From burnout to $3M+ in wholesale fees — Corey Reyment shares how he built a thriving real estate business in a small market by taking imperfect action, learning from setbacks, and staying true to his values. He opens up about a near team takeover, the power of masterminds, and why alignment and accountability matter more than titles. 🎙️🔥 How Corey Reyment Generated Over $3MM In Wholesale Fees In A Tiny Market | Video Replay https://youtu.be/KRLaleLU3dA Review and Score Your Sales Calls for FREE! https://objectionproof.ai/ To Close More Sales Faster: https://objectionproofselling.com/ How Corey Reyment Generated Over $3MM In Wholesale Fees In A Tiny Market Corey Reyment | The Wisconsin Investor Podcast https://www.youtube.com/@TheWisconsinInvestor https://www.facebook.com/corey.reyment https://www.instagram.com/thewisconsininvestor/ Corey Reyment turned a tiny Wisconsin market into a $3 million-a-year real estate powerhouse. Known for his “massive imperfect action” mindset, Corey helps everyday people become investors, hosts the Wisconsin Investor Podcast, and gives away his BRRRR strategy secrets. He’s proof you don’t need a big city to make a big impact—just hustle, heart, and a drive to help others win. How Corey Reyment Generated Over $3MM In Wholesale Fees In A Tiny Market | Takeaways 1. Take Massive, Imperfect Action: Don’t wait for everything to be perfect—just start. Progress comes from doing, learning, and adjusting along the way. 2. Invest in Relationships and Mentorship: Surround yourself with people who are doing what you want to do. Masterminds, mentors, and strong networks can accelerate your growth and open new doors. 3. Build the Right Team, Not Just Titles: Success comes from having the right people in the right roles, not from handing out fancy titles. Focus on fit, accountability, and shared vision. 4. Prioritize Work-Life Balance and Self-Awareness: Achieving business success means nothing if you lose yourself or your relationships. Be present, communicate, and work on personal growth. 5. Help Others Win: True fulfillment and long-term success come from helping others achieve their goals. Share your knowledge, support your community, and your impact will multiply. Get 10% OFF on InvestorLift. Use promo code DISRUPTORS. Earn MORE in wholesaling—FAST! https://get.investorlift.com/disruptors/ Share this with someone who would find this information valuable.👉 For more excellent free content! Subscribe to Our YouTube Channel https://www.youtube.com/@DisruptorsPodcast Schedule a free call with our Millionaire Advocates to discuss your situation and receive personalized advice. https://rb.gy/e0cqfh Get Connected https://tap.bio/@stevetrang Follow Us on iTunes/Apple Podcast and Leave a ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Review Disruptors https://podcasts.apple.com/ph/podcast/real-estate-disruptors/id1386400008 Spotify https://open.spotify.com/show/7G54paZF7C28VF6l2hLCvl?si=cxHATrYLQ6Ws7kgtWonuXQ https://open.spotify.com/show/7G54paZF7C28VF6l2hLCvl?si=MS-x88vlRNiidB8NpV_2cw Take Your Sales Team To The Next Level! Learn more about our Sales Training, Workshop, and Mentorship! https://objectionproofselling.com/ Struggling? We’re here to help. Schedule a call with us! https://rb.gy/e0cqfh Want to Work with Us? We’re looking for people who want to invest in real estate. If this is you, go to www.teamwithsteve.com. LOOKING FOR A NEW CAREER? DISRUPTORS IS HIRING! Want to work with us? https://www.disruptorsjobs.com/
Wisconsin Discount Properties
Co-founder of Wisconsin Discount Properties, the largest wholesaling company in Wisconsin. Built portfolio of 115+ rental units worth over $8M using BRRRR strategy. Earned over $3.2M in wholesale fees. Hosts The Wisconsin Investor podcast.
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.
1:50:17Steve Trang interviews Damon Lyons of Sellers Advantage, who shares his journey from losing everything in the 2008 financial crisis to building a $30 million assignment fee business. Lyons discusses his evolution from loan officer to foreclosure auction specialist with Posted Properties, then to direct-to-consumer house buying, revealing the systems and massive marketing spend that enabled his California operation to dominate the market.
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Corey Reyment: I came in the next week to debrief with all the leadership team there. What do we wanna take away from CJ? What do we wanna implement? That kind of stuff. And they decided that it's better for them to either have me sell them the company or they were all leaving.
I didn't wanna be back. I didn't wanna be back in the business, and I they knew that. That was the dirty part. I think that really rubbed me the wrong way at the time. It's like they knew Carrie and I were getting ready to leave for Florida again.
I left. Like, I said, I need I gotta get back to you and tell Carrie what's going on and all this stuff. And I called her, and she was not a happy mama. She's like, you turn that car back around. You go let them go.
Steve Trang: Welcome, and thank you for joining us for today's episode of disruptors where millionaires are made. Today, we got my good friend Corey Raymond with Wisconsin discount properties, and Corey flew in from Fish Creek, Wisconsin to talk about how they generate over $3,000,000 in fees last year in a tiny market. Guys, I wanna make sure to create a 100 millionaires. The information on this show alone is enough to help you become a millionaire in the next five to seven years. If you'll take consistent action, you will become one.
And before we jump in, if you're here to learn how real entrepreneurs are building real empires, hit that subscribe button because every week, we drop lessons that could create your first or next million. And, guys, this show is brought to you by Objection Proof AI. If you guys are looking to build a self managing sales team that does not require you, definitely check out Objection Proof AI. Ready?
Corey: Let's roll, baby.
Steve: Alright.
Corey: Let's do it.
Steve: Long, long time coming.
Corey: It has been a long time. I think
Steve: I've been trying to get you on this thing forever, and you just keep ignoring me.
Corey: I don't know about that. Come on now. I got I have emails to prove. This is not the case. This is not the case.
Steve: So we just came back, from CG Yeah. Last Wednesday, Collective Genius, for those that you guys, don't know from. That's how we connected. Mhmm. But, obviously, your story goes way, way back further.
So let's talk about what was your life like before you got into real estate?
Corey: Oh, that's a that's a good one, man. I'm trying to think back now. It's been about seven or eight years, so it's kinda hard to think back. But, man, it was a grind. Like, I remember, so much anxiety, I feel like, every month.
Mhmm. You know, I was making good money. I was in sales. I was I was the top sales guy. Every company I was in, so I was, you know, 6 figures, butting up against 200,000, which in Green Bay, you know, Wisconsin, you you can buy a lot for $200 a year, but I'd still look at it, and I'm like, man, it still feels like I can't get ahead.
Right? And for me, going way back in my past, money's a money for me was a fear, like, operation. We grew up without a lot of money. Only thing my parents ever thought about that I remember was money. Mhmm.
So for me, I was always like, I'm gonna make a lot of money. I get older, and I'm never gonna have this problem with my family. Well, that's great. It served me well from a motivation standpoint, but from a mental health standpoint, you know, probably not the best. Right?
Steve: And
Corey: I think probably a lot of us in this industry have a similar
Steve: Probably 98% of us.
Corey: Yeah. Motivation factor. Right? We create these false things like, you know, we're gonna bridge, kids aren't gonna starve. So I remember that, and so I was always trying to do something on the side.
And so work life balance, none.
Steve: Mhmm.
Corey: Right? And started having kids. And so my daughter, I remember when she was three years old, my job at the time was selling recruiting packages. So it's kinda like eHarmony or match.com, but for student athletes and college coaches.
Steve: Okay.
Corey: And so I would call these families when they're home from school or practice or whatever. And so I would call from the East Coast all the way out to Hawaii. So my calls would start sometimes at three, sometimes at four in the afternoon, but I would have to prep in the morning and get ready for all these meetings and reach out to the families, make sure they did their homework, you know, so that I resell before we got on there. And I remember my daughter who was getting into, like, dance recital and something like that. And, like, I had to ask off to go to her dance thing.
This is stupid. I can't do this
Steve: for
Corey: the rest of my life. I gotta get out of this. Mhmm.
Steve: But it
Corey: was causing me a lot of stress. When we when the kids were really little, wasn't the biggest thing. It was like they they need mom more than me. As they start getting older, I was like, I don't I need to figure out a way to get well, it was a stressful time, man. I mean, it it forced me to get into real estate.
It forced me to ask the questions of, like, how do I get out of this? What are the what are the mechanisms I can use? So we tried network marketing for, like, five years. Gary and I, we did well with it respectively Mhmm. Most people.
Steve: What were we selling?
Corey: Fitness products or, like, supplements. Okay. So it
Steve: wasn't like like it works?
Corey: No. No. It was Isagenix, which is actually based, I think, down here.
Steve: Huge here. Yeah. It's right off the freeway. It's like a massive building.
Corey: Yeah. Yeah. Still use some of the products. I still enjoy the products. Great great products, taught me a lot, got me reading books, which I had never done.
Steve: One of the best things about MLMs Yeah. Is they make you do a lot of personal development. You have
Corey: to do a lot of personal. Yeah. Went out to a conference that they were kind of, like, pushing. I don't think they were involved in, but, like, Jack Canfield was speaking and John Maxwell and, Robin Sharma and a bunch of these guys, like, thought leader guys. Yeah.
Learn rejection really well even though I had done sales. Mhmm. And it's a different level of rejection.
Steve: Embracing rejection.
Corey: Yeah. When you're going after your friends and family all the time. Yeah. I
Steve: don't I remember sitting in MLM. So, you know, I started real estate as realtor in 2007, and, it was not a good time to be a realtor.
Corey: No. Right? Maybe the worst of all time.
Steve: Maybe the worst.
Corey: Yeah.
Steve: And I remember, like, my broker this is my broker, my designated broker
Corey: Okay.
Steve: Who I trust implicitly Right. Because he's my broker. He's supposed to have my best interest at heart.
Corey: Yeah.
Steve: He's like, hey, Steve. We're doing this dinner thing tonight. You should check it out. We think it's gonna be bigger than Google. Okay.
Alright.
Corey: I I
Steve: don't know what this is, but I'll check it out.
Corey: Can't miss that.
Steve: Yeah. Sounds Yeah. That sounds important. And, again, my broker.
Corey: Right. Right. Right.
Steve: And I show up. I was like, are you kidding me? The freaking MLM. Right?
Corey: You're like, dang it. I got roped in. And how do you leave politely? It's your broker.
Steve: Yeah. Well Yeah. So and it was, for you guys wondering, it was WorldVentures. Right?
Corey: Which What what was it? Was it travel? It was
Steve: a travel one.
Corey: Travel one.
Steve: Yeah. Like, it all makes sense. In the presentation, it all makes sense. Yeah.
Corey: But I
Steve: was like, I am out of here. Like, I'm not signing up for some stupid thing. Yeah. So definitely, you know, disenfranchising. Or was it disheartening?
Yeah. Or I was like, okay. Like, why why did my broker try to rope me into this deal? Yeah. But, like, in in watching all this is, like, they tricked everyone to go into a room to have dinner where, like, it's a private dinner where they close the doors.
Corey: Oh my goodness.
Steve: You know, it's not like you're not locked. But But they close the doors. It's like it's a weird feeling.
Corey: That's weird.
Steve: That's a weird vibe, dude. So, like, is that what you're having to do with Isagenix? We would
Corey: bring them into the house. There it was a living room, no locked doors. We wouldn't close we'd let them go to the bathroom. They had to ask if they could go to the bathroom now because we were, like, making sure they didn't go out the window to leave kind of thing. No.
I do. I look back at all of my social media, you know, when you have the memories. Mhmm.
Steve: Come up.
Corey: I'm like, oh, can I just I wish there was a way history of social media?
Steve: Yeah. It's undue. Very embarrassing. Yeah. But Okay.
But it hurt you to embrace rejection. So then what was it then that, like, made you take the leap into real estate?
Corey: Well, it was it was that. Like, I was getting burned out from it, and Carrie was burned out, like my wife.
Steve: We had to ask her
Corey: time off
Steve: from, like, MLM? No. No. No. No.
No. No.
Corey: I was just, like, cyber. So I also had a I was doing personal training too, so I I started my own little gym out of this guy's back back of his.
Steve: So nonstop hustling?
Corey: Yeah. Nonstop hustling. Right? I I world's gonna cave in. I gotta have enough money.
Right?
Steve: So I'm
Corey: making money anyway I could. And, so the the nutrition products fit in really nicely for
Steve: that
Corey: purpose, but then it started to, like, ride it now. More people. But we were getting, like, the residual checks from it. I still was getting paid up until, like,
Steve: last Yeah.
Corey: So it's it's not like they're scams. They're just better ways like real estate. Mhmm. Fucking But I started thinking about this. I said, how do I get this money that keeps coming in every month without having to, like, chase friends and family down?
And then, like, everybody, I read Rich Dad Poor Dad. Answer. Carrie to read Rich Dad. He was interested in it because I had all these crazy ideas. I'm always trying to start business or do something.
Right?
Steve: Also hustle mode. Yes.
Corey: Yeah. And, so and she when she was like, this look this makes a lot of sense. We should totally do this. I was like, let's go. Let's go.
And, yeah. Then we just started getting in going to RIA groups and meet ups and trying to get around people that were doing it in our market.
Steve: Mhmm.
Corey: And paid paid a local mentor to get started and, you know? Yeah.
Steve: This might be a really naive question. Yeah. Right? But, you know, a smaller market like Green Bay Yep. Like, we all know what the stadium looks like.
Corey: Yeah.
Steve: Right? Everyone knows what the stadium looks like. But outside the stadium, like, what is this market size?
Corey: It's not big. Brent Daniels and I were just before this. This is recording. We were on a little show. He looked it up.
It's a 107,000 people population. So we could fit almost everybody in the city into the stadium of eighty eighty thousand plus. Yeah. So it's definitely small town USA.
Steve: So what were the rias like there? Because, like, you know, I'm in Arizona Ria. Right? And I remember, like, it used to be, like, these massive events. Yeah.
And, like, I don't know if we ever had a thousand people at these events, but we had several hundreds. Like, in their annual deal where, like, it they're feeling, like, it's, I can't remember what the State Fair Coliseum is, but, like, they held events. Right? Like, huge locations. But this is Phoenix.
Yeah. World of
Corey: Different world,
Steve: man. Different world. It's a great day.
Corey: Well, I will say this, not to knock anybody, but the guy that we did the mentorship with, he was, like, the only show in town. Yeah. Because, like, you didn't have options if you didn't like the guy presenting. Like, he's the guy.
Steve: Yeah.
Corey: And so I would go to the and I had to take off of work to go to these Rias. Right? Because I was working nights. And, I remember the first one, dude. He he hope he doesn't listen to this disrespect to him, but he's not a great publisher.
And it was, like, three hours of him talking in front, and it was, like, Ben Stein, you know, the clear eyes guy. Oh, man. And you're doing you're you're, you know, doing the chicken pack thing. You know? And, I was like, I just wanna meet people.
I just wanna network. I wanna meet people. Like, the information I'm sure he's sharing that I'm not listening to at all right now, I'm sure is great, but I need to, like, make connections. Right? And so there would be literally maybe be 12 people at these, and there's the same 12 people.
Steve: 12 people, and he's speaking for three hours?
Corey: Three hours, bro. Okay. Three hours. Like, our attention spans are, like, way shorter now, but, I mean, even back then, that's still an incredibly long time to be up in front speaking.
Steve: Yeah.
Corey: And it was every two weeks. What are you speaking about for six hours every two weeks? Like Yeah. It it was just not good. So at some point, when we started getting going, Carrie and I were like, nobody else is gonna create the other option, so let's create a different option.
And so all I did was I put a Facebook post up because I am like, I have a hunch a lot of people want networking like me. So we went ahead and put a Facebook event up and invited people to come to some bar Downtown Green Bay. No agenda, no sponsors, no nothing. Just show up, and let's get to know each other, and we'll talk real estate. Yeah.
And we had, like, 45 people show up, which
Steve: It's already bigger than the Ria.
Corey: All way bigger than the Ria. So I was like, okay. There's something here. Mhmm. And so we ended up eventually you know, there's another branch of Ria's that were in a smaller town, Appleton, which is a little bit little bit further south.
And they were already running these Ria's with more people showing up at their stuff, but they were still up there, sponsors and, like, promoting all this stuff. And I was like, I just wanna, like, maybe give people forty five minutes or something Mhmm.
Steve: And then
Corey: let them get to know each other. Right. That's it. And so we started a branch of theirs, but we said, only ours. It's gonna be the way that we wanna run it.
You guys don't get to tell us who's coming in or how to run it. We'll get the speakers, and then we'll just show up every once a month, and we'll do this thing in the first minute.
Steve: I think
Corey: we had, like, 90 people come.
Steve: I wanna say, like, twenty eighteen, maybe. So, again, the grand scheme of things, like, you look at the time frame. Like, this is when I started my podcast. Yeah. Right?
So you're able to build all this, but you start in '18 with basically reading the book. I mean, it's the book for real estate. Yeah. Right? But you read you you know, you read
Corey: Read in 2016. I read the book in 2016. The RIA thing we started in 2018.
Steve: Right. But, I mean, like, it's a lot to get done. Right? Because you went from, like, just another guy in the town to, like, being the guy Yeah. In the town.
Yeah. Okay. So but you did hire this guy to be your mentor?
Corey: I did. Okay. Yep.
Steve: How long did you guys work together at capacity?
Corey: Probably about I mean, really, it was, like, the first month is once I had, like, the documents and I knew, like, the legality that I needed to do to wholesale a deal legally Mhmm. Was kind of what I needed him for. And then he gave I think he did give us some lists and stuff like that to start to start mailing. Yeah. I did.
He gave us some lists to start mailing and kinda gave us, you know, the basics to get going. But then after that, I I didn't really wanna like, he was it's not that he wasn't available or willing to help. I just didn't really wanna go to him too much. Right?
Steve: I mean, we talk about Ben Stein. So Yeah. Okay. So then did he help you do your first deal, or you were to do deals before you had your own meetup?
Corey: They were part partly involved in that in the first couple deals. So within I think we started mailing in, like, August 2016 maybe and crickets until maybe December. Mhmm. And then we had a we had a seller reach out with a duplex who was thinking of selling it. I was doing it to do the BRRRR.
I wanted a 100 rental units as quickly as I could. Mhmm. Cash flow $200 a month and then go sit on the beach, you know, and drink Coronas for the rest of my life. Mhmm.
Steve: At least
Corey: so I thought. So that was the original goal of why I wanted to start acquiring off market deals. And then we had a single family at the same time. Like, December, we had a lady reach out with a one bedroom, one bathhouse, which I'm like, I don't I can't rent that. But I met somebody I wanted like weird houses, and there was, like, a downslope in the back.
So I was like, maybe somebody could, like, dig a basement under here and put two because it's in a really good area. Mhmm. Maybe they could put a basement in here and add two bedrooms? Crazy idea.
Steve: Yeah.
Corey: So I brought the lady through with her contractor, and she called me, like, two weeks later after she got all the numbers back. And she's like, yeah, Corey. We'll take it. What did you want for it? And I was like, I'm look Carrie's driving next to me, and I look at her.
I'm like, she's gonna take it. This is crazy. You know? I was like, oh, 55, and we had it under contract for 50. And she's like, yeah.
Okay. That sounds good. I can close it up in a couple weeks. And I'm like, this is the best business in the world. Right.
This is amazing. Right? And so yeah. So those two deals kinda happen almost within, like, days of each other of closing.
Steve: Okay. So you got proof of concept.
Corey: Yeah. Real. Yeah.
Steve: When do you start unwinding everything else you're working on? The Isagenix or
Corey: Pretty quick.
Steve: Pretty quick.
Corey: Yeah. I think we were already pretty well we were already pretty well done, but I quit I quit my job, my full time job in March '28 '18. Mhmm. So, so it was about a year and a half.
Steve: So, and I asked this question because there are a lot of people that are listening that, you know, still have, like, one foot in, one foot out, what I'm gonna do. Right? I know we got our friend, Jimmy Vreeland. Yep. But, basically, his wife, Susie, was like, you're quitting.
Right? Like, he is like, I don't wanna quit because, like, I'm the best guy here.
Corey: Yeah.
Steve: And I wanna get my plaque.
Corey: Oh, yeah. Right? Yeah.
Steve: She's like, you're an idiot. You're doing so all over here. Why would you keep your job? Yeah. Yeah.
Other people are like, you know, there's that safety and security component.
Corey: For sure.
Steve: Right? Like, either it's, a stable check or it's health insurance. Right. Yep. Like, what was that decision like for you?
Like, already having success and then, like, saying, you know, this this is called.
Corey: That was tough. There was a couple local mentors that we connected with and then we got involved actually in Wholesaling Inc, and had those guys to talk to about a lot of this stuff. And I remember we actually went out to their mastermind. We joined their mastermind, and I quit right before we went Mhmm. To that mastermind.
And, the the discussion was what if the well dries. Right? What if we're broke under the bridge and we never do another deal and yada yada yada. And I remember I don't know if it was those guys or if it was one of the local guys, but they're like, well, Corey, you're you're the number one sales guy in this company of, like, a 100 and some reps. Right?
Do you have, like, bad blood with these guys or anything? And I was like, no. No. No. They're great.
I love them. It's just the time. I don't wanna work anymore. And they're like, well, would they take you back if, like, worst case you ever had to go back? And I was like, yeah.
Yeah. Like, in a heartbeat. Like, okay. So, like, what are you what are you scared of, dude? Yeah.
And I was like, yeah. You're right. Alright. You're just gonna make the jump.
Steve: Well, and that's a great point because I haven't really talked about this enough, because I went through that same exact training. Okay. It's like everyone when I was quitting my job at Intel, I had a cushy job.
Corey: Yeah. I was
Steve: making good money.
Corey: Yeah. Cushy. Engineer. Right? Engineer.
Steve: Yeah. Yeah. Right? And everyone was like, you're an idiot. You worked as hard, and you have, like, the easiest job because, like, I was working twenty five hours a week.
I was going home at lunch to nap. Right? Like Oh. It was a great life. And, like, we have this idea, like, this is, like, all or nothing.
Corey: Right.
Steve: Like, if I quit and it doesn't work out, like, it's just doom. Yeah. But my best friend, I was like, Steve, like, if it doesn't work out, just go crawling back. Right? And my boss even when I quit, he was like, yeah.
If it doesn't work out, I'm back, which I didn't know what he would say. Yeah. Yeah. But he said that in the exit interview. Like, hey.
Go do your thing, but if it doesn't work out, we're still here. Yeah. So that that talk track that your friends gave you, I think it's really important.
Corey: Yeah.
Steve: I think people forget that.
Corey: For sure.
Steve: Because there's, like, if it doesn't work out, like, it's over.
Corey: Yeah. But I also see the flip side of that, Steve, where people leave too early. Mhmm. Right? Okay.
Steve: Talk about that.
Corey: So I see some like, we have some people in our market that and people who've worked for us before that they're doing okay now. Like, they they were in a good spot. The you know, I'm thinking of one person in particular was in a good spot financially, didn't have a bunch of debt, you know, had some rentals and some other things that they had acquired. But maybe just jump a little too quick where, like, now they have to make decisions and they kinda, in a way, get commission breath Mhmm. With buying deals or trying to do flips or whatever the case is, try to go into real estate full time.
Or if they now they're not bankable too. This is another thing that they forget Yeah. Is the minute you lose that w two, if you don't have a track record of of length of doing this or significant amount of cash saved up, now you go to get that next loan from the bank, and they're gonna shake their head at you and say no. And then you're crawling back to your employer going, hey. Remember that w two thing?
Right. Can we get that back? Because I need to be bankable. So I think it's a factor people don't talk to the banker first enough.
Steve: Mhmm.
Corey: Like, when I quit, I had a conversation with all my bankers. And I said, hey. If I leave my w two, are we still good? Are we still cool? And, you know, I had done enough deals and enough had enough in the pipe ready to close that they were like, yeah, man.
You're good. We're good with you. Yes. It's nice to have, but it was, like, a year and a half now that we've been doing business. And so they were all feeling pretty good about it, but would not have wanted to have that.
Steve: That's awesome that you had the foresight to do that. I didn't.
Corey: You did you run into this issue?
Steve: A 100%. Oh, no. Yeah. Like, you're not bankable. It's like, what do you feel not bankable?
I got this amazing credit score. Like, I've never had a late payment in my life. Yeah. Right? Like, everything is good.
Great income to debt well, not great income to debt ratios anymore. Yeah. But, you know, like, almost no debt. Yeah. The only debt I had was my mortgage.
Like, everything else is paid off.
Corey: Yeah. So no consumer debt?
Steve: Yeah. Yeah. No consumer debt. No. Yeah.
We just don't believe that you're gonna make it. Like, not you personally, but just like the data shows.
Corey: Yeah. Statistically, this is not good for us. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Steve: Right. It's like, well, that sucks. Like, I wish someone someone would have told me that beforehand.
Corey: Right. Yeah. What did you end up doing then? Did you just have to go full time realtor at that point and just
Steve: I mean, I'd
Corey: be able
Steve: to sell my credit cards, and I accept my line of credit because I already had those beforehand. Right? I had, like, 30 k limit beforehand for no reason just because, like, you
Corey: know, if
Steve: they call you, like, hey. Would you like to send your credit? Like, sure.
Corey: Sure. Yeah. Why not?
Steve: Yeah. Right. Like, don't know what you're gonna do with it, but sure. Whatever. And then, I had my home medical out of credit from when I bought my house.
You know, I bought if you remember back in the day, you had eighty fifteen five mortgages. Oh, right. So I had 80% Yeah. Was their first mortgage, 15% was their second mortgage, and you put 5% down. Yeah.
And so I had that 15% as my home equity line of credit, which I paid a lot of it down. Okay. You know, in over the course of, like, I don't know, like, a year and a half.
Corey: Yeah.
Steve: But I paid a good chunk of it down. I was like, well.
Corey: Bring her back to the bring her back to the brim?
Steve: Exactly. Wow. Yeah. Yeah. That's crazy, man.
Okay. So then, this is it sounds like then it was pretty smooth sailing. Like, you're doing deals, knocking out of the park. Not hearing a lot of adversity along the way. Yeah.
Was there adversity along the way?
Corey: There's always adversity, man. We I forget about a lot of the adversity at the time, but, I mean, it's the like, then I traded one job for another job Mhmm. Basically. So I got rid of this w two job. But now, like, I'm I am my own boss, and now the pressure is a 100% on me.
So before, it was it's on me, but pretty consistent income coming in monthly. Even though it's sales, it was pretty predictable for the most part. Yeah. And now it's like, okay. I gotta make this thing work
Steve: Mhmm.
Corey: Now. And so now it's like, okay. How the heck was I doing this before with just, like, four hour windows? Because now I feel like I'm working sixteen hours a day. So now it became really, it became a relationship struggle for Carrie and I.
She was handling and Carrie's Carrie's my wife for those people that don't know. She was handling a lot of, like, the behind the scenes, you know, the KPIs, doing the marketing, getting the things out, and all that stuff. And I was handling, obviously, the sales side Mhmm. Acquisitions and all that kind of thing. But it's like, that always takes precedent
Steve: Mhmm.
Corey: Over the family. That's that's what our balance was. You know? Right. There was no work life balance.
It was work Mhmm. Family whenever I get to it. Yeah. You know? And so it started to create some friction in our relationship.
Steve: Are some examples of, like, things that, you know, you did egregiously wrong? Like, feel some feel comfortable talking about. Oh, I
Corey: can talk about anything. Got it. One in particular, I'll never forget this. It was just her and I still in the business. I think we had hired maybe somebody just, like, piecemeal to, like, handwrite letters for us, the little stay at home mom or something, I think, was doing this for us.
But outside of that, it was just her and I, only employees. And I remember one time, she was, like, drawing this big funnel chart on tag board of, like, our lead where our lead volume was before, obviously, you had all these cool dashboards and all this other stuff. Right?
Steve: Plecto didn't exist.
Corey: Plecto didn't exist. We were using a CRM nobody's ever heard of called Insightly. This is what
Steve: it was.
Corey: I I don't even know if we were using that at this time. Might have just been on little, you know, handwritten sheets or something, but, I think we were using a phone system so we could track the phone numbers and at least figure that piece out. And she was drawing it, and I don't know what it was. Like, I was getting stressed out about something, and she was stressed. And she said she said something about I was like, what are you what are you doing with that stuff over there?
Like, we just need to get more leads. Don't worry about it. And she's like, hey, idiot. Like, if we don't know where the leads are coming from, how are we supposed to get more leads? Like, we don't know what lead source is generating the leads if we don't track it.
Steve: We'll figure it out.
Corey: And I was like, oh, right. And I kept I remember I said, I feel like that was my line to her. It's like, I feel like we just need to get more deals. I just need to get on the phone more. I gotta talk to more people.
That's all that's all we need to do, and we'll get our we'll get to our goal or whatever. And she's like, you feel like that, but what does the data say?
Steve: Mhmm. And
Corey: I was like, good point. So now anytime I say I feel like, I catch myself, I'm like, wait. Mhmm. What does the data say now? What do
Steve: I feel?
Corey: My PIE is, like, way off the charts, so I'm very emotional, very emotional decision maker. Mhmm. Data, whatever. Get rid
Steve: of it. Right. Right. For other people. Right.
Corey: Yeah.
Steve: Yeah. Yeah. But as far as the work, like, balance component, like, when did you get, like, in trouble for, like, being too involved in your business and not being present enough at home?
Corey: All the time. I mean, vacations, that's there's I mean, I'm there. I mean, physically I'm physically there, but I'm on my phone. And it's still a struggle to this day. I mean,
Steve: we have
Corey: a team that runs most of the day to day operations and stuff, but it's still that, like, oh, I I have to feel important, so I have to be involved in the business and that kind of thing. So that still creates some tension. She still has to check me every once in a while. Like, hey. You've been you're on your phone a lot when you're home.
Like, when you're home, be home. I'm like, oh, yeah. Okay. Alright.
Steve: Is Carrie still involved in the business?
Corey: No. No. She she fired herself last year.
Steve: Oh, good. Yeah. Good for her. Yeah. But you're still involved?
Corey: Still involved.
Steve: Yeah. To what capacity?
Corey: So I pretty much manage the sales team. I mean, I manage the whole team, but I'm pretty much mostly involved with our acquisitions team. Mhmm. So we do trainings in the mornings. We do a team huddle every morning.
That's my primary focus. Mhmm. Getting back involved in quality control. We are getting a little loosey goosey on some things, so I step back into that. But, again, it's something every time I step it back into something, then I go to CG, and it's all about getting you know, delegating and not training and that stuff.
I'm like, I don't need to be doing this. Like, some you know, somebody else needs to be doing this, but I find I I find things in the business to get back involved with to whatever.
Steve: Let's talk about, the journey then to get Carrie. Right? Because, you know, she's doing the operations.
Corey: Yeah.
Steve: Cannot be, overstated how important Yes. It is. Right? Like, I was talking to someone yesterday, like, sales and marketing is sexy. Yeah.
Without operations, like Yeah. Nothing's happening. No.
Corey: You don't have leads. You don't have a business.
Steve: Yeah. Yeah. So let's talk about, like, how did she what did did you guys put a plan in place for her to leave? Mhmm. Did she say, like, hey, I wanna be out of here by this date?
Like, how did you guys plan to have it where she could remove herself? Because, like like, in context of everything, we're still talking like you're you're the biggest guy in your market. Right? Like, how did you get to a position where she could exit?
Corey: Yeah. It it was because of having babies. Mhmm. So I got her pregnant again. And and she was looking at the timeline going, well, I'm gonna be out for a little bit.
Mhmm. And we need leads. So if we don't have leads coming in Mhmm. We don't have a business, and so we gotta hire somebody. You know, that was the first big scary, like but that means we won't get to keep all of our money.
Like, what are we gonna do? You know? And so we brought a girl in part time to take off just doing our we used to do in the mail in house. We brought it back in house now, but we used to do is a little bit more of a manual process in house. Like, I remember they'd be, like, with the paper cutter making the postcards and, like, doing all this stuff.
So we brought a girl in, take that stuff off of her plate and then the data stuff. And turns out, she did a better job than Carrie did Mhmm. On a lot of this stuff, and she was a rock star. So she ended up really helping us get organized on the back end of stuff and managing a lot of the leads and making sure that they were being handled and making sure they weren't we weren't losing them and getting us organized and that sort of stuff. So really after that, our third child before so after our third child, she was out.
And then periodically, when people would leave,
Steve: you
Corey: know, that were in that role, she would step back in for a little bit. Right. Train them up and that kind of thing. And then after a while, she's like, okay. I don't need to be here anymore.
Steve: Mhmm. I'm not
Corey: I don't work here anymore. See you later.
Steve: So So then, going back to the whole work life balance deal then, like, what, rails, guardrails are you putting in place to make sure, you know, you're present at home?
Corey: Yeah. I need to put more in. Is is as we're talking about this, I'm like, what what am I putting in? It's an awareness thing, I think, though. Like, I used to get really defensive anytime she would say anything like, hey.
You're not being present. I'm like, but I gotta make money for the family. You know? Like like, that kind of thing. Like, oh, I'm so important.
Yeah. This is really more important than you guys because I'm doing the most important job in our whole family, you know, kind of thing.
Steve: Right.
Corey: And so me becoming aware of that, doing a lot of work with guys like Brad Chandler and, like, those kinds of things, I understand why I operate that way and trying to just bring the walls down to defensiveness. It's created better communication between us where now she can point things out to me with good constructive criticism, and then I can instead of being defensive, I can be like, okay. Alright. I gotta just be more aware and put the phone away, be done at a certain time. So I try to be more hey, when we're you know, I try to be done at three or four every day if I can.
Mhmm. Unless we have some meetup or something else going on, but then just be done and not try
Steve: to talk about that work with Brad Chandler because he was on a show, I was thinking, maybe about a year ago now.
Corey: Okay.
Steve: And, I think what the the stuff that he's teaching
Corey: Mhmm.
Steve: And sharing is so important. Mhmm. But no one wants to hear it.
Corey: Yeah. People are like, pretty good talking about Brad Chandler stuff. I'm out of here. I know they're tuning out right now.
Steve: It sounds loosey goosey. Right? Like, I know, like, I've talked to him. I was like, you know, like, how are you, like, in the morning meditations at CG? He's like, not that many people come.
Yeah. Right? And it's just and we've talked about, like, how do we make this more interesting? Yeah. So talk about, what prompted you to talk to to Brad, and then what how did it help?
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Corey: Yeah. No. This is good. So I had these problems. Right?
Like, I kept we'd every six months, Carrie and I would have this blow up. Right? Like, we'd be great, great, great, great, great blow up fight. And it was this pattern that kept happening. Right?
And I'm like, well, she doesn't understand. I need to do this, this, this, this, this, and it was always, like, her fault. And then one time, I was like, wait. What if it's me? What if I'm the problem in this pattern?
Yeah. Oh, no. It can't be me. It can't be me. And then Brad used to be the guy that was out at the bar till two in the morning at CG.
Steve: I never met that version of Brad.
Corey: Really?
Steve: The only time because I I've heard these stories.
Corey: Okay. Okay.
Steve: The only time I witnessed anything was it was, like, right before the transition.
Corey: Okay.
Steve: Where they're like, hey. They were gonna hang out in Brad's room. I was like, okay. And then we go to Brad's room, like, he's smoking a bong and everything. Yeah.
Well, this is different. I wasn't expecting to see this as CG. Yeah. But, hey, you know, like, no judgment. Like, they're each of their own.
Yeah. Yeah. That's not me, but, like Yeah. You know, I'll go grab some beers. Right.
Yeah. Yeah. So I never got to see, like, the wild side.
Corey: The party brand.
Steve: Yeah. Yeah. So but, anyway, continue.
Corey: Yeah. Party Brad was always a good time. Yeah. And so, like, I would I couldn't hang with Brad. Mhmm.
Like, I'm like it's like twelve. I'm like, I'm going to I gotta get up. I'll play basketball in the morning. Mhmm. I gotta have some sleep.
I gotta be able to actually function the next day, and he's out till two, three. I don't even know what time in the morning. And then I I was gone from CG for a little bit, I think, having kids. And so I've missed a few CGs. And I came back, and this is back when I think we were still doing the presentations, maybe.
Steve: Hot seats.
Corey: It was hot seats, but I think we'd go every other time or something like that. Right? And so he's up, and it's his presentation. Right? And, you know, Brad had become a good friend at that time, so I'm I'm dialed in.
I'm excited to hear what Brad's gonna talk about. And he's always got the biggest shit eating grin on his face. Like, he's always smiling. Right? And he's up there no different this time.
But this time, he's talking about how he doesn't drink anymore. He doesn't smoke weed anymore. He's changed his entire life. And I'm going and how he used to have these fights with his partners, and he got to like, he's like, well, I got divorced twice, and I blame them each time. And then same thing.
He's, like, talking about how maybe it was him. It's
Steve: better. Yeah.
Corey: It was his pattern. I'm like, that's me. Yeah. Oh my gosh. Brad, you're talking about me.
I don't smoke weed, but I was like, I'd like to drink. And I was like, I don't think I wanna give up drinking, but I wanna have a better relationship with my wife. That sounds pretty awesome. And so after that, I texted him. I said, I didn't get a chance to talk to him really in that.
And I said, dude, whatever you're on, I want it. Give it to me because you're a completely different person, but you're in a good way, like, not in a bad way. And so I got connected with him. And at that time, Annie and Larry from, I forgot their call. Leaders.
Seal team leaders were the ones that he had gone through their program.
Steve: And so
Corey: I went out to Salt Lake. I went through the whole thing that he went through. He did? Okay. And in that, I had a really weird emotional thing happen.
Like, I wasn't a big crier ever, I don't think. And Annie had me in the basement of this place, and we were doing some kind of exercise where, like, you grab around one of your fingers and you you pull it and you say one thing good about yourself and your and you don't even verbalize. It's just in your head. And then you do the other thing or you get rid of a negative thought. Mhmm.
And then you bring your finger in and you say something positive, and I just, like, lost it. I was just in shambles, like, crying my eyes out. I don't I don't know what happened. But then I was on the table, and Larry's taking you through all these different things, and you're blindfolded. And, you know, there's, you know, all these people around giving you energy, which, again, some peep there was, like, crystals and stuff, which I you know, I'm not really into the crystal thing.
Steve: I don't
Corey: I don't really believe in that, but I don't care. Well, whatever. You know? But crystals are on me. Great.
And going through that, it kinda unblocked a lot of things that, you know, we talk about why I was operating out of fear. Mhmm. And a lot of those things started to come to the surface of, like, these events that, like, were trapped up here that I don't realize are the the computer program that's running in the background unconsciously that are just literally making me operate day to day, hour by hour, minute by minute. All my habits, all my decisions, they're all running from this little program going out of the back. And these a lot of them were just lies and meaning that I attached to certain memories.
Steve: What are
Corey: some of those lies? Well, one of them was, like, it's a lot of worthiness stuff. Like, I'm only good enough if I achieve. Right? So one of the things that came up was, like, my dad, great dad.
Still love my dad. And my it's just the meaning again. So it's not, like, against the person.
Steve: The stories we told ourselves as kids.
Corey: As kids. Right? So my dad was always kind of the quiet guy in the in the parenting. My mom was the more of, like, the vocal enforcer. Dad only got in enforcer if things got bad Mhmm.
Steve: When he had to.
Corey: When he had to.
Steve: Yeah. Which I imagine with you, a lot of had tos.
Corey: Actually, my middle brother was the had to the most. Yeah. Alright. I had a couple, but mostly middle brother was the problem child. And so I remember, though, he also didn't he wasn't it's not like he was very vocal about giving love or praise.
Right? And the only time that I would get it is through sports. Mhmm. Right? So if I did good in a sport, then he would just give praise or whatever.
Right? Achievement. So I tied that to, like, oh, if I achieve, then I'll get praise. Right? Then I'll get love.
Then I'm worthy enough. Then I'm good enough. Right? And so that drives a lot of this behavior as a 30 some year old at the time. Now I'm 40 and still have to keep being aware of it and work through it that, like, I don't have to achieve to be good enough.
Steve: Well, that's why you're always the top sales guy.
Corey: Gotta get the plaques. Gotta get that recognition, man. Yeah. Gotta be the top. Gotta get told attaboy.
Good job. Yeah.
Steve: So what did Brad help you accomplish afterwards? Like, what what transformations did you see?
Corey: Yeah. I think curiosity is the big word that comes in to my mind. It's like, if I get anger or defensiveness or I'm I'm feeling triggered, if you will, that's kind of the new catch word. Right? Get triggered.
It's like stopping and being curious of, like, why is that upsetting me? Mhmm. And then what's the lie that I'm telling myself right now that's causing that? Where did that come from?
Steve: Mhmm.
Corey: And then is that true? No. It's not true. Am I good enough? Yes.
Okay. What am I grateful for in this moment? And then go into gratitude. So it's just a little process, this little mental process, and I'm still not perfect at it. Like, having these conversations is always a good reminder of, oh, yeah.
I gotta make sure I'm doing that. Right? Yeah. But it's awareness and curiosity. Those are the two biggest things just being aware of, like, okay.
I'm I'm pissed right now. Why am I upset about this? Oh, it's because I think because I'm actually sad about, you know, that I'm not good enough. Otherwise, this wouldn't have happened right in business. Right?
Yeah. I get angry sometimes if something does go right. Right? And I'm like, oh, you guys shoulda did this. But then when I really think about it, I'm like, why am I angry about that?
It's because, really, at the end of the day, I I feel like I didn't do a good enough job training the team, which if I'm I'm not good enough to be a leader, who am I to be running a company? Right?
Steve: Right.
Corey: Oh, I am good enough.
Steve: Mhmm.
Corey: I am worthy enough. Right? I I am worthy of love. Right? Those kinds of things and and then coming back to gratitude in that moment.
Steve: Yeah. That's what we're talking about. Yeah. Like, Corey, a year and a half ago, was not saying any of these things. No.
Corey, a year and a half ago might be pissed off by a lot of different things. Yeah. Yeah. And so, going back to, you know, the blow up fights, if you guys if you come from talking about it, like, what are some blow up fights that you're having before? Like, you see, like we're not saying, like, they'll never happen again.
Yeah. But, like, definitely a lot more preventable.
Corey: Yeah. I think one of the biggest ones again is this work life thing. Right? Like, it's this I would get I would just be rigid and defensive. Like, I'm the breadwinner.
I have to work. Like, I can't like, yeah. Yeah. What you do is important, but, really, I'm I'm the most important as well.
Steve: Yeah. Would be.
Corey: Yeah. I'm kinda gonna be over here. You know?
Steve: Look after the franchise.
Corey: Yeah. Come on. I make the money. You know? Right?
And I never would would position it. I would never say anything like that to her ever. But in my behaviors and how defensive I would get, that's the message I'm sending to her. Yeah.
Steve: Come across that way.
Corey: A 100%.
Steve: Yeah. And, again, like, for everyone who's watching, like, I highly recommend you go back and watch the episode with Brad after this because, like, you know, Brad Chandler, like, he's had a massive transformation. Not only has he had a massive transformation. Yep. He's consistently making transformations just like you're not talking about right now for other people.
Yeah. And then I just gotta hit this thing real quick because you're talking about, you know, playing basketball in the mornings. Yeah. You set ridiculous screens. I don't know what it is because you're not a big guy.
Yeah. But when we're playing basketball, you're a pain in the ass right now. So just have to throw that out there. Like, you know, you guys can tell by this banter. Like, we've known each other for a while.
Yeah. But, yeah, it was always a pain in the ass when Corey's on the other team.
Corey: Dude, I can't shoot to save my ass, so I gotta make up for it. I gotta get that recognition, Steve, as being a good screener, defender, hustler. Right? That's Yeah. That's what I do.
Steve: Irritants, I think is is the way you're looking for irritants. The only one that's a bigger irritant is Wren.
Corey: Yeah. He hasn't played in a while, though.
Steve: Hasn't he?
Corey: I haven't seen him out there in a while.
Steve: Yeah. So okay. So we're talking about, the, we're getting to a point about, you know, being the biggest. One of the things that happened as well so Ren and I, actually, we're just talking about him. He and I, we had partnered up to create a program
Corey: on sales leadership Yep.
Steve: Which I thought was, like, really incredible. Yeah.
Corey: I went through it. Great program.
Steve: Yeah. Yeah. But it's just one of those things that people don't want.
Corey: They don't better at.
Steve: Leading a leading a sales organization. Like, there's, like they rather just put more money in marketing.
Corey: Okay. Right?
Steve: It's like Right. Right.
Corey: If we have enough leads, it'll work itself out.
Steve: I mean, like, kinda where you're sitting earlier. It's like, I just gotta get out there and sell more.
Corey: Yes.
Steve: Right? Sales solves all problems.
Corey: Like, you
Steve: realize later on, like, sales does not solve all problems. Right. Sells a
Corey: lot of problems.
Steve: Yeah. But not all problems. But, you know, you and I like, so right now I put this thing together, and then you're one of the clients that came through. Yep. And then you have something absolutely crazy happen in the middle of it.
Mhmm. So you, for everyone that's listening. Right? Like, you spent $25,000 with Rent and Me Yeah. To improve your team Yeah.
So that they can get better Yeah. So that you can sit in the owner's box Right. So that you can move down to Florida, I believe Yep. With your family Yep. Did not work out that way.
Corey: No. For a short period of time, it did.
Steve: For a short period of time, it did. Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, this is not, like, meant to be, like, a scary story. No.
But it's an experience It is. And getting into owner's box.
Corey: Yes.
Steve: So you wanna share kinda what that journey was? Sure.
Corey: Yeah. We learned a lot in this journey. So we had in, what year was that, Steve? Two years ago? It was yeah.
Yeah. Because last year, I jumped back in.
Steve: The thing was '22 is when we started. We started, like, towards the '22. And you might have joined in '23.
Corey: Okay. I think it was in '23, maybe. Yeah. I
Steve: think you joined in '23.
Corey: Yeah. So I think it was '23 when this happened.
Steve: Okay.
Corey: So I had, I had a girl who was running operations for us.
Steve: Mhmm.
Corey: Tried to have her. She was a she started as a TC. This is the backstory of all this that that led to this. She was a TC. Great job as a TC.
Mhmm. We the girl who I was talking about, who was our original girl for Carrie
Steve: Mhmm.
Corey: She had a baby, and then she said she was gonna come back. She came back for, like, two weeks, and then it's like, no. Just kidding. I'm gonna go home and stay with my kid. Right?
Just can't blame her. So we were like, crap. Like, we just sat we like, that was a big hole in our business. Like, this girl was a big part of our business. And so the girl who was TC also was, like, really good at, like, kinda HRE type stuff.
And so we're like, hey. You could yeah. You're probably a good operations person, and it was kinda just, like, convenience. They're just throw her into this thing. Right?
So we threw her in, and she was trying to implement a change from Podio to Salesforce. No technical background whatsoever. We're like, sure. Figure it out. Like, you can handle it.
Yeah. Marketing or no marketing background, no experience in marketing. We're like, Jess used to do it. You she's probably at SOPs. You know?
I kinda like, just go do it. A lot of things. So we kinda threw her to the wolves. Right? Yeah.
And things weren't going well.
Steve: Yeah. Well and before we get into all this, I would say, like, I remember seeing her, and you had I think there's another female there that you brought to CG. Right?
Corey: Yeah. There's a couple of them.
Steve: I brought a current remember, like, looking. It's like, man, like, Corey's got it good. Yeah. Because he's got these two females who, by all appearances, look to be badasses. Yeah.
We've got it all figured out.
Corey: Yeah. Well, these were after. So this first girl named Elizabeth. Mhmm. Sweetheart.
Love her to death. Just we just threw her in the wrong spot. Right? And so it was, like, February 2023. I'm in Florida
Steve: Mhmm.
Corey: And I I know our business is, like, imploding. Right? I'm like, this is not going good. Right? Like, the marketing is not getting done the way it should get done.
The Salesforce thing is a mess. Right? This is a disaster. And I'm like, I need somebody who can lead this freaking company Mhmm. When I'm there.
So I had a girl in dispositions who was doing a good job in dispositions and had more of it seemed like that kind of badass leadership type thing. You know? She could stand up to the at guys a little bit and then go back and forth. Right? And so I called her and I gave her I I said, hey.
What do you think about this? This is what we're experiencing. You know, would you wanna I don't wanna say push this person out, but maybe we just put her in more, like, HR type of a role. You take over the marketing and all this stuff and run the company. You're the CEO.
Mhmm. What do you think of that? Of course, she loved that idea. Right? And then another girl who's TC, she helped us implement the novation's process.
So we gave her the brewer method. She went through, I mean, phenomenal job. She just picked it all up, made SOPs out of it, trained the team on all the documents we need and all this stuff. And so I'm like, you can be the CEO. Mhmm.
This would be great. I got a CEO and a COO,
Steve: then I've Just give him titles.
Corey: Yeah. Just give him titles, and it'll all work out. You can just you can sit in the owner's box in. Right? And, and then I brought in my old boss at the at the company that I worked for prior doing the, eharmonymatch.com college student athletes thing.
Yeah. I brought him in to be the director of sales. So I'm like, I got all my bases covered now. Peace. I'm out of here.
Right? And so I would do, like, I would do a call once a week with with Jackie, the person who was the CEO at the time, and we just talked about state of the business, how we're doing. I'd give her a couple things to work on or do differently or whatever, and they go about their business. Right? And this is when interest rates were going up too, and so the market was changing.
And so we had to try try to figure out pivots, do different things, and it wasn't working out. Right? Things just weren't we weren't going back the right direction. In fact, we're going the opposite direction of where we thought to to go. And so, they were getting paid off of revenue percentage, not profit percentage.
And so that was how their pay was structured. So if we did bad, it was okay because, like, I wasn't paying them as much. But, also, they weren't making a lot of times the best decisions on the profitability side of things.
Steve: Like, I don't care revenue.
Corey: I could care less about revenue. That's an irrelevant number to me. I care about what's going in the bank account every month. Right?
Steve: Right.
Corey: And, so I had a I had a conversation with her actually at CG. So I used to bring her and several other people Mhmm. To CG to try to better them and help them grow.
Steve: Yeah. You generally want to lift everyone else in your organization.
Corey: Yeah. I wanted them to grow. And and, again, if I'm not gonna be the I'm if I wanna be in the owner's box, I need people who can be elevated and be in that spot. And so we had a discussion about comp. I said, hey.
We have to change it to profit based off of profit. Mhmm.
Steve: I'm not
Corey: trying to take money out of your pocket. Let's just figure out what did we profit this year. What did you get paid? We'll do a basic math equation, and we'll turn it to profit. Everything will be great.
Right? Well, I came in the next week to debrief with all the all the leadership team there Mhmm.
Steve: And come
Corey: up with, what do we wanna take away from CG? What do we wanna implement? That kind of stuff. And they decided that it was better for them to either have me sell them the company or they were all leaving. And so
Steve: So you have a conversate a conversation about compensation? Yep. And a week later, like, having an intervention with you.
Corey: Yeah. It was literally it felt like it was weird. It was awkward. Wow.
Steve: Okay. So you're blindsided walking A 100%. No idea.
Corey: Never saw it coming.
Steve: And you had three people
Corey: Yep.
Steve: On the other side
Corey: Yep.
Steve: That work for you Yep. That are basically doing a hostile takeover.
Corey: Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Attempting.
Steve: Attempted. Yeah. So that like, what did you do?
Corey: I I just tried to understand where they're coming from. Right? I was like, where is this, you know, where is this coming from, guys? Let's talk about let's talk through this. It seemed very irrational to me.
Like Mhmm. It wasn't computing. I'm like, okay. Hang on. All we were talking about was making sure we're all rowing the boat in the same direction.
Steve: I'd say compensation and alignment with the company's goals.
Corey: Correct.
Steve: Mhmm. Yeah. Reward the right behavior. Like, that's Right. Real quick, just, like, you know, attention.
You're like I think if there's one thing that, you know, like, everyone is listening and the owners can, you know, be aware of is, like, compensation has to be in alignment with what you want. Right. Has Has to be in alignment with what you want. The I see too often, like, well, you know, they're doing this. They're not doing that.
I was like, well, how did they get rewarded for doing that getting that done well? I was like, they don't. I was like, well Yeah. Yeah. There's your problem.
Yeah. Yeah. So, anyway, go back to
Corey: that. Yeah. So, yeah, so we I just tried to say I sat probably for an hour talking to him. Just trying to understand. Rationally.
Rationally.
Steve: Like Mister feelings off the chart. Yeah. Try to rationalize with three employees Yeah. On where they're coming from.
Corey: Yeah. More so understand. I don't know about rationalize, but just understand the root
Steve: I applaud that.
Corey: Of where they come from.
Steve: I applaud that. Like, I can do it, but, like, I'm, like, I'm a far right e. Okay. But, like, I have to understand everything.
Corey: Yeah.
Steve: And, I am to the right on the c, so I'm, like, extremely patient.
Corey: Oh, yeah. No.
Steve: So, like, I'm not I I am way more understanding than I should be, and I generally want to understand what's going on Yeah. Before I lose it on you.
Corey: Yeah.
Steve: You went all the way to, like, let's let's talk it out.
Corey: Let's talk it out. Okay. Let's figure it out. Yeah. Because I didn't wanna be back.
I didn't wanna be back in the business, and I they knew that. That was the dirty part. I think that really rubbed me the wrong way at the time. It's like, they knew Carrie and I were getting ready to leave for Florida again. Mhmm.
And we had a vacation down here actually in Tucson and then up at Sedona, and they knew all this stuff. And so it almost felt like it was a little bit more planned than just that conversation. In the corner. They're putting me in the corner.
Steve: Right? And they
Corey: knew we would be in a pickle. Like, I'd have to step back into the business
Steve: If
Corey: I didn't sell them the company. Yeah. Like, then I'm choosing to step back in the business, basically. And, yeah, so we had a good conversation. And I left, like I said, I need I'm like, I gotta I gotta I gotta get back to you to talk good.
I'm obviously, I'm gonna tell Carrie what's going on and all this stuff. And I called her and she was not a happy mama. So she's like, you turn that car back around. You go let them go. I was like, okay, ma'am.
Yes, ma'am. And so
Steve: Is that typical of Carrie?
Corey: No. She's
Steve: the more rational one?
Corey: Yeah. She's definitely the more rational. Okay. So when she says, you turn that car on, you go fire them. Like, okay.
Alright. Sounds good. Yeah.
Steve: Yes. So
Corey: and I actually I let I let the CEO go first, and I again, I sat down with each one of the other ones because it felt a little bit like she was the one controlling
Steve: the cancer. She was the cancer. Yeah.
Corey: And I thought, well, if we cut that out of here, maybe these other because they were good employees. They're good, very qualified, great people. I had I loved them. And, and I sat back down with both of them, and they both decided to still Mhmm. Go their separate ways and said, alright.
Yeah. But it was the best thing that happened to us. Learned a lot in that process.
Steve: Yeah. So some of the lessons learned.
Corey: Yeah. One, don't give people titles. Yeah. Like, I don't care about a title. You can call me king of the universe and whatever you wanna call me, and it's great.
I don't care. I'm just doing what's my job? Mhmm. Okay. I'm gonna go do that.
But to other people, it really changes. You know? And I think in our industries in particular Mhmm. I see COO thrown around all the time. Right?
Like, I'm gonna get a COO. Right? Unless you're running, like, a $10,000,000 business, you you do not need a COO. Mhmm. You need someone to help you with operations.
Call my operations manager.
Steve: I'd
Corey: be even careful with the word manager.
Steve: Mhmm. That
Corey: can go to people's heads. Right? Director of operations, again, now getting up there. You're getting up there. Executive assistant maybe is a better spot to start with.
But titles is a big thing. I didn't think that I actually met with a guy right before I met with these people that have breakfast. The guy who runs several manufacturing companies. He's kinda my rich dad. Right?
Steve: Okay.
Corey: And, we were having breakfast, and we were actually talking about leadership positions and how do you find good leaders and how do you get people to run your company. And he's he's been running a business for forty years, and he's like, I don't give them titles unless they've earned it after several years, like a c title. Mhmm. They've had to earn it for, like, three plus years and been with me. And even then, I'm still a little leery about it.
He's like, I've seen it change people too many times. And then I literally walk into, like, this intervention with three people to see titles going, holy crap. This guy's like a prophet. Yeah. He figured this out.
So that was one of the big things. The other thing is Carrie and I used to talk a lot about leaving the business, and we would say, hey. We've our goal is to exit the business. We wanna be out of the business. Right?
And I think while that was Carrie's goal, there really would never was my deep down my goal. Like, I love this industry. I love real estate. Like, I wouldn't change the industries for anything.
Steve: Yeah.
Corey: So I think I was just going along with that verbiage, but I think people on the team who maybe don't and I I don't think they had bad intentions from the jump. I think just it creeps into their mindset of, like, oh, they wanna be out of the business. Well, now I'm super important. Mhmm. And so now I have this entitlement.
It create it breeds entitlement is what it does. And so I don't I'll never say that again that I wanna be out of the business. I'm in it. So if my team's listening, don't get any ideas. Alright.
I'm here. I'm here to stay. But, that those were a couple of the big lessons. Like, it's just about messaging to the team and and try not to create that entitlement environment. Because it that was the that was another pattern that had happened now, like, two or three times.
Steve: Oh, really?
Corey: We'd had somebody who got in a power position, quote, unquote, then tried to basically use that knowing that we wanted to be removed from the day to day stuff. Mhmm. And they tried to leverage that for higher compensation. If you don't give me this, then I'm gonna I'm gonna go find something you know, those kinds of things that put us in a position. I'm like, well, it's not them.
It's us. It's our problem. Again, going back to the awareness piece. What are we saying or doing that's breeding this? Attracting it.
It's attracting it. Yeah.
Steve: Yeah. Yeah. Oh, that's all those are all great points. And, yeah, I think, Chris Johns. Right?
He's with Chris he's with Mark Dela tour. And, that that is not St. Louis. It's Kansas City. Yeah.
Right? And, they did a whole presentation about titles. Yeah. And, I remember, like, going to that presentation. I was like, well, we have a lot of, like, really fancy titles back at the company.
Yeah. Yeah. Like, what am I gonna do? Yeah. We've since changed all the titles.
Corey: Okay. Right? I might
Steve: not properly cascade it to the team why we changed all the titles. But we did change all the titles, because they talked about, like yeah. Exactly what you're saying is, like, they, once you get someone a certain title, then they demand Yeah. For the conversation.
Corey: Because
Steve: when they go to, like, Glassdoor Yeah. Or Google or these days, I guess, ChatGPT.
Corey: Yeah. Right?
Steve: It's like, hey. As a COO, what should I make? And they're correcting they're comparing a COO at, like, a Fortune 500 company.
Corey: Yeah. Coca Cola Yeah. Versus us. Managing 10 salespeople. Yeah.
Steve: It's Yeah. So they expect this because this is what the industry standard is. And maybe they don't compare you to a Fortune 500 company, but they maybe compare you to, like, all the major companies locally. Right. Right?
And so they go like, hey. You know, this company is hiring for this and that. Yeah. Like, yeah. Like, if you wanna go get that job,
Corey: like, go get that job. Right.
Steve: Yeah. Well, that's not what that's not what we're paying you.
Corey: Yeah.
Steve: Well, we
Corey: had a girl this the girl the first girl that was with us, I remember we sat down with her, and she was demanding, like, a pretty high confidence because, again, we were like, hey. Here's our vision. Here's our goal. We're gonna be in Florida. We need somebody to run the day to day.
Mhmm. We think you're the person to do it. And then it was like, I well, sure. I'll do that. Yeah.
I would love to. And then I was like, but we gotta talk about my compensation. Right? I was like, okay. We can talk about it for sure.
And then the conversation was demanding. We're like, hold on, girl. She was like, 22 at the time or 23. No degree, which again, I don't care if you have a degree or you don't have a degree. But you're comparing when you when you're looking these things up, you're comparing yourself to people who have four year, maybe sick, you know, master's degree level business leadership MBA.
Steve: An MBA Track record.
Corey: Track record. They've ran bigger companies before. Like, every problems. Everything you've learned, you've learned from us.
Steve: Mhmm.
Corey: Right? Or we've given you some some tool to learn it. Like, you didn't you didn't come to us already ready to rock and roll. Like, we've groomed you to be here. So that was interesting.
The other thing I guess the other lesson I would I learned from that too, Steve, is I was really quick to just be like, hey. You're a warm body.
Steve: Yeah.
Corey: Here you go. Right? And, like, now, like, we have PIs, and we have all these other things, like, make sure we're putting the right person in the right seat, and I'm not great at that. So I have another I have another I have a new number two who's been with me now a year and a half, and I'd leave a lot of those things, the research, the detail, and then, hey. Bring me your findings on some of those things first before I'm just gonna, like, make a quick decision to go, I need somebody to fill the spot.
Steve: Yeah. There you go. And, yeah, I think you had the inside track on Wyatt. Mhmm. Right?
Yeah. Because I found out he left. And by the time I found he left, I was like, he's I'm working for Corey. I was
Corey: like,
Steve: damn it.
Corey: Yeah. You know what? That those three were the ones that hired him, though.
Steve: They those Oh, they hired him?
Corey: Which was great. And God's an interesting an interesting being. Right? He Yeah. Kinda weaved a lot of this stuff together as you look back.
Right? And you're like, k. They hire Wyatt. Wyatt comes into the fold. Wyatt now is my number two.
Right? And, and then, like, literally a month and a half later, they're trying to do this thing. And I'm like, as I got to work with him I I only worked with him briefly because I wasn't very involved in the day to day, but I had known him from CG before. Right. And I knew how he had worked in all these other orgs.
I knew he was working for the Salesforce people that we were trying to, like, thank you. I think he and I will like, I think we'll be able to rock this Yeah. Together. I don't think we need all three of you guys, but appreciate you bringing him in. Yeah.
It was great. So Yeah. Wyatt's incredible hire.
Steve: So Yeah. Like I said, I found out before that he was disgruntled. Yeah. I would've I would've pushed him before you got him. Yeah.
And then so another thing you're doing too, so talk to me about, like, you got a podcast, you're doing burs. Mhmm. What is going on right now in Green Bay?
Corey: Mostly wholesale stuff. So we started a podcast called the Wisconsin investor podcast. Really wanted to bring local investors in or people who could serve the local market. And we get people like you know, they're used to investing in a high priced market like Phoenix or, you know, LA or some of these other places, and they can't get a return in some cases. So and they don't know about Wisconsin.
Like, literally, all they know is the Packers are Green Bay. They don't even know it's in Wisconsin. Right? Yeah. And so I just wanted to have a platform to be able to be like, hey.
This is Wisconsin. These are the deals we're doing. Either local people or people outside looking to get a return, come take a look at Wisconsin and take a look at it. So enjoying that, we're doing that once a week. We're dropping an episode, once a week, which maybe we can get Steve trying on.
Yeah. Alright. You can do it virtually. You don't have to travel.
Steve: I'll make some time.
Corey: Okay. Alright.
Steve: Have your people talk to my people.
Corey: Yeah. We'll we'll we'll connect them. Yeah. And then, still doing BRS. Yep.
Still love the BRS. Right? Still working in Wisconsin, which I know at CG, a lot of people don't believe it, but you can still
Steve: do BRS. Elaborate on that. So I was I was actually interviewing Kennedy yesterday.
Corey: Okay.
Steve: And she's like, yeah. One of the things that wherever I work, I want to be able to learn from them and how to buy real estate. Okay. It's like, okay. Well, you just you should know.
Like, a, I don't buy real estate anymore. Yeah. I guess real estate is just not not I'm just not actively doing it.
Corey: Yeah.
Steve: And b, we're in Phoenix. Yeah. So, like, if you wanna buy real estate, you gotta look like Midwest. Like, where do you live right now? It's like Harrisburg.
Right? Like, she's moving here.
Corey: Okay. It's like,
Steve: I live in Harrisburg. Like, I ain't gonna blah blah figure. I was like, oh, so you're right by York. Yeah. Right?
So you're right by Brewer. Yeah. Like, you should just buy all the real estate there. Yeah. Right?
Like Yeah. Don't come to Phoenix to buy real snow. Right? At least that's my own philosophy. Like, everyone like, play your own game.
Right. But I'm not buying here for cash flow. No. So you're in Green Bay, and you can still BRRR. You can still BRRR.
So talk to me why you can still BRRR in Green Bay.
Corey: The prices are still you're still able to make some cash flow on these deals. Mhmm. Section 8 is great up by us. I mean, we have some amazing Section 8 programs. Like, three bedroom up by us will get you about $1,500 a month.
Mhmm.
Steve: So you
Corey: can buy these upper lower duplexes, you know, at a lower price than a side by side, for example.
Steve: Mhmm.
Corey: Fix them up. They're appraising out like crazy right now. I I'm like the old like, I've been in the game only seven or eight years. Right? And I'm like the old guy who walked uphill both ways, no shoes, 12 feet of snow.
Yeah. My I remember back in my day, we we could get these things for $50, you know? And now they're appraising at 300 plus for an upper lower duplex.
Steve: Okay.
Corey: Right? And so for me, it's still blowing my mind, but there's there's still cash flowing. You know? Not a lot. If you're gonna burn, you're not gonna you don't expect to get, you know, rich on a burn, but it's a great wealth building strategy, and you can still be cash flow positive and have no money into these deals, which is incredible.
Steve: So are you sourcing your own deals for these burrs, or are you getting them from other people?
Corey: Sourcing our own. Yeah. So either on our list
Steve: Mhmm. Through
Corey: our buyers list, or I have to buy from our buyers list too, which is maybe a lesson I learned if I restart this whole company over again. I would totally do it differently.
Steve: So what would you do differently?
Corey: I would change up how the commission structure's built and figure out a way to make it
Steve: What is it now, and what would you like it to be?
Corey: So now they get paid. My acquisitions guys get paid a percentage of the of the net profit or whatever it is on the on the wholesale fee. Mhmm. So I'd figure out maybe a set standard. Hey.
If I'm gonna keep one of these, it's gonna be x or something like that and do it that way. But I got a lot of loyalty to these guys. I brought them in a certain comp plan.
Steve: So what do you do differently?
Corey: I would I would probably put somebody's salary. So, actually, I was listening to you and Pace
Steve: Mhmm.
Corey: The other day. Phenomenal podcast, by the way.
Steve: Thank you.
Corey: You guys haven't listened. I wanna go back and check it out. It's great. And you guys were talking about the book Who Not How. Mhmm.
And I've tried to get we did multifamily stuff a few years ago before the interest rates skyrocketed, and we did about 2,000,000 in assignment fees just in multifamily stuff. And then the well went dry. Like, we could not get like, the sellers were still way up here and the buyers were even lower now. Way lower. Yeah.
Yeah. Way too much. There you couldn't get that little delta we needed. And so we we scrapped that, but I had a guy, my my top sale my top act guy, he's really good with any multifamily leads that we get. He's done several of them.
He's got the biggest assignment fee. Mhmm. It's, like, probably five of the top assignment fees in our company, and all those were multifamily deals. And so I try to get him to go start sourcing these, but they're few and far between. I mean Right.
You get one or two a month, you're doing pretty good. Right? So it's hard to pull him off of his bread and butter, the thing that brings in the cash for him to try to go chase the elephant. Right? And so listening to you guys, a who not how problem, like, why don't I just hire a because then I'm like, well, I'll be the multifamily guy.
Like, let me get a let me delegate all this other stuff off of my plate. Right. And that was, like, three weeks ago that I made that decision, and I've made zero calls.
Steve: So, like, I need a who.
Corey: I need a who. Yeah. And, I'm like, why don't I just pay this guy or gal Mhmm. A nice salary and then figure out again what's the what's the behavior I want. So I want I want bird deals.
I wanna figure out a compensation structure that makes sense for them to win when we get a good bird deal.
Steve: Right.
Corey: And then anything we don't want, we can wholesale it. Right. But first goal is to build a portfolio, and I just need to just need to hoot for it. Starting over with a different asset class.
Steve: So Roberto work for you, you're sourcing the deals. Yeah. What percentage of market are you paying? I mean, are you basically paying what an end buyer for you would pay? Like, if you were to wholesale it.
Mhmm. We're basically paying, you know, the wholesale end buyer price. And then doing a burn?
Corey: To the company? Mhmm. So I pay basically whatever our commission is. Mhmm. So, like, if, let's say, you're a buyer on our buyers lists Mhmm.
And you offer 20,000 over our contract price. Right? And you're the highest and best. Right? Me as the owner, I could look at that and say, well, I'll buy it for 20,100 or whatever.
Right? And I think that's fair to the buyers. I think we'd understand that. Right? So then I just figure I have to calculate out what's the commission on that.
That's my cost
Steve: Mhmm.
Corey: To buy it Mhmm. Right from the company. And then, you know, the other amount is, like, air money.
Steve: Right? Right.
Corey: It's not real. It's just we never realized it. So kinda factor it that way right now if I'm buying and keeping any of them. Sometimes I get them on my own. Like, I'll send out some email blast, sometimes there's some email list, and Yeah.
I'll get and I'll have I've done deals with sellers before, and they'll call me up and just say, hey. I got another one. You wanna come to this thing? That kind of deal.
Steve: Okay. So you have a slight competitive advantage. Yeah. You can pay a little bit less Yeah. Than your competition.
Yep. Which is nice because you're probably spending a lot of marketing.
Corey: You're correct.
Steve: Yeah. Let's talk about that. So we're talking about doing 3 and a half million last year
Corey: Yep.
Steve: In fees. Yep. In a tiny market. Like, I'm not, like, exaggerating here. You said a 100,000 people.
Corey: Yeah. That's just the city that is bigger. It's probably 500,000 with the whole geographical area that Okay.
Steve: So half million population. Yeah. But it's still a lot. Yeah. Right?
Like, there are guys in Phoenix that make it that much. Right. Or a lot lot lot larger. Yeah. I think we're 10 x larger.
Corey: Yeah. Yeah.
Steve: So how did you get to this point where you are just a guy at ARIA to now you got a company where, like I imagine you're the gorilla in the space now or hulk in the pond. Yeah. Yeah. So what what did you do to set yourself apart that you were able to grow where you are today?
Corey: What did I do? A lot of things. I think it's just that consistent massive action. You know? When I talk about massive imperfect action, I think that's one of my favorite phrases out there, and I think that's that's the key to it.
You know? Just taking that next step forward. Like, you I look back now, and I'm like, man, that does sound thanks, Steve. That sounds pretty cool that we did that. Right?
In the moment, we're just doing the next deal. We're just worried about closing the next deal. Where is that next deal coming from? When's the next deal closing? What's the next month look like, next quarter look like?
Those types of things. And then measuring the past. Okay. What did we do here? What could we have done better?
What can we do going forward to change? Or what are the trends we're seeing that that can change? We're not really thinking about, like, the culminate it's a culmination of so many things. Right? But Yeah.
So it's hard to pinpoint. Like, there wasn't, like, one moment, I would think. If anything, it would be joined in a mastermind. Mhmm. You know, we joined the Wholesale and Inc one when they used to run it.
That was our first mastermind. They called it the Rhino Roundtable. There's only, like, 12 of us in in the room. It was awesome. Loved it.
Mhmm. And then when they quit that, Tom Kroll, who was the owner of the company at the time, he was a part of Collective Genius, and he's like, hey. You guys should be in CG.
Steve: Mhmm.
Corey: And so we did our call with CG. We got accepted in, and then, like, you can see when we joined the mastermind, it was like Yeah. Like hockey stick.
Steve: Do you know when you joined?
Corey: I think at CG, it was 2039 or 2020.
Steve: Okay. So right before I joined.
Corey: Yeah.
Steve: Because I joined April 2020.
Corey: Okay.
Steve: Alright. Still grateful for that. Yeah. That, mister Martinez just let,
Corey: you know, just let me in.
Steve: Yeah. Fantastic. Right? Yeah. So, obviously, you you know, for me, like, you're a staple in there.
Yeah. I was actually looking around last time. I was like, how long have you been here? I was like, five years. Like, I've been here for a while.
Corey: Yeah. We're starting to become, like, old goats in there now. Yeah. Yeah.
Steve: So, like, what are some of the key relationships that you've created in there?
Corey: Yeah. I think a lot of them were vendor relationships for us, honestly. Like, sales leadership with you, you know, that brought our sales game up to a whole new level and just the accountability that we can give our team now. Right? Direct mail vendors, you know, getting that connection.
So we were doing it all in house before CG Wow. Can only scale and send out so many pieces when your operations manager is with a paper cutter. Mhmm. Cutting
Steve: them. You know? Yes. It's
Corey: direct mail on a budget right there. Yeah. PPC, starting to get into that. TV. We have great TV vendor.
Right. Came through CG.
Steve: You
Corey: know? Would have never done TV before. I would have been so afraid that, like, oh my gosh. I don't know how to do TV. And then
Steve: I was like, oh, wait. Intimidating.
Corey: Yeah. Like, oh, they know how to do it, and I just pay them the check. And then Yeah. It's pretty easy.
Steve: Right? Right.
Corey: So it was a lot of those key relationships. You know? Now we're starting to look at as we grow bringing some of those things back in house. So we brought direct mail back in house with a different vendor who's the fulfillment center
Steve: Mhmm.
Corey: Not the creative person or the list provider. A list, that's another thing. Getting different lists of data Yeah. To I mean, so all of those relationships, I think, have been really some of the keys. And then it's just being around a lot of the guys in there that are doing doing it at a high level with integrity and doing the right things and Yeah.
Just setting the standard to to follow.
Steve: One of the things that you and I are talking about is, like, the the trouble that happens when, we're hanging around with, like, Jacob.
Corey: Yeah.
Steve: Right?
Corey: Yeah.
Steve: Jacob Mullins. Now there's your shout out.
Corey: Yeah. Molly. There you go.
Steve: Yeah. Just trouble. Trouble. Yeah. Hanging around that guy.
But, yeah, I think the the the parts of surrounding yourself with people that are doing it Yeah. It's you know, we talked we talked about a moment ago, like, the whole the stories we tell ourselves when we were kids to, you know, to make the world safe Mhmm. That are, you know, are lies, but they made sense at the time. Mhmm. Right?
I think one of the things about masterminds is that it also opens your mind to other possibilities. Mhmm. Because, like, I mean, when we were in high school, college, whatever, like, you don't think about, like, it's possible to make it. Right. You don't think about these things.
Right. Alright. When you go to Masterminds, like, that guy's making how much? Yeah. What's he doing?
Yeah. And look. No disrespect to anybody, but he's not that much smarter than me. Exactly. Right?
Yes. What's he doing? Let's just go ahead and copy and
Corey: paste that. 100%. That's our entire business.
Steve: Yeah. Yeah. Let's say, which vendor are you using? Oh, you're good.
Corey: Yeah. Okay. Cool. I'll use them too.
Steve: Thanks. Right. So it it I think there's that. So the connections to the vendors, but also, like, the comparing notes
Corey: For sure.
Steve: The vulnerability. Yeah. You know, like, I'm going to collect the genius. Like, I've gone through some, shake ups. Right?
I mean, like, having a business divorce is, like, traumatizing for a business.
Corey: For sure.
Steve: I've been able to call Stephanie Betters, Gary Harper, Eric Brewer. I was like, hey. You know, what's going on here? And when Mark Delaure, I had a conversation with him, and, like, I actually asked him, like, hey. Can you just talk to this person in my company?
Because, like, just think about quitting. I don't know what to do here.
Corey: Yeah.
Steve: I'm at a loss. Can you just talk to her for an hour? And he did. Yeah. And he was like, Steve, what is the matter with you?
Right? Here are all the things that you're doing wrong. I was like, okay. Thank you.
Corey: Yeah. That's great. That's what you need.
Steve: That's what I needed. Right? But that doesn't happen without being in the right mastermind.
Corey: Yep. So Yeah. No. It's that's it's such a key point. I think you mentioned too.
The other the other interesting part is we've been through a lot since we've been in CG. Think about COVID. I mean, COVID happened.
Steve: Right. Well, apparently, it was a boon. Yeah. It was a boon.
Corey: But at the time, I remember I was on a panel up there, and I remember Frank Kava came in the room. And it was, like, the last they used to do, like, half the people come in, and then the other half come in. And on Wednesdays, everybody's together.
Steve: Right? Yeah.
Corey: And so that was it was the Wednesday, and I was up on the panel. It was, like, the last thing for the day of Wednesday or whatever. Right? And Cava comes in, and he's like, alright, guys. I gotta interrupt the panel.
The NCAA just canceled the March Madness, or it was NBA canceled their season.
Steve: NBA just canceled the season together.
Corey: Some some with basketball got canceled. And I remember everybody kinda because when we all came in the room, we were like I mean, we were like hugging and we're like, oh, COVID, you know, and we're like, yeah, doing the handshakes and stuff. And at that time, it was still like, oh, I don't know how serious this is. And then when they canceled the season, everybody's like, holy crap. This just got really real.
Yeah. I remember, like, the look on a lot of people's faces, like, woah. This is getting really serious, really fast. Okay. I don't know if you had it, like, they were trying to change flights.
I mean, it got really crazy, but go being able to be around 200 other people who are high performers and figure out what are you doing that's working during this time. Remember, we had this all all hands on deck calls, and it was like, what are you guys doing? What's happening in your market? What's working? What's not working?
Steve: And it
Corey: was just great to have that community be able to navigate, like, a, hopefully, a once in a lifetime event, right, and get through it together. I mean,
Steve: parts of me hopes we have another one.
Corey: Yeah. Well, yeah. Let's let's get let's get those values up double again. Yeah. Let's get that stimuli out there.
That's right. It's coming.
Steve: So let's talk about, your business today. Right? So, you know, talking about how you you're at 3 and a half million right now in, revenue last year.
Corey: Yep.
Steve: So what does your business look like right now in your in your organization as far as operations goes?
Corey: My name is Lance McCann. I have recently switched in sessions with Ian Ross. Those conversations with Ian has made me $50,000 in the past two deals that I've had. I was able to renegotiate, go back and renegotiate the original purchase price on one deal, and I saved $40,000. And I got another $10,000 off my other deals.
Call again to give them a chance
Steve: to do what we're ready.
Corey: If you like what you just heard and would like similar types of success, text close to 33777, and we'll see if you qualify to join objection proof selling. We're taking good sales reps, and we're making them objection proof. Yeah. So Wyatt is my number two guy. Mhmm.
Not gonna call him a CEO. I'm not gonna call him operations manager. My number two guy. Mhmm. So he he handles a lot of the meeting with the vendors, making running the KPIs, making sure we're hitting our targets, all those kinds of things.
And then he also runs a lot of the the day to day daily huddles and those kinds of things. I'm usually on there, so here, I'll run those type of meetings. But he's handling most of most of all that stuff. And then him and I are meeting once a week for an l 10. Mhmm.
And then we've got three closers. We call them closers, acquisitions managers, whatever you wanna call them. Again, another title. We have one inside sales or lead manager. Mhmm.
Two dispo. So one guy is really more responsible for new buyers Mhmm. Like, cultivating those new buyer relationships. And then the other guy is more in charge of selling the deals every week and, you know, take kinda taking that hand off from the first guy with the new relationship. Yeah.
Two TCs, two VAs, and, executive assistant. And what kind
Steve: of volume are you pushing through as far as, number of transactions?
Corey: Last year, we closed a 140, for the year. This year, we're we started out really slow. January and February were terrible. Mhmm.
Steve: But we
Corey: picked it up since. I think we had our best month ever in March or April as far as contracts go. I think we did 27 book contracts in the month. Yeah. Wow.
Not closed, booked. So some of that
Steve: will fall off.
Corey: Mhmm. But
Steve: Still. Yeah. Almost one a day.
Corey: Yeah. It was bananas. It was bananas. Yeah.
Steve: Yeah. Okay. Are you still with you?
Corey: He's still with me.
Steve: Always love coaching that kid.
Corey: Yeah. Right. He's great.
Steve: He's got such a good head on his shoulders.
Corey: He does. He's very coachable. Yeah. He always wants that feedback too.
Steve: Incredibly coachable. Yeah. Yeah. Alright. And then as far as marketing goes, like, what is working for you guys today?
Corey: The big three is pretty much all we do. So TV, PPC, direct mail.
Steve: Yeah.
Corey: We were texting and cold calling earlier in the year, and we we just too many horror stories of lawsuits and On the way now. Well, I I just had we just talked to Eric Allen this morning, the TCPA.
Steve: Okay.
Corey: Guy on Brent Daniels' show, he had him on there. Okay. It's really interesting to kinda understand. So that's a
Steve: he's saying?
Corey: So what he's saying is that is a, trial trial case.
Steve: Mhmm.
Corey: It hasn't gone up to appellate court or to the Supreme Court yet.
Steve: Oh, so he's saying that it might get changed.
Corey: It's he said we went from, like, if you get sued, you've got a very small chance of winning to maybe a fifty fifty chance now.
Steve: Is there a coin toss?
Corey: It's a coin toss. Yeah. You're still gonna lose either way because you have to get an attorney Right.
Steve: Involved. But but it's no longer a clear cut loss.
Corey: Correct. Yeah. But it's only like, what he's saying is if you're in, say, Utah and anywhere, really, you still gotta scrub against the do not call list. Like, you still gotta just get rid get rid of all those people.
Steve: Yeah. We didn't do
Corey: that. Okay. And then there's the litigator scrub. You definitely wanna get the litigator scrub.
Steve: Although, these days, like, if we're winning lawsuits, then
Corey: Right. It's not
Steve: as big a deal. Not a
Corey: big deal. That's like bring it on. Yeah. It's good. You're gonna pay my attorney fees plus the damages for all
Steve: this stuff. Right? Because, like, we never scrubbed against the DNC. Really? Ever did.
Really? Because who are you gonna call? Like Yeah. It's not gonna be made. Everyone's gonna I'm on the DNC list.
Yeah. Right? Too. Yeah. So we never scrubbed against
Corey: the DNC.
Steve: The only thing we've scrubbed against was the litigators.
Corey: Okay. Which is probably the most important one.
Steve: Right. Because they're the ones that are, like,
Corey: proven. They're the habitual sewers. Yeah.
Steve: Yeah. So, yeah, we never we never did that. Yeah. But what's interesting is AI now. Mhmm.
So where does AI sit? Like, they don't have legislation right now. I'm like, hey. Can AI cold call or not?
Corey: He is strongly against it.
Steve: Yeah. Yeah. Do you sure why?
Corey: Something to do with the definition of your technology. He was talking he had a lot of information, but it was something about the technology, cannot be making the call for you. So it's they would treat it like a robo dial
Steve: Mhmm.
Corey: Which apparently is against law.
Steve: Only if you're not in politics. Okay. Yeah. So I I don't know if you knew this or not, but, like, I was so tired of the texting, not in '24, but in 2020. Yeah.
So many freaking text messages. So I was like, well, this sucks. Right? Yeah. But, like, there's a way around it.
The loophole is, like, run for office. So I
Corey: bought Okay.
Steve: So I bought presidentialcashoffers.com. And then I'm gonna be like, hey. Like, vote for me for president. Also, we buy houses. Like, that was
Corey: No way.
Steve: That that was that was the the intention, behind that. Yeah. We never we never ran with it. But it was like, yeah. You know, like, vote for me for president.
Also, we buy houses.
Corey: That's amazing.
Steve: Because then, like, you can't get mad at me. Like Right. I'm legit. Like
Corey: I'm a presidential candidate. I'm presidential candidate.
Steve: Yeah. Right?
Corey: How are you gonna sue me?
Steve: Who I am? Yeah.
Corey: Kind of a big deal.
Steve: So, but whenever we whenever, went down that road. But with AI, it's gonna be interesting because, like, we're building AI agents. Right?
Corey: Like, you know,
Steve: you and I, we're building it out. We're gonna be running with it. Yeah. So this is with no research. Okay.
No research. Okay. But I agree with it. It's it's just using technology component. Right?
Right. So I look at it just like it would be texting. Yeah. I just need to hit a button, and the AI does the call. Right.
Just like I'll hit a button.
Corey: Right. So if you're not just setting the AI agent to make a million calls for you in a day, you have to and then it's an agent doing it.
Steve: Someone, you know, that's making, like, $2 an hour Yeah. In some desert Yeah. Just to keep clicking.
Corey: Yeah. And there's always a way, man.
Steve: There's always a way.
Corey: I I think on your guys' podcast, pace was, though, talking about some AI cool call. Is it Prop AI or something like that?
Steve: We've tested it.
Corey: Is it any good?
Steve: No. Okay. Yeah. We're not worried about Prop AI. Okay.
Corey: Yeah. Okay.
Steve: So, I mean, that sounds terrible because, like, they're way better funded than us. But, like, we we've got ours and we've seen theirs and Yeah.
Corey: Well and if you're doing the click thing and doing all things right and you guys have the I mean, you guys have the agents already built that are amazing.
Steve: We've got agents that are built. They're not ready for prime time yet. Really, the bottleneck is me. Okay. Ian has built out all the AI.
Okay. I'm the one that's, like, been, like, housing the AI units. Okay. Right? So, like, it's falls in my court.
Yeah.
Corey: Okay. Yeah. Yeah. But, I mean, as far as your the objection proof AI
Steve: Oh, yeah. You guys
Corey: have those those guys are dialed in already.
Steve: Those guys
Corey: are dialed in already. Those guys are dialed in. The role play stuff.
Steve: Oh, the role play stuff. Yeah.
Corey: Everybody dude, everybody at CGU was just like, this is the best thing ever. Like, it's the dude it's the new toy people like.
Steve: So It's the new toy. And it's I did a a demonstration yesterday or or had a conversation with someone yesterday, Kixie, who, you know, someone I've heard of recently. Okay. They're, like, another, phone system.
Corey: Okay.
Steve: And it was a really interesting conversation because they're like, hey. Like, you know, they're like, well, let's just say, you know, we signed up with you. Yeah. How long is it gonna take the onboarding? I was like, this afternoon.
Corey: Right? Yeah.
Steve: And they're like, no. Like, seriously, like, you know, if I give you money today Yeah. When can my team be up and running in the system? I was like, this afternoon. Yeah.
And he was so dumbfounded by my answer. And I'm like and I was shocked that he was shocked.
Corey: Yeah.
Steve: And I was like, why are you so, like, in disbelief
Corey: Yeah.
Steve: That we can have you up and running this afternoon? Right. And his answer surprised me because I'd not done a market research here.
Corey: K.
Steve: Because, like, every other AI company requires you to send them all this training data. Right? So, Corey, send me all your successful calls. Send me all your bad calls. We're gonna feed it into AI to train it.
Mhmm. So now we know if you had a good call or a bad call. Yeah. Which sounds so ridiculous to me, because, you know, we're a sales company. Right.
We know what a good sales call sounds like. We know what a bad sales call sales call sounds like. So that's what Ian's been training for the last two years.
Corey: Yeah.
Steve: So I was like he's like, so why are you different? I was like, I don't know. Because we're passionate about sales. So, like, we can tell you what a bad sales call sounds like. We don't need AI Right.
To tell you what a bad sales call sounds like. We've we do this all day every day. And so that was, yeah. Like, you're talking about, like, you know, the new shiny toy. It's really cool to see, like, the professionals out there being blown away
Corey: Yeah.
Steve: By what we're doing.
Corey: Yeah. The first thing when I walked into CG, ran into Paul Grimes
Steve: Mhmm.
Corey: Out of Augusta, Georgia. Yeah. And at the last CG, we were talking AI and chat and doing some of these little zaps and all these other things. And we're like, what's what's new, man? What's going on with the business?
And he's like he's like, man, we're using Trang's, objection proof AI, and, man, this thing is the best thing ever. Mhmm.
Steve: And Good. Excellent.
Corey: That was pretty good. That was pretty good, Paul. Yeah. And, I mean, he just went on and on and on about it. So, I mean and then he then I talked to somebody else, and they're using it and
Steve: they're using it. They're using it. So what you
Corey: guys built an amazing product.
Steve: And Yeah. Well, it was, again, through the, really the vision and wisdom. Right? Stephanie Betters, Casey Ryan, Brad Chandler. They're like, hey.
We want this, and we think you can do
Corey: it. Yeah.
Steve: So build this for us.
Corey: Yeah.
Steve: Like, okay.
Corey: Yeah. And now you're building the collars.
Steve: And we're building the collars. We're hoping to have that up in a month.
Corey: That's awesome. Alright. Well, let me know when you get those out.
Steve: Yeah. Well, you should know. Expensive.
Corey: Okay. Okay.
Steve: But, yeah, I I I think that's gonna be such a game changer.
Corey: It's all about ROI, though, man.
Steve: Yeah. Like, it's like, the the the thing that's sad because we talked about it with Pace's Yeah. Podcast two weeks ago. Right? It's like, my definition of success necessarily leads a job loss.
Like, that's the thing that sucks the most. It does. Alright. Like, if I do a really good job, we're out of jobs.
Corey: Yeah. Yeah. AI is it's here, though. I mean, it's either you either embrace it and it is what it is Yeah. Or you get left in the dust and a year from now, you're gonna be like, well, those people don't have a job anyway because of something else that
Steve: Someone else is gonna do it.
Corey: Someone else is gonna
Steve: do it. This is kinda like how I used to justify, you know, like, me, like, taking money from old people. At poker tables. Like, when they came to the casino with the money, It wasn't gonna be me.
Corey: It was gonna be somebody else. It's almost
Steve: gonna take the money. It's like
Corey: So true. So true.
Steve: But, yeah. So now, you also do some sort of dispo stuff as well. Or you have a course with talk
Corey: about Oh, yeah. So I have a BER course.
Steve: Mhmm. Yeah. BER course. Okay.
Corey: Yes. Yes.
Steve: So talk to me about the the BER course.
Corey: Yeah. The BER course, I created actually Tom Kroll was I was gonna he want he was talking about having me be on their platform at Wholesale and Inc and coaching with them. And so but first, I had to build this this course first before I could do it. So he gotta help me coach me on becoming a coach a little bit. Mhmm.
So I built this program, and then he sold the company to another guy Mhmm. Like, right what I thought we were launching in. And, like, we're gonna sign a contract, and then he's like, hey. By the way, I sold the company. I was like, alright.
And the new owner had enough stuff on his plate Mhmm. And was dealing with all that stuff. So I here I had this course, and, it's all about the burst strategy and how to get your first property. And you can use it for flips too. You just don't refinance at the end.
Mhmm. You just do everything else, but just don't refinance at the end. And, it's been good, man. First year, I had, like, 50 people right away join it.
Steve: Mhmm. We
Corey: were charging, like, think, $3 at the time, and I was doing weekly coaching calls. And it was good because I got to get feedback. We made some changes in the program and all that kind of stuff and added some modules and took some out and that. But then I would be, like, in Florida, like, 01:00, and there's it like, the numbers would drop on those weekly calls. There'd be, like, two people, and I'm like, I wanna be on the boat right now.
I don't wanna be like so I just gave everybody my cell phone, and I was like, call me if you need it. Mhmm. Here you go. And, I mean, people got some great success. So we had one guy go from zero to, like, 40 units in his first first year Wow.
Doing the burst strategy. Wow. Awesome. Like, he's my poster boy.
Steve: That is awesome.
Corey: It was great. That is awesome. So life changing stuff.
Steve: Wants to find out about how they how did they do that?
Corey: Yeah. They can just go to our website, and they just go to wisconsindiscountproperties.com. Mhmm. They can put if they don't wanna get on our buyers list yet, they can just fill out a little contact us form and say, hey. Corey talked about the BRRRR program on Steve's thing.
Let's give it away. Like, we're just gonna give it away for free going forward. So Of course,
Steve: you're selling for 3,000.
Corey: Of course, we're selling for 3,000. Now that we had some coaching components. Now we sell for about 1,500 Mhmm. Because I don't do the, you know, the on in person coaching stuff. But, yeah, anybody who wants it, I think we just are gonna ask, like I think our my guys in the office will just ask you to join the buyers list.
Mhmm. You can literally join it, have a conversation with them, get the discount code, and then unsubscribe if you're not interested in buying in Wisconsin. It's fine. I just wanna help people. I unsubscribe if you're not interested in buying in Wisconsin.
It's fine. I just wanna help people. Yeah. I I believe in the burst so much. It's just the best vehicle to build wealth in my opinion out there.
Steve: It absolutely is. I mean, that's the thing that I am so envious of everyone in the Midwest. Yeah. Right? It's like, I even opened the market in Oklahoma City.
Corey: Did you really?
Steve: I was like, man, like, I really I'm really feeling left out on this whole bird deal. Like, let me let me, like, go into a Midwest market and start burning properties.
Corey: Yeah. What happened there?
Steve: Did not work out. Did not work out. But, you know, that was a leadership issue. You know, I thought some things I was expecting some some things to happen Yeah. That weren't quite happening the way I was expecting.
Corey: Okay. Okay.
Steve: Alright. Yeah. So misalignment Yeah. And values
Corey: Yeah.
Steve: In in the organization, which you might have experienced once or twice.
Corey: That once or twice. Yeah.
Steve: Yeah. So if I had to go over again, I definitely would. I just would have done it with a with a different squad.
Corey: Okay.
Steve: Yeah. Yeah. And who knows? Maybe someday.
Corey: There you go. Right in Wisconsin. Let's go, Steve. I'll get you my BERC course for free. Let's get you up there in Wisconsin.
Alright. Alright. Get you by
Steve: the wheels. Is it how easy is it is it to evict people?
Corey: It's like a thirty day process.
Steve: Thirty day?
Corey: Twenty well, you issue a twenty eight day notice, and then it goes to, then you have to file like, get the eviction writ or whatever, and then the sheriff comes fast
Steve: we can get people out here?
Corey: I think it's it's a couple weeks.
Steve: Eighteen days. Right? If
Corey: you miss
Steve: on the first. By eighteenth, we can have you
Corey: out here. Wow.
Steve: Yeah. Crazy.
Corey: That's really crazy.
Steve: Now, you know, we've gone a little bluer, like, with some Californians that come here. So it might have it might have gunked up the system a bit. Yeah. But Yeah. Yeah.
Eighteen days is, is the fastest I've seen, like
Corey: That's crazy.
Steve: Not paid to sheriffs picking yourself and putting it in the front yard.
Corey: That's insane. Yeah. Wow.
Steve: That's why I like the red states for for rental properties.
Corey: Yeah. We're purple up up in Wisconsin, so we're somewhere in the middle.
Steve: I know we're both battleground states now. Yeah. And then you gotta, like, you love helping people. You love watching people grow.
Corey: Mhmm.
Steve: What's the story behind that?
Corey: Man, it's just it's, again, it's like a it's probably something from my childhood.
Steve: Mhmm.
Corey: Gives me some some, you know, some of the that dopamine hit. It's like getting a deal. Right? For me, when I see somebody else that I've helped get a deal, I get the same rush as if I got the deal. Right?
So there's a lot of probably, I don't know what you call it self. It's it's for myself to do it. But I love it. That's why I love coaching people through, you know, our process. So people in our our neck of the woods or people that wanna invest up in Wisconsin with us, like, one of the things I love doing is when they come into our ecosystem, they just raise their hand, say, I'm interested in real estate.
I'm like, yes. Let's get you from not knowing anything to buying your first deal. Let's get let's get you through this little pipeline of things. And so we get them connected to lenders. We get them connected to property managers.
We we run numbers with them. We have them submit offers if they're really off on their numbers. We'll sit down and break down the numbers for them. It's all about trying to just get them that first deal. Once you get the first deal, as you know, Steve, it takes a lot of pressure off.
Yeah. You're like, oh, this isn't so scary. Mhmm. Oh my gosh. And then it's like, you can just see that potentially you and I talk about going into the mastermind, and it's like, oh my gosh.
That guy's making a million bucks. Like, how do I do what they do? Once they do that first deal, they kinda have that same epiphany of like, woah. I was my goals were so small. The world is my oyster, and it's just a cool moment
Steve: to watch. A lot of Lebanese beliefs.
Corey: Yes. Yeah. For sure.
Steve: Yeah. And then you set you set off a goal to have a 100. Yeah. How are we doing there?
Corey: Well, we have about a 140 units right now. Mix the Airbnb long term rentals in there. Yeah. But we're not living on the beach. Yeah.
Burry's are not. You're not you're not gonna you're not gonna get rich on cash flow.
Steve: You're not 200 a door cash flow right now on those houses?
Corey: We probably are. Okay. We probably are. Gotcha. Lifestyle creep, baby.
Lifestyle creep. Yeah. Yeah. So and we're not we're not retiring anytime soon on it. But the equity gain's insane.
I mean, I look back from I mean, we talked about COVID. Mhmm. I look at some of those properties I bought back in 2017, '18, 1920, and it's like, good lord. Yeah. Like, we all talk about we're, like, again, uphill both ways with, you know, no shoes, but I could go back and rebuy as million of the houses.
I would do it all over again. Yeah. So a lot more.
Steve: One thing that you hear at Masterminds, is return on equity.
Corey: Mhmm.
Steve: So you have a bunch of doors. Mhmm. You're keeping those doors, it sounds like. Yes. You're not playing the return on equity game.
No. What's the argument against doing that?
Corey: What is the return on equity game?
Steve: So what these guys look at is, like, well, you have all this equity in your property.
Corey: Mhmm.
Steve: Because you have all this equity in your property, the return on that cash, if you were to, like, sell your properties Mhmm. And take that money, put it somewhere else, you're gonna get a higher return. Oh, sure. Right? Yeah.
So they're suggesting, I think, if I understand this correctly Yeah. Is sell your properties and take that money and put it in something else that's gonna give you a higher return.
Corey: Yeah.
Steve: Yeah. So you're not now you're not living that long. Not unlike that. So No. What's the argument against that?
Why is that why is that not appealing?
Corey: Well, one, I already did all the hard work to get the property fixed up. Right? Two, my tenant's paying my debt down. Mhmm. I'm not paying it.
They're paying it. Right? Three, I can just refinance that property and still pull the cash tax free now Mhmm. And then go invest it somewhere else. So I've actually started to do that.
I did sell a couple properties last year like an idiot. And, after I sold them, I had a $10.31 into something else because the government's gonna get their money.
Steve: One way or another.
Corey: Oh, yeah. And if you I use cost seg, which I don't know if we wanna go into details on what cost seg is. But if the big beautiful bill gets passed, we're gonna be back to a 100% bonus depreciation, which is like the eighth wonder of the world. It's amazing. Especially if you're wholesaling and you're making a lot of, you know, transactional income that's heavily taxed, you can use the rentals to offset Alright.
That tax burden. Right? And so that's really what we look at every year. It's like, okay. Let's buy enough rentals at least that are gonna offset our income enough that we're paying a much smaller tax bill.
And so if we get a 100 back, it's gonna be amazing. I can't get a 100% bonus depreciation on equities or
Steve: Right.
Corey: EFTs or whatever else is out there. I'm and I have no control. In real estate, I have control. Yeah. You know, that's one thing I I think it that gets lost a lot of times is you're just trusting whoever you're giving that money to
Steve: Mhmm.
Corey: Is gonna get you that return.
Steve: They're gonna be a good the same steward if you're
Corey: a good steward in it. It's not always the case. Right?
Steve: Well, we're hearing that. So here and there. Right? A lot of the, syndications. Yes.
Are there some challenges there? Mhmm. And then, yeah, I I did misspeak a bit miss misspoke a bit about, like, yeah, you can also do a cash out refi. You don't have to sell it. But Right.
Either way, like, the idea is put your equity to work. Don't leave it locked. Yeah.
Corey: And I always. That part I believe in. Yeah. 100%. Like, if if you're out there right now and you wanna get into real estate and you don't have a HELOC on your house,
Steve: what
Corey: are you doing? Mhmm. It's just dead money sitting in your house. You've already paid it in, and now they've locked it up. Mhmm.
And you can't touch it unless you get that HELOC going. But you might as well take that HELOC and go put it to work to do some real estate deals. Just don't go buy a boat with it or go to go to the casino and or put it all in black. Yeah. Yeah.
Don't do that.
Steve: A lot of friends into sport fishing.
Corey: Do you? Okay.
Steve: Oh, we tell me we got Oh, Wren. Wren. I think Phil Phil. I don't know what what he does exactly.
Corey: Yeah. He catches a lot of tuna. Yeah. He catches a lot of fish. Big boys.
Steve: So what does your business look like today now versus what it was just, you know, a few short years ago?
Corey: As as far as revenue goes? Or As
Steve: far as what the like, time freedom, life like, financial freedom, like, what how's your life different today than it was, you know, when you started this journey?
Corey: Yeah. Alright. It's fun it's fun to think back at this, Steve. I don't ever sit and think about this, though. It's a lot different, man.
So we live in a totally different we live in a totally different community than we ever lived in before. So we're a much smaller community. Carrie's starting a preschool and a homeschool school. Community center kind of a thing. So she's getting to do what she's really passionate about, which is really awesome.
We have that freedom that she can go do that. Like, we live in Florida part of the time, so we're down there in the winter months and get out of the craziness of the cold weather. As far as the work life, like, it's kind of nice now. I get to I get to, for the most part, choose what I wanna do. Mhmm.
So, like, I'm involved in the business, but it's because I wanna be. You know? It's not because I have to be, like, in the old days where I I had to drive the business. I had to be the revenue generator. I had to do mark I had to do this.
Now I can kinda pick and choose what I wanna do. And, you know, we have good people. Our team is awesome right now. Like, there's nobody on our team right now that I'm like, I don't know about this person or how long they're gonna be here. You know?
Everybody in our team is phenomenal, and they're all doing a great job. And so it takes a lot of that, PTSD away of maybe some people who have had before that could have probably ruined trust with employees. But these the ones that we have now, who knows? I could be an idiot. They could be cooing behind the scenes on me again.
I don't know. But right now, I don't get that vibe. Everybody takes ownership in what they do. Everybody loves what they do, it seems like, and we have a lot of fun together. So
Steve: being the the the Hulk in your pond, you get to hang out with cool people like Aaron Rodgers?
Corey: All the time.
Steve: All the time.
Corey: Dude, I'm teaching Burr right now. No. No. There are some cool people, though. We have some former NFL players that stick around and do some real estate.
There's a guy used to he played with on, in the Super Bowl, Brett Favre team back in the nineties. He's a realtor on my brother's team.
Steve: And Oh, really?
Corey: Yeah. It was kinda fun.
Steve: You know Richard Rogers?
Corey: Yeah. Rich Raj.
Steve: Yeah. I get to play basketball with
Corey: him Okay. A year ago. Really?
Steve: That guy. Freaking athlete. Like, I obviously, you're an athlete in the NFL. Right? I know he's also
Corey: a baller. He's I think he played bass basketball and football in college, didn't he?
Steve: I don't know. Okay. I just remember showing up at the gym. Yeah. Like, this is the first time I ever played basketball.
I picked up basketball. It was, like, invite only.
Corey: Okay.
Steve: Right? Was, you know, it's my buddy inviting me. I wasn't like, hey, Steve. You're an incredible athlete. Right?
It's like, you know, like Only supreme athletes. You're in, Steve. Right? Yeah. My my buddy who was invited
Corey: Yeah.
Steve: Invited me because I was visiting. And it's like the first time I played in a gym where for pickup basketball, they got a game clock, a shot clock, and a scorekeeper. No way. Yeah. Right?
And so, like So
Corey: you know it's legit? It's legit.
Steve: Like, there was a guy who, like, tried to dunk on me, and, like, that's just not excellent.
Corey: Right? Did you take the charge?
Steve: I foul the hell out of it. Alright? And, and I remember, like, I was like, hey. I was like, I'm I'm holding him up. So I'm filing him up because, like, I'm not dirty.
Yeah. It's not gonna finish. Right. Right? And, he didn't dunk, but he made the basket.
And he looked at me, and he was like, you're gonna found me a lot harder. You're gonna try to stop me. I was like, wow. Okay. I didn't know I was at, like, this.
Woah. I love it. Because these are the guys that played in college. Yeah.
Corey: He's like
Steve: some of these guys still trying to GoPro. Man, it was insane. But, yeah, we saw, like, you know, Richard Rogers. He was the one that was walking right before him right before, and my buddy's like, you know, LMA is like, remember him? Like, who is that?
Yeah. Right? It's like Richard Rogers. Like, oh, the guy was catching all those Hail Marys.
Corey: Yeah. That's right. He caught those he caught a couple of big ones.
Steve: Yeah. Remember, it's the Cardinals. Oh,
Corey: that's right. It was Cardinals. He's also, though, I think, the guy no. No. That was a different tight end.
We had the guy Brandon Bostick who got kinda, like, ousted from Green Bank. We played against Seattle in the NFC championship game, and they did an outside kick, all
Steve: you had
Corey: to do all you had to do was catch the outside kick. We win the game
Steve: going to Super Bowl. Mhmm. Misses it. Yeah. I remember that.
Corey: That was a that was a
Steve: rough rough That was that
Corey: was a real season.
Steve: Rough off season for him. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Okay. So then, besides financial freedom, because it sounds like you're a lifer.
But besides financial freedom, what do you love most about real estate?
Corey: I think it's the the first of all, it's the best industry on the planet. I think it's it's recession proof for the most part. We don't know what's gonna happen with AI, but I think PACE's prediction is pretty accurate. You know, I'm kinda going that direction too with multifamily stuff and more affordable housing things. I've always been in that lane, though.
I I just I think you can you can literally take somebody off the streets and who knows nothing about real estate, and they can be a millionaire in the shortest amount of time. I mean, maybe tech in this world, they could go learn enough on their own to create some kind of tech that could get in there. But, I mean, this is the most there's so much information out there. It's so doable. There's like, they can listen to this podcast literally, follow the nuggets that people talk about in here, go take massive imperfect action, and in a year, they can be a millionaire.
Yeah. You know? Two years, whatever it is. Whatever the time frame is, however quickly they wanna take action.
Steve: But it can be done.
Corey: It can be done. It's the only industry I know that you can do that. Yeah. Like, I don't know. I mean, I just maybe maybe there's one out there that somebody could be like, oh, you forgot about this industry.
Okay. Great. Yeah. This is this is yeah.
Steve: The drop shipping.
Corey: Right. But even that, like, how much that's legit? Yeah. Right. You can do it.
It's just this is the most easy tangible way. Plus, there's so many benefits to it.
Steve: Well, there's, you know, Tony Robbins talks about, you know, success leaves clues. Mhmm. Right? Like, there are so many people I've done in real estate.
Corey: Right.
Steve: Like, you don't have to be smart. You don't. Right? Like, when I'm figuring out the education side, like, there's a few people I can talk to. Yeah.
But, like, how many people who can I talk to? Like, okay. You built a sales training organization. Yeah. This seat, that seat, you know, what's a good what's the right Right.
Amount of budget for marketing? Where should I be mark like, there's no masterminds to that degree. No. Right? But I can go to CG.
Yeah. There's hundreds of people there
Corey: Right.
Steve: That are doing exactly what I wanted. Exactly.
Corey: Yeah. Yeah. In all these different sectors too.
Steve: Right.
Corey: So you can be like, okay. I wanna do commercial or I wanna do single family or I wanna do this or I wanna do that. I wanna do subject to. I wanna do wholesale. Like, there's, like, within it
Steve: Yeah.
Corey: You know, for us people who are, like, squirrels. Right?
Steve: There's plenty of ways.
Corey: There's plenty of ways to go squirrel out in real estate. You know? Yeah. It's just I don't know.
Steve: Why we attract so many Mavericks?
Corey: I think so. Yeah. Yeah. I would think so.
Steve: What do you wanna be remembered for?
Corey: Helping people, man. Just helping people.
Steve: Mhmm.
Corey: Yeah. Like, if I'm if I'm sitting in at at my casket, I want that thing. I'll line out the door going, oh, that dude changed my life. That dude changed my life. He poured into me.
He gave me this nugget that totally changed the trajectory of where I was going. You know? That's to
Steve: me I know we touched on a little bit, but where do you think that came from exactly?
Corey: Oh, man. What what event probably in my childhood. Right? Mhmm. I think it all stems back from just wanting that appreciation for accomplishment.
Right? Mhmm. Like, to me, that's the ultimate accomplishment is helping other people get what they want. Right? Zig Ziglar said it.
We all say it. Right? It's the cliche. Yeah. We help enough people.
And you're probably along that same line, I would imagine, with your mission. Right? Mhmm. You know? What about for you?
What do you think that came from for you?
Steve: Wanted to help people?
Corey: Like the millionaire you know, your your mission, creating millionaires.
Steve: I mean, I think it was for me, when I started doing it, like, I've always been service oriented, but I think, you know, I was inspired when, you know, I read about, Carnegie doing it. Right?
Corey: Okay.
Steve: And then, you know, like, when I read Zig Zig, like, man, that that that saying really resonates with me. Yeah. But it wasn't real until, after I started helping people.
Corey: Okay.
Steve: And you started seeing success. Yeah. And you realize, like, man, like, the dopamine you get from helping people
Corey: Yeah.
Steve: Far exceeds, like, the the money. Right? Yeah. Like, you know, Pace talked about, right, whether I get a wholesale fee or a guy that says thank you for helping me wholesale.
Corey: For sure.
Steve: Rather get the thank you Yeah. Helping me wholesale. Yeah. And it's crazy.
Corey: Yeah. That's where we're at. Right?
Steve: Right? Yeah. So that that feeling is addicting. I don't know many other feelings that surpass
Corey: that. Right.
Steve: Right? Like, it's it's the it's the full dopamine hit.
Corey: Yep. 100%. I agree. I think we're both on the same line there. Probably a lot of us.
I I think I think it it also is like a for me, it was like a foundation thing like Maslow's hierarchy of needs. Right?
Steve: Oh, yeah.
Corey: For me, it was like, okay. First, I gotta take care of home base.
Steve: Mhmm.
Corey: Right? And not not that that's stopped. Right? That's still there, but it's become a lot more
Steve: Less of a concern.
Corey: Less of a concern. We built some foundations, some walls, some security around what we're doing.
Steve: Mhmm.
Corey: Then I could it takes a little bit of that pressure off. Right? And I can really just pour in other people. And it's in it's it's how we've built this whole business. I think you asked before.
How do you go from zero to three and a half million in wholesale fees? Well, you gotta help a lot of people. Right? You gotta help sellers out of their problems and genuinely help them. That because it's gonna serve you.
Mhmm. Like, yeah. Cool. It'll serve me, but let's solve their problem. And even if I don't make a dime on this one, I'm sure at some point, they're gonna tell a friend who's gonna tell a friend who's then gonna call me, and I'm gonna have a huge wholesale fee from it or something else.
Same thing with the buyers as we talked about. Like, we're taking people who know nothing about real estate Mhmm. And we're taking them and holding their hand for free all the way till they get that first deal. And if they don't buy from us, okay. Whatever.
At some point, maybe they will, or they're gonna tell a friend to come and help us, but it's that dopamine hit that Yeah. Ultimately at the end is the is the paycheck. Right? Yeah.
Steve: And you're a resource for your local community for that. For sure.
Corey: And we're changing communities too. Another thing I love about real estate is it's you're taking some of these neighborhoods that are pretty beat up, and you're getting people to invest capital and improve those and give people a better condition, a better place to live, better communities. So many great things about real estate, man.
Steve: What's your biggest struggle today?
Corey: Biggest struggle today is still just checking out, man. Just still being able to completely because it's the dopamine, man. Yeah. Like, I want that dopamine hit. And, like, I love my kids.
They're amazing. Love my wife. Amazing. But sometimes, like, we can be just transactional
Steve: Mhmm.
Corey: In our families. I think we take each other for granted until something happens, then it's like, oh, I really do love you a lot, and I really should be spending more time with you. And so it's trying to just build a muscle. It's building that muscle of checkout and be checked be checked in here, checked out there. I'd be able to separate those two things.
Steve: And I
Corey: work from home too, which doesn't help a lot of times. It starts to blend things a little bit.
Steve: Harder to shift gears. It's hard to shift gears.
Corey: Yeah. Yeah.
Steve: Are you doing anything to get better at it?
Corey: I working with coaches. So I work with Brad for a while, and then his program's, like, seven weeks, I think. I don't know if he's changed it since then, but five or seven weeks or something like that. And there's ongoing stuff with those guys that you can do. But then I have a local Brad.
Literally, his name is Brad, but he's local. So I did I did, like, 20 sessions with him, and now I actually brought him in to work with our team once a month.
Steve: Oh, that's awesome.
Corey: Yeah. So he's doing, like, a two hour session, I think, next week with our team. Yeah. He did one last, last month, and they loved it. So yeah.
So those are good. Just constant it's gotta be the awareness. You gotta constantly I mean, these things are hardwired they're hardwired in from
Steve: Yeah.
Corey: Childhood. It's pretty hard to continue to break that pattern.
Steve: It's tough. It's tough. And I I had, actually invited Brad, Brad and Yvonne into our group for a couple weeks. Just, you know, all the all the salespeople.
Corey: Yep.
Steve: And, yeah. Like, it's really eye opening, but it's hard to, like, shift your habits. It is hard. Yeah. It can it has to be worked on just like any other muscle.
For sure. You Can't just be like, alright.
Corey: Yeah.
Steve: You can bench 300 now.
Corey: Yeah. Yeah. Not gonna sit on the bench and just pop it up. You gotta work at it. You gotta build it up.
Yeah.
Steve: What's your, what is your superpower?
Corey: Superpower, man. Probably, I think now being curious.
Steve: Mhmm. Yeah.
Corey: I think that's probably in sales, it's the number one reason why I was probably the top salesperson is because I would genuinely be curious about people. You know? And if you if you're curious enough about them, they feel like they're in they're important. Absolutely. And then, bam, they're gonna tell you all sorts of things that, you know, other people who are just very transactional or direct aren't gonna get.
Right. And so and now it's I've this was something Chandler helped me with too is, hey. You're a great salesperson. You're curious about your prospects and all that stuff. Get curious about yourself.
Right? Be curious about why you're responding certain ways or why you're doing behaviors you're doing or why that struggle keeps happening. Just be asking yourself a lot of these questions, and it's helped. It's helped a lot.
Steve: And just, like, you know, a quick anecdotal, you know, like, anecdote, like, you know, I left home this morning. My wife's like, hey. Can you take care of this? Like, no. I can't do that right now.
Like, they asked me, like, an hour ago, but the answer would have been
Corey: yes. Yeah.
Steve: But I was, like, short with her, you know. Yeah. So I get in the car, like, feeling like a piece of crap. Yeah. Yeah.
There's that curiosity. Yeah. Why did I just do Mhmm. What I did? Why would I like, she didn't say anything bad.
She didn't get upset. Yeah. But it's like, I'm kinda taking her for granted a little bit.
Corey: Yeah. For sure. I don't think enough people are curious enough. I think we just like, you like, the old me, if that was me, I woulda got in the car and I'd have been like, screw her. She's mad at me.
Or now I'm not gonna talk to her. There she Three at least three days. I'm gonna give her the cold sore. At least three days, really let her have it. Right?
Right. And then, you know, that emotional bank account gets gets depleted down low enough where it quickly. Creates a big explosion and something has to change. Right? And now, like, those fights, if we have them, are much shorter.
Mhmm. It's like a separate oh, why did I do that? And she did a lot of work on herself too, which was great. So we both she did her own little program, and I was doing my stuff with the Brads, and we're able to get to the point now where it's like, if we do get in a fight, a lot of times we're able to reconcile a lot quicker. Mhmm.
And it's a lot more like
Steve: we
Corey: take a lot more ownership now. Right. I'm like, hey. Sorry. I responded this way.
I was feeling this way because back in my back in the old days, this is what that meant to me or this is how I interpreted it. Even though I know that's not what you meant, this is the way I interpreted it. And then she's like, oh, I didn't I didn't know you would think of it like that. Well, I'm really sorry. I'm sorry I made you feel that way.
I wasn't meaning that. I was meaning this, and we just have a lot better healthier
Steve: That's great.
Corey: Conflict.
Steve: Yes. I I think it's great that you have the Brads. Yes. It's like the Bobs Yeah.
Corey: In the office space. That's right.
Steve: Actually, you know, I was limping around at CG last week. Yep. And Brad, like, Chandler's like, why don't you get a scooter? He's like, Brad, you don't understand my childhood trauma. Well, now allow me Yes.
To to roll around in a in a scooter. Okay. And then what failure have you learned the most from?
Corey: Probably probably the coup. Yeah? Yeah. Yeah. It's taught me a lot about leadership, taught me a lot about messaging, how important that is to our team.
It's it's really taught me a lot about what it it made me really think about what do I wanna do. Mhmm. Yeah. Do I wanna be running a company? Do I not wanna be running a company?
Do I wanna be the leader? Do I not wanna be the leader? How do I wanna do this? And then what do I need to message to the team about? I think that's probably been probably one of the biggest ones
Steve: for sure. And I think going back to what you're saying, like, the messaging you were leaving with the team Mhmm. Really important what message it is is getting out there between the words and the action.
Corey: Yes. Yeah.
Steve: Yeah. 100%. What book have you gifted more than any other?
Corey: What book what have I gifted? Mhmm. Honestly, there's one called, I don't have enough faith to be an atheist. Mhmm. So for for those of people out there who aren't believers but wanna be believers, to me, it's a great book.
When it comes to, like, Christianity and faith and those kinds of things, like, I I do get into the doubt tree a lot, and I'm like, but what about this? Right? How is this possible? Or we said that. And so it's a it's written from an apologetic standpoint.
Mhmm. The guy goes through, and he's a lot of science in there Mhmm. That explains a lot of a lot of, you know, things that would help us believe, you know, the Earth is unique and special and all those kinds of things, then it gets into some of the the old biblical stories and some of the proof behind that. The other one, though, recently is we talked business is, who not how. Mhmm.
I've read it. I read it a few years ago, and I'm rereading it. I'm like, this is just to me, it's like a no brainer. Like, as I read it, I'm like, dog dog. Like, every time I read a chapter, I'm like, oh my gosh.
Why didn't I think of a who for that? Right. You know?
Steve: Oh, for sure. I had the good fortune. I got a chance to go through his program back in 2018.
Corey: Okay.
Steve: So, like, those Was
Corey: it Dan? Dan Sullivan's program. Yeah.
Steve: Okay. So, yeah, it's been I could tell you, like, all those things were really helpful back then. Yeah. It's like, you know, like, I didn't, like, buy all the stuff. It was like, alright.
Who has a podcast studio I can go use right now? Oh, yeah. My very first episode is just calling my friends that have podcast studios. That's awesome. Who has a studio versus, like, how do I build a studio?
For sure.
Corey: Yeah. That's so good. Yeah.
Steve: So it was really, really helpful. Alright. So, guys, if you got value from this episode, make sure you guys subscribe, man. That way, we got even more subscribers. I'm sorry.
We got even more disruptors coming who'll break down the exact moves they made to win so that if you guys subscribe, hit that bell. You guys will find out when next people, hop on. So what are some lessons you wanna leave everyone with?
Corey: Cool. Lessons. Massive imperfect action. Mhmm. Don't worry about getting a business card, an LLC, a website, any of that stuff.
Just go do the action.
Steve: Mhmm.
Corey: Right? Take action. You'll you'll figure it out. Right? Yeah.
If you if you want it bad enough. Right? Or you'll give up at some point, and then you can go do something else and try it. But Yeah. You gotta take massive action at whatever whatever the goal is.
You know, that's probably been the biggest three little words that have always served me the most in any anything I'm doing is just go go figure out how to be the best. Alright. And, again, find some who's that are doing it already. Mhmm. Go learn from your who's.
Get some who's.
Steve: Yeah. Probably in your own backyard.
Corey: Right.
Steve: Don't have to go that far.
Corey: Yeah. Don't come to Green Bay. It's a terrible market. That's the other thing I wanna leave the audience with. Don't come there.
Steve: Unless you're in Green Bay, then send the deals.
Corey: Then, yeah, then send the deals over. Yeah. Yeah. Alright.
Steve: Yeah. Perfect. Someone wants to connect with you. What's the best way for them?
Corey: Probably a Facebook Messenger, Corey Raymond. Just go out there, search it up, send me a message on there. I'm not on really social media. I have a who now that does all my social media stuff. So I don't really I don't really go on to Facebook.
And so if you comment on something Mhmm. I'm probably it's gonna be my who that's responding to you in my in my Corey GPT voice. But if you message me, I will be the one that responds to you personally on Facebook Messenger. Awesome.
Steve: Thank you so much. Hey, man.
Corey: Appreciate it. Yep. Thanks.
Steve: Thank you guys for watching. I'll see you guys next time. Shout out to Steve Train. Jump on the Steve Train. Disrupt us.
