.
Speaker: K? I'll be talking about the personal bank, how you tie the two together to enhance your real estate investing. We're gonna kinda tag team and then end up the day with a q and a. So nine to five, go to yourpersonalbank.com to register. I would recommend doing it soon.
We got a few more free seats available, and then after that, there's gonna be a cost.
Steve: Yeah. So yourpersonalbank.com. Yes. And then if someone wanted to find you on the radio, where is that at?
Speaker: Well, it's the best place is just again, go to my app, your personal bank app, or the yourpersonalbank.com website. You can go listen you can listen to current or any of the previously recorded shows anytime you want. Of course, it's on Spotify and everywhere else you can find. Just your personal bank. And then, yes, we're on 20 stations around the country radio terrestrial radio stations around the country, but it's on different times, different locations, and you may or may not be in that,
Steve: space. Spotify is easiest.
Speaker: Spotify, but or the website or the app.
Steve: Yeah. And then someone wanted to reach out and do, to work with you. What's the best way to do that?
Speaker: Again, your personalmag.com. And as I say on there, yes, you'll reach me. I'm an assistant.
Steve: Mhmm.
Speaker: I I had 45 people working for me at one time. And over the years, I've learned how to streamline things and specialize, and I just enjoy talking to people directly.
Steve: Alright. Simple enough. Yeah. Before we end up here, what are some last thoughts you want to leave all the listeners with?
Speaker: I think one of the biggest things is if you haven't realized it yet, everything has changed economically. We're in a different environment. Last decade was the decade that was known as easy monetary policy, low interest rates, stock markets, and real estate markets, crypto, you name it, just took off. We are now in the midst of one of the biggest bubbles in history. Take any measurement you wanna take.
We are at extreme levels on all of that stuff. Right? That is a fact. Mhmm. Now will it continue going up like that?
No. We will have will we have a correction? Yes. What no one can tell you is how much, how long, or when. But there will be a correction.
Yeah. I can with I can share that with basically absolute certainty. Yeah. And this goes back to the nineteen fifties tulip bulb. You know you know, there was a time in Holland that you tulip bulbs were more expensive than a house.
Yeah. Okay? This is not new. Alright? Now the the message I'm trying to have people share people is there's not a reason to be scared, though.
Again, it's not new. This has happened before.
Speaker: Mhmm.
Speaker: And it's going to happen again. What do you do when you get a .com buck burst or an o eight zero nine correction in the real estate and stock market, which some are predicting? The numbers are certainly there to could potentially support that. I'm not predicting it. I'm saying it could be.
We could have a very severe correction. What do you do? You diversify. You protect yourself. You start if you've got assets that are investments that are subject to risk, dial it back or peeling some off.
If you've had winnings, let's say you've taken advantage of this great run up in the stock, real estate markets, whatever, crypto, whatever. Does it make sense to take some off the table? I mean, what do what do successful wise investors do? Look at Warren Buffett. Mhmm.
Warren Buffett has sold more stock in his career, both percentage and dollar wise, over this past year than any point in his sixty plus year career. That's a pretty smart dude to listen to and follow. Yeah. K? You know, last quarter, he didn't buy a single dime of stock.
I don't think he's ever done that in his career. Warren Buffett's actions are telling us what's going to happen. By the way, he did the same thing before o eight, o nine. He did in o seven. He also did in 2000.
Go back in charts and look what happened. 45, 55% drop top to bottom in the markets, top markets, both of those times. Real estate, a lot of it suffered there. Real estate's gonna have a correction.
Steve: Yeah. He's pretty good at, what's the word, the the fundamentals. Yes. Pay attention. Pay attention to the fundamentals.
Fundamentals. Right.
Speaker: Am I saying get out? No. I said take the winnings off the table, didn't I? Understand. Get into the fixed asset market.
It is the golden age. Get into the stuff that more in the bonds as we talked about earlier. High cash value policies. By the way, you know what's the best time to buy an annuity in over forty two years? That's the higher bond interest rates.
They're now paying double and triple they were where they were just a couple years ago. If you want guaranteed lifetime income, if somebody says, I want a pension check, you know, those are now paying two. I get companies are paying a 30% bonus upfront for that. If you put in a $100 in one of those, and they'll pay give you an 8% increase guaranteed per year. So if you put in a $100, a year later, you would have a $140,000 available for a long guaranteed income or pension check for the rest of your life.
Wow.
Steve: As I look back at 2025, these five lessons show up again and again. Use leverage. Accept the grind. Keep things simple. Master sales.
Protect your wealth. None of these are shortcuts. They're principles. And the people who win aren't the ones who hear them. They're the ones who actually apply them.
If you take even one of these lessons and act on it going to 2026, you'll already be ahead of most people. And if you commit to all five, you give yourself a real shot at building something that lasts. So rewatch the parts that hit you, take notes, and decide what you're going to do differently this year because 2026 will reward the people who move, not the ones who wait. So comment down your favorite lessons, how you plan to take action, and I love to read them and crush 2026 together with all of you. Thanks for watching, and I'll see you in 2026.
Speaker: Shout out to Steve Train. Jump on the Steve Train. Disrupt us.
