Turning Failure into Big Profits in Real Estate

Steve Trang: Hey, everybody. Thank you for joining us for today's episode of Real Estate Disruptors. Today, we have Nick Allerud with the AA Real Estate Group, and he flew in from Boston, Massachusetts to talk about how failure and struggle is how he's built multiple businesses. If this is your first time tuning in, I'm Steve Trang, sales trainer for some of the top wholesalers in the country, and I'm on a mission to create 100 millionaires. Question I get the most, how do I become one of the 100 millionaires?

Information on this podcast alone is enough to help you become a millionaire in the next five to seven years. If you will take consistent action, you will become one. If you wanna get there faster, send me a message on Instagram, and we'll see if we're qualified to help you. If you get value out of the show today, please tag our friend below, share this episode right now. That way we can all grow together.

And this is a live show, so please ask your questions for Nick to answer.

Nick Allerud: You ready? Oh, I'm ready.

Steve: Born ready. Alright. So first question, softball, what got you into real estate?

Nick: That's awesome. Steve, first of all, thanks for having me. Oh, it's my pleasure. What got me into real estate? Well, you heard of the board game Risk?

Steve: Yeah. A long, long time ago.

Nick: There it is. When we

Steve: were playing as kids.

Nick: That's it. Yeah. Political science majors, all we ever wanted to do was dominate global domination. That's it. Right?

And I had no future once I graduated with a political degree, politics degree. But me and my whole bunch of my buddies were around the table and playing risk, and five of them ganged up on me, got me out first, and the only thing on TV at two in the morning were real estate infomercials.

Steve: That was it. So Because you lost in risk. Yep. Yep.

Nick: I couldn't go to bed. It's in my house. So I I, as a joke, called up the first infomercial I saw, which was, you know, buy real estate pennies on the dollar, dollars 49 gets you this binder. Mhmm. And that was it it arrived in the mail, and it said I read through it.

It was kinda neat. It was tax lien investing. Didn't know any about real estate at all. I was a banker. Right?

Mhmm. And then at the bottom of it, it said, if you're serious about real estate investing, call this number. Mhmm. I guess I'm serious. I paid $49 for a binder.

Right? Right. So I call the number, and the best salesperson in the entire world talked me into my first over the phone coaching mentorship boot camp Mhmm. How to wholesale real estate.

Steve: Yeah.

Nick: So that's how I got into it. So when was this? That was in 2005 before the first ultimate disaster.

Steve: Right. So 2005. So you you were saying political science major, but you were graduated already.

Nick: You were I did.

Steve: You were playing risk as a grown man. Grown man.

Nick: So I

Steve: wanna make sure we got this all correct. Alright. So, so you were working corporate America Yes. And then you jumped in, and then you signed up for a tax lien investing.

Nick: That was it. Yeah. The corporate grind, as you know, I was promoted four times in the banking world Okay. And was still making under 50,000 a year, but I had, like, 25 people reporting this year. Were you at least VP?

No. Didn't give us a dollar. Candy. I know. Nope.

Totally missed it.

Steve: Okay.

Nick: I missed it. But they you know, it was a lot. Working holidays, working weekends, working, like, you know, working on foreign trading. Is it

Steve: like in a retail, like going to a bank? Or

Nick: It's a mutual funds custody, like an investment bank for Mellon Bank. And it was just it was a it was a grind. And real estate, after I did that as a joke, almost became, wow. This is interesting. This could be my way out.

Steve: Mhmm. Right? Out of the rat race.

Nick: Out of the rat race.

Steve: Got it.

Nick: So you

Steve: signed up for coaching. I did. And then what happened next?

Nick: The coaching well, he he only made two of his calls because he was over the phone coach that I didn't know anything about. But he got me to read the book Rich Dad Poor Dad by Kiyosaki, like, we all have all read. Right? That changed my entire outlook on how to buy and how to invest. And And what was your coaching program?

The coaching that first one was 6,000.

Steve: So you paid $6,000 to be told to read Rich Dad Poor Dad? Yeah. That's still a good investment. In the grand scheme of things, it's still a good investment. Turned out to be.

Yeah. Probably took that book more seriously. Absolutely.

Nick: Yeah. Absolutely. Read that book, like a champ. Yeah. So Alright.

Steve: So then what'd you do after that?

Nick: Okay. Well, I mean, this is where this is where it all started. So I'm at the bank. I'm getting up in the morning, just still going to work. And I've now I went to the Learning Annex in Boston back in 2005.

That's when all the big, you know, Kiyosaki and Trump and and all the big players were there. Right? There's a lot of local regional people there. And I went nuts. I went coach happy, and I bought, like, six different courses.

I bought, like, a Marshall Silver course. I bought a a a David Lindahl course. I bought, you know, a Trump course. I was Trump University. Like, I did it all.

And I'm like, we're gonna invest. Might as well invest now. Yeah. So I started taking all of those courses, and I'm really, really angry at myself. Right?

Because I have not yet done a deal. And now it's been three months, four months, six months.

Steve: Yeah.

Nick: And I'm I'm mad at myself.

Steve: You're collecting degrees, though. Collecting degrees in in different strategies. True.

Nick: Yeah. True. But I remember, like so in my shower, I I used to have hair. I know it's hard to hard to picture, but I in the shower, I had shampoo, and, like, literally, I would get up in the morning. This is the story.

I literally see the shampoo bottle going smaller and smaller and smaller. And I'm like, by the time that's empty, I need to have a deal done, real estate. That became my accountability partner.

Steve: Interesting.

Nick: Right? Yeah. So as it kinda shrunk down, I'm, I'm, like, banging my head against the wall. Like, I'm going to the meet to Rias and and local groups, and I'm trying to, like I'm doing my marketing, my direct mail, and my phone calls. Like, what's going on?

Why can't I land anything? When it's a segue into the first kinda what happened. A man in Minnesota found me and a couple others, trying to hustle and do some real estate. And he's like, listen. And that was just 2,005.

Remember. I'm finding undervalued real estate

Steve: Mhmm.

Nick: That, has a motivated seller involved, and we're buying it, you know, 60 to 70¢ on the dollar. We're lining up a tenant buyer, like a lease option buyer, to rent that 20% above market rent. And they're gonna cash us out out in three years at 20 above what we just paid for it. Mhmm. This is a no brainer.

And in 2005, back then, you could get money at the purchase table. Right? You finance everything 90 to a 100%. The seller you could contract for, like, 500,000 for a house. Seller gives you $50,000 and says, hey.

Thanks and good luck to you. Right? But totally legal back then.

Steve: Yeah. You could use the seller proceeds to fund your deals.

Nick: It was amazing. It was amazing. Right?

Steve: Totally different time.

Nick: So I said, you know what? If I and the deal was he needed a credit partner to sign on these loans. Mhmm. So I'm not gonna buy one of these because I'm gonna make money at the closings, at the purchases. I'm gonna buy five in one week.

Steve: Yeah.

Nick: That was what I did.

Steve: And and you closed on all five.

Nick: Closed on all five. And that

Steve: from there, it was easy.

Nick: It was totally easy, and I I'm now a multimillionaire. Right. Or the we we had our call on Monday with the gentleman out in Minnesota to line up next steps and tenant buyers. And, okay, let's get tenants into these things to start cash flow because we're paying monthly debt on service now. Mhmm.

And he showed up to the first call, but then didn't show up to the second call, and then didn't respond any emails anymore after that.

Steve: This is a straw man situation?

Nick: This this was his I don't know. But I know he got 40% from those closings, the purchase closings, and there were no tenants. There were no purchase contracts. There were no leases like we had seen. Right?

They weren't real. So all of that, I ended up paying attorneys to chase him down, and property managers try to rent these things out. And just fast forward eight months later carrying 10 loans, I lost pretty much everything. I lost

Steve: Everything being?

Nick: Four short sales of foreclosure. So all my cash is gone. My credit goes down to $3.50. And $3.50. It was three I didn't check it for years.

Steve: That's an impressive accomplishment, though.

Nick: I mean, maybe I that number, I don't know for sure, but I I didn't look at it. Didn't need to. Right? But, like, that was I thought my life was over. Right?

And I'm in a bank I'm in a bank banking situation. If they check my credit, I'd lose my job.

Steve: Right.

Nick: So it was I literally felt in my mid twenties that I was completely, I'm going to jail. I don't know why. I just feel like my life's over. Why not?

Steve: How much did you lose in in, like, cash savings, whatever, or pulled out in debt? How much did you lose at that point?

Nick: Yep. So I had, roughly it was 250 k to my name. The problem was that when you're doing short sales. Right? I didn't know what to do.

It was an investor in Minnesota that actually helped me through my situation because I'm now a motivated seller. Right? I'm now I don't I want the collection calls to stop. I want the mail to stop. I I don't wanna be I just wanna be out of situation.

And an investor led me through it. He's like, listen. You just gather some paperwork. I'm gonna help lead you through the short sale process. And in doing that, I was like, whatever.

And I was signing anything that they would put in front of me. Mhmm. Some of those things they put in front of me were promissory notes to to get out of these deals. Mhmm. And I wasn't paying attention because I was completely emotional and motivated.

Right? Mhmm. So I'm signing, and I ended up after after the closings, having another 480,000. It was just under 500,000 in debt on my credit report that I now had to pay back to get out of these deals.

Steve: So just take a step back a little bit because I saw you also have some short sale experience. For everyone to put it in perspective, because February different than back in 2005. So back then, you could actually have your seller fund your down payment. Yes. Right?

Yes. So that's what you were doing. Is yes. So that sounds crazy to you guys now, probably. But back then, that's what we could do.

So you could buy more deals because you didn't need to come out of cash in your own pocket. That's it. The other thing with short sells is if you had a bad short sell negotiator, they wouldn't tell you that the bank is this isn't a short sell. They're just taking the money you lost on the property instead of having to stick it with the bank. You're on the hook for it.

Absolutely. And that's what you agreed to with this guy that helped you out. That's it. That's it.

Nick: And he didn't know either. Right? To be fair, the investor doesn't know, but I should have

Steve: been reading the contracts ultimately. Well, maybe. Right? But that was a new environment for everybody. Like, that whole environment, we were all learning on the go.

So Yeah. So you hooked so you you you signed on to $480,000

Nick: Mhmm.

Steve: In personal debt. Mhmm. So what'd you do after that?

Nick: That was for me, it is funny thinking back as just my first reset button. But for me, that was a very, very dark time. My phone I I was so afraid of my own phone because of the collections calls. Yeah. And I literally remember shutting it off and putting it in a drawer knowing that I I just don't wanna even have that ring tone anymore in my life.

Like, the ring tone literally was setting me off on trauma. Like, I couldn't. Yeah. So for about six months, I was really angry. I was really dark.

I was feeling victimized. Right? Like, this guy screwed me. I can't believe he did that. And he's reset my entire financial career.

Meanwhile, I have all my corporate bankers in in the cubes. Right? And no matter how they were beforehand, now they're better than me because I was playing the competition game too. Right? So their four zero one k is now higher than mine, and they're they're they know, they have their savings accounts are still not drained like mine are.

Right? And it became a whole competition, and I was in a very dark, dark, dark place. Yeah. And six months later, I had actually already paid for for that Learning Annex a seminar from, Marshall Silver. I don't know if you know him, but he's I'm not

Steve: familiar with Marshall Silver.

Nick: Las Vegas hypnotist. Like, he's a he's a, entertainer, but he's also a mindset coach.

Steve: World renowned guy.

Nick: Yes. Yeah. Yeah. And I had already paid for this money, and I was like, whatever. I'm just gonna go to this thing.

And I fly out to it was in Boston, though. I went to Boston, and I remember, well, I can't be hypnotized to whatever. I'm just gonna be here for my mindset coach. We'll see what happens. I remember being on the floor, laying, looking at the ceiling.

And in my brain, I'm literally yelling at myself. I'm swearing at myself in my own brain. Like, you I I know I can't swear in your podcast, but, like, I'm from Boston. It's what we do sometimes. But, like, I'm literally, like, you idiot.

What are you doing here? Like, why are you not even trying anymore? Like, you just gave up. You know? Well, this guy, he screwed me.

Like, this is not right. Like, I can't believe this happened to me, and it's gonna take me ten years to dig out of this. And he's like, well, is this what you wanna do about it? I just wanna lay here and, like, think that you're just gonna get fixed? Right?

And I remember, like, having this conversation for, like, whatever. I thought it was five minutes. It might have been sixty. I don't know. And I I got out of that realizing the master program.

Like, I can let this bother me, or I can literally, what do I want, and what's my next step? Mhmm. Right? And and literally, though, it it sounds so easy saying it to you now, but, like, six months of just being in hell and then having it shrink down to when one of the things you ask all your guests, what is your superpower? Mhmm.

My superpower now has been taking what used to take six months of me to dig out. And if I can cut that back to four months, two months, one month, one day, even a couple hours, What's the learning to be extracted? Mhmm. And how do we move forward quickly? Right?

That's my superpower now.

Steve: Did Marshall help you with this?

Nick: Marshall yes. I say he did. It was me being on the ground and him causing me to be on the ground and and talking to myself. And, yes, it absolutely helped me. Yeah.

Because I

Steve: I'm only asking this question because, you know, I've dug really deeply into, like, neurologist programming, right, which a lot of hypnotic therapy revolves around. And then one of the things they talk about is how to shrink the trauma, right, and and and help it disappear.

Nick: The body doesn't forget. Is that another what do you mean? Is that

Steve: Well, the body doesn't forget, but you can watch the film in a different perspective. Yes. Right? And I think that's one of the things that you were saying, like, you know, how do you put yourself in this position, but you're in your young twenties.

Nick: Mhmm.

Steve: Right? You didn't know what you were doing. And I think that a lot of us and you you dug a pretty deep hole pretty fast with help from someone else. But you dug a pretty deep hole pretty fast, and it's easy. It's a lot easier to stay the victim.

Absolutely. A lot easier. But everyone that comes on the show, everyone that we look up to, or most people we look up to, right, has faced as faced adversity and overcoming. So you mentioned a moment ago that's your superpower.

Nick: I feel that's my now superpower. Yeah.

Steve: How did you develop this superpower?

Nick: By going through reset button after reset button after reset button. I call them resets now. Right? Challenges, failures, call them whatever you will. Yeah.

But a reset is a is a chance to pivot, right, and shift and change. Because if we're not changing, we're dying anyway. Right. So as you taught, you just said perspective. Mhmm.

And that's literally, like, now I go through my own exercise. You and I totally believe in masterminds. Right? Absolutely. We have a huge, huge, huge, in support of one one in particular.

Mhmm. I'm also part of another one in California where every single morning we get up and we're supposed to say, okay. What happened to us yesterday that makes us that angry, irritated, happy, sad, grateful, whatever it is, we we put it down into this application. And if it's an angry or irritated or rage or something or maybe a deep seated fear, like, a lot of men think, you know, I'm not enough. Right?

Like, that's a big one. So you start there. And if you can literally have someone leading you through the different perspectives of that story, it it can change your entire world. Right? You know that already.

But it's like, I think that's my superpower now is I can boil something down that I could it it has just completely destroyed my entire business career or my personal life as in, you know, couple divorces that I've had. Yeah. And it's like, okay. How can I shrink down the pain of this to where because the pain is not helping me? What will help me out of this, and what do I want?

And the quicker I can get to that, that's my superpower. I can now do that, hopefully, within an hour or a couple weeks if it's a divorce. Yeah. Well, one

Steve: of the one of my first coaches was Derek Zeller, and he kinda said, like, you know, the difference between champions and everyone else is how fast they get back up. Amen. Right? So you're in this crazy situation, mountain of debt. How did you get out of that?

Nick: Yeah. Once I finally took responsibility. Right? Once I'm finally saying, this is on me. I wasn't prepared.

I don't have enough knowledge. I didn't do enough due diligence. I didn't know what I was I didn't know what I didn't know.

Steve: Mhmm.

Nick: I had already taken all these wholesaling courses, and I said, okay. What can I do now that doesn't require cash or credit? Because I don't have any of that. Yeah. And also, being from the corporate world, what can I do?

What rules can I set in place? Because I can't afford to lose any money. So what kind of buy box or criteria do I have to set forth to make sure to protect me? Right? So I that began, I literally found a a gentleman at a local real estate group Mhmm.

In the Boston area, and he was buying triple deckers in the what we it's called Summerville. It's right next to Boston.

Steve: You wanna elaborate what are triple deckers?

Nick: Triple triple deck oh, that's right. We're out in the desert here. Triple deckers in dense areas are, in like, Boston specifically doesn't have a lot of single family homes. Right? It's so dense that there's, like, 18 hundreds built, one, two, three floors on top, each of them, like, a thousand square feet.

People live in that, and it's three different homes for three different people in one of the Triplex.

Steve: Triplex. Vertical triplex.

Nick: Pretty that's it. Okay. The way to set it. I I yeah. Desert.

Right? Right. But he was buying these triplexes and condo ing them Mhmm. And then selling them. Got it.

So I found what he was looking for, and I'm like, listen. I'm just gonna follow this guy. So nights and weekends, I was knocking on doors and making phone calls, talking to a lot of tenants, but getting filing to the owners and learning, right, what he looked for and then trying to paper them up with a contract and then selling to him for 5,000 a piece

Steve: Got it.

Nick: Wholesaling. And I did enough of those. It took three months to even get my first one, but I borrowed from my $4.00 1 k for my marketing dollars, and this was the first part of me establishing I in in eight months, I had enough to do my own triplex condo conversion.

Steve: Nice.

Nick: And I found out what hard money was because I couldn't get bank loans. Mhmm. Right? And so hard money lender, and and I did this with a partner, and we broke even. And that was the biggest win I had had that point, Steve.

Didn't have to lose everything on a deal.

Steve: That was the first positive. It wasn't a negative.

Nick: That's it.

Steve: Got it. That was me. So then and when was this approximately? Because you started in 2000.

Nick: 2006.

Steve: So

Nick: now we're at, like, mid to late two thousand six for my first successful rehab.

Steve: Got it. Alright. And then you took that experience because there was a recession right around the corner. So what did you do with that experience?

Nick: That's it. I, was a one man show for a long time, but, yeah, we we catapulted the rules that we have learned and how to buy Mhmm. Right, which all the investors know now. And your a lot of your guests have already elaborated on that, so I'm not gonna do that here. But we started to try to create that into a machine, right, and and documented procedures as far as direct mail and and texting and phone calls and and the old school way of doing it.

And what are we looking for exactly? What's our actual target?

Steve: Mhmm.

Nick: Right? Three only three there's a time when we're only doing three bedrooms within, like, a a half hour radius of my office. Right? But as time went on, we started to expand all those and became more of a customer service entity versus just a fix and flip entity.

Steve: Got it. So you're actively searching for properties with an end buyer in mind? Or

Nick: For the wholesaling. In that point, we were pivoting into rehabbing, but I started in the wholesaling world. Yeah.

Steve: Wholesaling. So you started rehabbing? Yes. And then how did that go?

Nick: Rehabbing? Yeah. For the most part, it actually went okay because we were buying right. Right? I was overly conservative based on what happened to me.

That talk about a blessing. Mhmm. An absolute blessing where I saw people overbuying for properties like I might be seeing now. People overbuying for properties. And in the meantime, hard money lender I had a very conservative hard money lender too who we both said, listen.

We're doing price declines of, like, 1% a month. Like, if we're the prices are dropping 12% in a year, that's a problem, and we have to figure that into a six month rehab or an eight month rehab or a twelve month rehab. Yeah. So that all kinda worked into we would back that into our purchase price at the time. So we did great based on how we were buying.

Contractor management, contractor setup, and and finished work, that took another couple years of honing and fine tuning, right, with our procedures in place.

Steve: So then because you were scarred, you were able to survive the recession then.

Nick: Absolutely. I was already scarred. Right?

Steve: Right.

Nick: I was open up on a table, on a surgery table, and they they never really patched me up, but I walked out. Yeah.

Steve: Well and I you know, for me, I I I kinda share with people that, you know, are are listening to me now is, like, I got scarred from 2007. Right? I didn't have anything bad before 2007, but I didn't get hurt too bad. But I witnessed a lot of bad things happen to a lot of people. Right?

And so, like, a lot of my decisions are made based off that time. And for better or for worse, right, I might be too conservative, but a lot of decisions made are from that framework of that PTSD.

Nick: There it is.

Steve: Yeah. So Absolutely. So then with the re with with the recession occurring and you're rehabbing, you you continue to do that for a long time, or what was the next

Nick: change

Steve: in your business?

Nick: Yeah. No. Next was was rehabbing. And at the same time, I was I had control issues now. So I also couldn't rely on other agents Mhmm.

Right, to help pull comps and to help I would always be looking over their shoulder because I'm like, your money's not on the line. My money's on the line here, so I'm gonna look at the comps. I'm gonna look at the ERV. Like, just just get out of the way. Let me do that.

Right. So no reason you wanted to work with me. I wouldn't wanna work with me either. Mhmm. So I got my license.

Right? So I went to what you did. Yeah. And I worked at the same time in a, Century twenty one office, which was great. Right?

I learned a lot. I was the youngest by at least forty five forty, fifty years. From Century twenty one.

Steve: It's an older crowd.

Nick: No offense to those folks. They were amazing agents, right, if they're watching this. But, I had a conversation with the broker, and I said, listen. You know, I'm I'm an investor. I'm not really here as an agent.

I'm happy to put on investor buyer seminars. I'm happy to teach people what I'm doing, but I'm not gonna really be out there doing retail agency. And it was understanding. Mhmm. And then three years into it, en masse, I was able to get my broker's license.

So we haven't

Steve: talked about you actually quitting your job. When did you quit your job?

Nick: That's I quit my job in 2008.

Steve: Okay. So around the time you transitioned to flipping.

Nick: So you

Steve: were flipping, quit your job, and then now you open the brokerage, which makes sense because

Nick: control issues?

Steve: There you go. Is it I don't know. Right?

Nick: I mean, people ask me,

Steve: like, should I open a brokerage? And and I, you know, I got a brokerage. Like, this past month was the first time we broke 1% market share. We have over 1% market share in the Phoenix market. Right?

That's amazing. Yeah. So it's something we're really proud of. You know? But anytime someone says, hey, Stitch.

I open a brokerage. No.

Nick: This is it. Let's talk about this. I'm a 100% with you on this. So why

Steve: did you think opening a brokerage was a good idea?

Nick: Oh my god. Let me tell you this story. This is a good one. So I opened a brokerage because, well, you know, now I don't have I don't have to do phone time, office time, uptime. What do they call it?

I didn't have fees to pay. I didn't have this is fantastic. Right? I'm gonna pass my license, my, pass my test, and get my insurance and LLC set up. I'm like, I'm great.

Mhmm. My first week as a broker, I went up to the front of, one of the our old Rias in Boston, investor associations. And I said to everybody, hey. I'm a broker now. We're gonna start the first investor friendly brokerage in Massa, New Hampshire.

Who wants to come on board? I had, in three weeks, 40 agents that jumped on. Now mind you, right, here's a big a huge learning lesson for me. Right? Didn't have a back office, didn't have, any sort of transaction coordination system, didn't have really, no to do with marketing.

I can't support these people. Mhmm. And so I'm having to do I also don't have an office, by the way, at this point. Don't have an office yet. I I'm working at Panera and Starbucks and, like, my house.

So I set up every other week, like, a Wednesday night. If they wanted to sign up for a fifteen minute coaching session, I was trying to do that, you know, and I would spend four hours of my night coaching these these folks. And how many of those people do you think did anything that they were supposed to do or anything that I coached them on?

Steve: Well, they're investors. They're probably not rule followers. True story. So paperwork may not have been top notch. Timeliness probably got overlooked.

Nick: Mhmm. That's about accurate. And how many transactions? Maybe three in three months out of all 40.

Steve: Right.

Nick: So at the time, I just had to make a really it was another hard money lender that I was having a dinner with. And she said she said, you don't you you don't pay these people. You can fire them. I was like, I can fire you, but they came to me like, yeah. Well, they serving you.

Are you serving them? You're not they're not you're not doing them justice. Right. Like, let let them go. Yeah.

So then I had good that my next coaching night was, like, conversations every single fifteen minutes of, are you sure, like, you belong here? Like, why don't you go get some training? Because I'm clearly not a good coach

Steve: for you. It's not you. It's

Nick: me. It's not you. It's me. Yeah. There it is.

Steve: So, for those of you guys that are listening. Right? Like, I can say for myself, I thought when I opened my brokerage, there's two reasons, and neither of them were really good. One was greed. Right?

I don't have to pay any more fees. Right? Turns out, paying an office and staff is a lot more expensive than playing splits. And then, the second thing is, I didn't want anyone, like, overlooking my marketing, right, which is still a plus because the previous broker had to review my marketing. So that's that was plus.

But I could have found somebody else that would let me escape by with that. And what people didn't or people will say, running a brokerage isn't profitable, and maybe you had the same exact answer I did, is my answer always was WatchMe, which was not the right answer. But that was my response. And then the other thing too is being a brokerage owner is you get sued on a fairly regular basis for things you have no idea what happened on. So did you get did you get to deal with that too?

Nick: Oh my god. Every other month Yeah. We get one. So I'm so appreciative of you sharing that. And I just posted on my social the other day.

I said, my attorney finally congratulated me. He's like, you know you've made it when you're getting, like, one lawsuit every month. Yeah.

Steve: Like, you know you've made it. Exactly. Alright. So you did the brokerage, hired 40 people. But I'm all go explore.

Three. Yeah. Okay. And so then what was your next venture?

Nick: Then we worked out of the basement of one of the three because he had a bigger basement than Panera Bread was.

Steve: Okay.

Nick: And, you know, I I again, I was more in the investment world. Like, that was me. I was focused on my my rehabbing, my wholesaling. And, I worked I had a rehab machine working that was fantastic. And now we're gonna fast forward to about 2010.

Mhmm. 2010, I had taken some courses from another national guru that teaches you how to buy and sell multifamilies. But don't don't start at four, six, or 12 units. Mhmm. Just jump to the 200 units.

Steve: Well, you bought 10 houses your first week.

Nick: I did. I did five houses. But, yes, still. Good point. We don't follow rules, you said.

Right? Investors. Yeah. So, he was teaching that, and I'm like, alright. Well, my rehab machine is now systemized, and I have a team in place, like, a small team, but, like, a small team that's now running that.

I'm I'm now gonna be a multifamily guy. Mhmm. I've got this. Right? So I opened up my old books that I had bought from the LearningNX, and I started marketing as I would to a specific emerging market that I thought was an emerging market.

Mhmm. And banging my head against the wall, trying to raise private equity. My first time actually trying to hey, listen. We're gonna start doing multi families, and, you know, you've been in my network for a while, and, like, can I put you down for, you know, like 50,000 or a 100,000 if we find one? And I didn't know what I was doing at all.

Steve: Right.

Nick: Right? So, but I did get some commitments. And I then got a seller to agree to talk to me, which was number one. So I almost freaked out. Mhmm.

And then I started to go through the process of due diligence and actually understanding what leases were and the expenses. And you would never believe this, Steve. The seller lied to me about the income and expenses of the property. Shocker.

Steve: So we, In writing. In writing. Yeah. Yeah. That's the that's the best part.

Nick: So but I'm happy the deal died there because if it didn't die there, I my next call, I had called one of my investors that I'd raised equity from. Mhmm. And I'm like, okay. Hey. Listen.

We've got one on the on the plate. We're gonna be closing hopefully in the next sixty days. Just wanna make sure you're still in. And the answer was, who is this? Mhmm.

Like, I didn't I didn't stay in contact with my people. I didn't have a newsletters. Uh-huh. I didn't have any touch points with my investors.

Steve: Got it.

Nick: So the deal was gonna die one way or the other. I'm glad it died in due diligence. Mhmm. Meanwhile, wheels are spinning, and I'm like, I can't get a deal again. And then these three folks in the Boston area, see me hustling.

Does that sound familiar? Right? Got in Minnesota, three of the people in the Boston area see me hustling, and they're like, hey, we already own 650 units. Why don't you just come work with us, help us raise equity, which you can't do anymore. Right?

You have to have a more active role than just raise equity. But come help us raise equity, and we'll get you into the operations. You get to see how we manage and how we asset manage. And I'm like, yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. All that. And they were coaches for that national national guy Mhmm. That I had taken the courses from. I'm like, I'm gonna get massive coaching with, you know, not gonna pay any more fees.

I'm I'm I'm in. So I put up about, 200 g's of my money, and I start raising some capital. I raised about 250,000 of other people's capital, and we started putting into the this deal in Dallas. And literally, this is the second reset, by the way. I get a call, from one of the GPs, and he said to me, hey.

Listen. Not a big deal. Just got a call from the SEC.

Steve: Not a big deal.

Nick: Not a big deal. We're we're totally cooperating. They're just asking some questions. And, well, they're gonna call you next, so good luck. And then he hangs up the phone.

I'm like I'm like, you know, now I'm late twenties. Right? So he's, like, looking around, and I'm, trying to figure out exactly what's happening, so they call me. And by the way, fun fact, if the SEC ever calls you, it's all nines on the cell phone Mhmm. In case anybody gets all nines on their on their phone.

So and and Department of Justice is all zeros. So if just in case anybody needs to know that on your on your audience.

Steve: Good to know.

Nick: SEC calls, there's three gentlemen on the line, and they start just asking me questions. Where how did you get this information? Who did you market to this? How did you do this? I'm answering them as best I can.

Steve: Without an attorney.

Nick: Without an attorney. I'm sweating. Right? I just wanted to be helpful. Right?

Like, I don't there's nothing wrong to my knowledge.

Steve: Advice for the listeners. You're dealing with SCC, should you have your attorney present?

Nick: Three hours later, I finally said to them, gentlemen, I I really wanna keep helping, but, like, do I need an attorney? Mhmm. And their response was, do you feel you need an attorney, mister Allerud? And at that point, I tried to be as friendly as I could. I'm like, I gotta go.

I'll talk to you in a bit. Yeah. And that was the first lesson as to, yes. The SEC calls. You have to say nothing.

Even if you've done nothing wrong, you don't know why they're calling. Right? Like, they're calling. They're not gonna tell you. So lawyered up, and this was the first really, really rough year after 2005.

Lawyered up, I'm I'm $65,000 into attorneys. First thing they say is don't talk to the general partners. Like and I'm like, but no. They're good guys. I know them.

Like, I've been to their house. And it's like, no. No. Don't don't talk to them. Like, it's them against you right now.

And and this is what attorneys do. Right? And $65,000 later, I found out that I was just a witness to there was an investor complaint, and we didn't even know this until it came out on in the court system where there was mismanagement of funds that was reallocated from one asset to another. There was a a chance that one of the GPs had bought a car personally with investor funds, And, all three of them were were fined $300,000. One lost his law license, and they were instructed not to do business in Massachusetts ever again.

But here's a big deal. What does that mean for the all the equity that I put in and that I raised and put into to those deals? People People wonder what the worst case scenario is in a multifamily deal. Also that you lose some of your money. It's that the asset goes back to the government to try to recover funds.

Mhmm. And because no one's actively asset managing or property managing that asset, it goes back to the bank. Mhmm. Investments drop to zero. That's the worst case scenario.

Steve: Got it.

Nick: So a year of my life with subpoenas and pulling it they flashed my laptop. Like, I had to bring that to the Boston office and, like, they did something with it where they took a picture of everything on it. I had to print out emails, everyone I ever talked to about any business venture ever since 2005. So they're they found the Minnesota stuff. They found all this stuff.

And it was a year of complete stress, a year of hell, and I lost my first wife over it.

Steve: Yeah.

Nick: So that was 2010.

Steve: So you didn't do anything wrong.

Nick: I don't feel I did anything wrong.

Steve: Just trusted the wrong people.

Nick: I trusted the wrong people, and I still feel like I did enough due diligence. Like, I knew them. Like, they were locals. Right? We all knew each other.

And I and to this day, I don't think that I would've they didn't do anything maliciously, I don't think.

Steve: Yeah. So were there any lessons then in this situation?

Nick: A thousand percent. Well, number one, for good for better or for worse, my control issue started to flare again. Mhmm. So I knew that I needed to find a way that even if the I shouldn't say the s word. Sorry.

Even if the crap hits the fan on any sort of multifamily deal that I was into. I don't care if it was 300 units. I don't care if it was a six unit building. I needed to know how to get my hands dirty and literally fix that. So I had to come up with processes and procedures and SOPs for that specific thing.

So if there's a fire, if there's, it just we have to terminate the property manager, which happens frequently, unfortunately. Right? Like, if there's anything that has to be done, I knew I needed to set something up in my own company that we could do the dirty work if we had to do the dirty work.

Steve: Right. So you wouldn't be relying on somebody

Nick: else. Exactly. And call that control issues, call that you know, I I violated the who not how principle, but I then created our property management company from that from the ashes of that. And we started to have a different take on it. We we practiced out in Pennsylvania and in Ohio and then brought it to mass in New Hampshire.

And I'm now confident. Right? If we get involved in a deal, even if it's in the Carolinas or in Florida or in California, if the crap hits the fan, like, if no one else is involved, I can send a team out and deal with it.

Steve: You know? Yeah. Like, the a team.

Nick: The a team. The double a team.

Steve: Double a team. So not to get too personal here. Right? But you're saying that you you lost your first marriage over this. I did.

Were there any lessons there for those entrepreneurs that are married on how to prevent that from happening? Because, something I said a couple of times on the show, not a lot, but for us, entrepreneurship is difficult. We get get punched in the mouth. You got punched in the mouth more than I have. We get punched in

Nick: the mouth a lot.

Steve: But we we overcome it. Right? But being married to one someone like us, it's hard because we're crazy. Right? We don't fit in.

We are crazy. We're not normal. So what lessons did you learn there that someone that's watching or listening can learn from?

Nick: Oh, here we go. Let's go deep. Right? Like, the biggest resets that I've had have not been in business. Right?

The biggest resets were that year, losing the love of my life at that time. And the other one, right, I went through a very, very nasty divorce just even a year and a half ago. Mhmm. Right? And I had to join, you know, another mastermind to teach me because business was no longer my issue.

I needed to fix me.

Steve: Yeah. Right? I had

Nick: to fix me. What's wrong with internally and me, and and how do I resolve this? And with marriages, the same way we time block on a day to day basis, right, on on our seller calls, on our seller responses, on our our team building, on our podcast recordings, like, the same way we set up meetings there. If you're not paying that same attention to your wife or your girlfriend or your fiancee or your your partner. Right?

Mhmm. If you're not paying that same attention, if you don't have that time blocked out, they see that. Even if they don't say they see it, they see it. Mhmm. And they know exactly what your priority is.

And for years, I sedated Steve with my work. Right? I was had going through trouble at home. Easy for me to stay at the office another three hours. Easy.

Some Some people use drugs. Some people use alcohol. Some people use gambling. Right? Some people use, it

Steve: it That sounds me.

Nick: Yeah. They're right? Gambling. We should talk about Vegas later. Yes.

No. But I I did that too. We all use a a form of sedation. My easy one was work. Mhmm.

And that's still a form of sedation. Doesn't matter if I make an extra million dollars this year. I'm sedating from something really deep down that I haven't fixed yet, either in my spiritual world or my relationship or with my kids. Yeah. And and learning what I have to do on a day to day basis to to take care of that first before I get into business.

Right? Because as someone pointed out to me, business you can't break a certain barrier in business if you've got the other three rungs of your ladder broken. Yeah. Business is the top one. Like, it's easy to make money.

Money comes and flows. Right? But it's those three foundations, spirituality, relationships, right, and and and fitness, really, our body. Like, if we don't have those three done.

Steve: Yeah. Yeah. And that's something that, I I I got a chance to watch Gary Keller. Right? He's the guy that runs Keller Williams.

He wrote the book, The One Thing. And I got a chance to watch him speak when he was trying to, you know, push the book. And he he demonstrated. Right? Like, all the balls you're juggling all the time, only one of them is made of rubber.

Right? And that's the business and money.

Nick: That's so true.

Steve: Right? The health, the family, spirituality, these are glass. Right? It's not easy to just once it draws, to just pick it up. So, yeah, I think that's a great point.

Right? You're being intentional with your relationship.

Nick: Indeed. Do you would you have any habits now? Do you have you shared with people as far as do you have habits around, you know, your personal, your relationships, your fitness? Like, what are your habits? Because I love talking about habits and routines.

Yeah.

Steve: So, I mean, for me, I work out every morning. Right? I don't love it, but I do it. Yep. So Monday Mondays and Fridays, I run now.

Right? So I wake up at five till I can go run at 05:40, run sprints. Tuesdays and Thursdays, I have a personal trainer. And, this is gonna sound ridiculous because I'm not any kind of an athlete. Right?

No. But I reached out to my buddy, Oliver Ross, who played for the Cardinals and the Patriots. Awesome. Hey. Who are you working out with?

Nick: Right? Awesome.

Steve: Like, I didn't, like, hey. Let's just go hire this trainer or that whatever. It's like, who are professional athletes or former athletes working out with? That's who I wanna work out with. Right?

So that's what I did there. And then on Wednesdays, I started playing basketball. So if I sound kinda like I got an itchy throat, it's because the guy I was guarding this morning was just running sprints. On every every transition, he was running sprints on offense. I had to not just, like, run back on the other sprint back on the over and over again.

So but for me, that's that's the fitness, routine. Family, it's time blocked. Right?

Nick: Mhmm.

Steve: I wish I could say that I'm as good a husband as I'm a father.

Nick: Mhmm.

Steve: It's not as much time blocking, like you kinda mentioned, right, for the husband and wife stuff. We did book a trip to Vegas in three weeks, right, to hang out with Ryan Pineda. But, the the kids, right, I go to piano Tuesdays and Wednesdays. They take them to piano and kung fu Tuesdays and Wednesdays and Saturdays. Right?

So that's time blocked. And one thing I do every night for dinner, it's important to me to be home for dinner, is when I get home, before we have dinner, I charge my phone in the kitchen That's great. So that there are no distractions at the table during dinner. So when we're having dinner having dinner, TV's off, devices are off, just family at the dinner. So those are my habits.

Perfect.

Nick: I love that. I love that. For for you you don't understand how precious your kids are until you almost lose them. Yeah. Right?

And and in my year of battling, I almost lost my kids. And because of that, I had a whole separate issue. So once I I I fought legally and and won, I now had an issue where every single second that I had my kids, I couldn't do anything else. So so everything everything else suffered. Then business suffered.

My spirituality suffered. My fitness suffered. Because I'm like, oh, hey. My kids, like, I have to be intentional with them every single second that they're here, and they have to know me and, like, make sure. And then that also didn't serve me.

Me. Mhmm. Right? And it took another coach to say, listen. Small strategic strikes with your kids.

If you don't have to be present and intention with them all the time, intentional with them all the time. But if you can pick, like, one one thing this week and one five minute carve out just to jump on a trampoline with them in the back. Right? Like Yeah. They'll remember that five minutes over two hours of you just being with them while they watch movie or something.

Steve: Yeah. Quality over quantity. I think a lot of people right now are pushing quantity right now. It's quality over quantity. So one other thing too I didn't mention is, every morning, I take them to school except for Tuesdays.

So Monday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, I take them to school. And we listen to Darren Hardy. Right? Darrenhardy.com. Yes.

So we listen to Darren Hardy on the Darren Daily, and they don't love this. But we do it. And not only do they have to listen to it with me in the car, but once it's over, because it's long enough, this is the ride of school. After we listen to it, I ask both of them, Amelia and Vivian, what did you learn from this one? And then after they share with me, then we can listen to music.

Nick: Fantastic. Yeah. I love that. That's a we do affirmations. My kids don't like it either, but they'll learn.

Steve: Someday. We're gonna just gonna keep brainwashing them.

Nick: That's it. Yeah. That's exactly right. Yeah. So that was the second reset of multifamily, and the SEC in that whole year with the first marriage.

But I'm glad you brought it up because a lot of people right. The whole point of being vulnerable and being real is that that whole, in fact, I think you posted it. It was the the entrepreneur path. Mhmm. Right?

Like, it's not like seeing a goal, envisioning the goal, and just going straight to that goal. It's like the whole point of what we're doing is to go through these challenges and these struggles. Mhmm. And if you come out stronger, that's what's gonna that's what's supposed to happen.

Steve: Yeah.

Nick: Right? Like, I can still say every time, like, my last divorce that happened, like, oh my god. I've been wiped out again, like, you know, financially and, like, you know, almost took the businesses, almost took the kids, and this but you know what? Like, what can I learn from this? Well, in my new relationship, I'm gonna be super intentional.

Steve: Mhmm.

Nick: And I'm gonna let her know that she's the one she's more important than anything else that I have going on. Right? And the kids, you're now more important than anything else I have going on when I'm with you. Mhmm. So that has taught me how to have a solid, habits every single morning that I'm trying to put together.

So I we talk business, but thank you for going deep, man, because that's that's where we're at.

Steve: Like Well, another thing too. Right? And just got a quick tangent is that it's the it's the journey. Right? The destination we all shoot for our destination, but the destination's relevant.

Right? It's a journey that's fulfilling and rewarding.

Nick: Amen. And we

Steve: have a couple guys here. We got, Eric Brewer and Adam Berbethis.

Nick: Eric Brewer. What's up, Eric?

Steve: So, alright. So then, multifamily. Didn't work out. Didn't work out. Twenty ten.

But that's yeah. It's still another another eleven years here to to to unwind. So what'd you do after that?

Nick: So that was multifamily. I put my head back in the sand. I'm like, I'm gonna go back to my single family world. Mhmm. Like, I'm you know, I know that.

It worked. It worked. Yep. Rehabs, wholesales, like, all that stuff. And you know what's funny is that, then I was banging my head against the wall trying to exceed, like, a a a 40 deals a year, ceiling that I had.

Mhmm. And I did not know how to scale until my next big mastermind, right, which you and I are a huge fan of, Collective Genius. So Yep. I was like I go to the room, and I'm like, what what are what are these people? Like, I I hadn't I had hired three people when I started to go to Collective Genius.

Right? And I was still trying to crush it, but it was banging the head against the wall. And the next evolution for me was understanding and this also you mentioned, you know, journey over destination. So if my first y of my first destination was to make x amount of dollars, right, what happens when we hit that? We'll just hit a bigger number.

Right? We'll just hit a bigger number.

Steve: Move the target.

Nick: Yeah. Let's keep moving it.

Steve: And We didn't even celebrate it.

Nick: Sometimes, and I'm like, okay. I can just let's get back to work here. Yeah. But, at that point is my whole why started to shift. Right?

From from money it was first to travel the world in every single country and have, gourmet food and beverages in every single country in the world, then my kids. Right? So now, like, okay. I wanna do that with my kids, and I wanna give experiences for them. But then it it became something a whole different version of myself where I know I'm gonna invest money into this team that's not gonna be as effective as I was.

Mhmm. Right? This is this is all in my head. This is the scarcity mindset talking, but I have to now pay payroll and and and invest time and energy and money into these people that had come on board. And they can't close like me.

They don't know how to lead gen like me. They I have SOPs, but, like, they're are they gonna follow them? Do who's gonna hold them accountable? Now I have to yell at them every week too? This is ridiculous.

And talk about yelling at every week. Right? Zero culture. Right? Zero culture, zero understanding of how to really manage people.

And and and okay. Now we have six people. Now what? Mhmm. You guys aren't hitting your numbers.

Right? Well, we're not hitting your numbers because I don't wanna hear it. You didn't hit your numbers. Like, horrible management skills. Mhmm.

Steve: So it took Not horrible. Early. Early. Early management. Learning.

We have to learn, like, that's the part of the entrepreneurial journey is learning all the different skills. We don't have those skills, right? We can learn how lead gen, we can learn how to network, we can learn how to sell, right? We can learn those skills. Managing is a different skill.

People don't You think that it just magically happens. You watch these guys doing thirty, forty, 50, hundreds of deals a year. More skill sets. More skills to learn. So early in your management experience.

Nick: Early because they felt faced the struggles and challenges too. Right? Yeah. I I then literally made a huge pivot in just the past couple years, three years, where, you know, we're not just here to make money. We're not just here to, to create better lives for us and our families.

Right? Like, what what what can we set up here? Like, what we do in real estate is just so freaking powerful. Right? Because we now we're it didn't even occur to me until, like, three years ago.

Like, we're touching people in the most intense emotional situations in their life. And not only are we touching motivated sellers and those types of people, which I was one so I can relate, But even, you know, property management, we're touching tenants that have issues, maybe financial issues and maybe, you know, job issues and now pandemic issues and landlords that have never had a properly managed asset that they might be losing and having stress every morning and they're they're done taking the the calls. Every single one of these people that we're touching, we have an ability to leave an impact. Right?

Steve: Right.

Nick: Be it whether they're calling up and screaming at us, or we're reaching out proactively and making those contacts. Not only that, with all of those people, they help fund a team that if we write if we raise the team effectively and appropriately and in the right culture this is what I learned last year and a half. Yeah. If the right culture is there, which starts with the leaders, right, at that point, your entire mission becomes leaving an impact on people instead of just making money. And when we shifted, Steve, like, obviously, you know, your sales training is amazing.

Right?

Steve: Thank you.

Nick: We we shifted from trying to get the offer signed to getting a testimonial. Mhmm. And that was a whole shift as far as what we're supposed to be doing. Right? So instead of when when we set up the seller, right, we frame them to go in.

We're gonna take a little walk through your house. It's gonna be about thirty, forty minutes to do the rehab, walk through. And while they were to talk about more of your situation, and if it makes sense at that time I've done this in a while, by the way. My team does this, so I'm trying to do my best. If it makes sense, we'll have a seat at the at the table, and we'll go over some options for you.

Right? One of those options might be an offer. And if it works for you, great. And if it doesn't, it's okay too. Mhmm.

Totally okay to have it not work for you. But what I really wanna ask you right now, mister Seller, is that I am rated by how well you feel listened to and taken care of today, regardless of whether or not we get this contract. Mhmm. Is it fair of me to say that if we walk through this house with you today that you'll give me a video testimonial one way or the other? Right?

Yeah. And if we structure our appointments to get video testimonials, even if we don't get contracts Mhmm. We left an impact Yeah. And we can use that testimonial in every bit of our marketing.

Steve: Absolutely. The culture part is so important and under, underappreciated. Right? No one really talks about it. It's not a sexy topic.

But Wren, last week, Wren Bartlett did a killer presentation on what they're doing with culture, and they're they're they're creating herby warriors. Now you're talking about mastermind. I think you're in the warrior? I'm in warrior. Yep.

Warrior mastermind. Yeah. So that that culture, right, is so impactful. And it's one of those things that's kinda like a buzzword. You gotta be proactive and and whatever.

But it's true, and it's real, and it makes a lasting impact.

Nick: 100%. Jared and Wren are the reason why we ended up blowing up our entire team.

Steve: Oh, really?

Nick: So we if they're listening to this, Jared and Wren, we appreciate you. We literally, three months ago, as I was telling Steve before we started, we we are literally starting from scratch because we didn't have the right culture. But I thought I did. We had, you know, we had, oh, god, core values. Mhmm.

We had, you know, an orientation video, which I thought was amazing. Right? Because I made it myself. But, like, we still had people from the old regime Mhmm. That were still with us that, you know, how much am I getting paid?

What am I getting paid? Right? Which is okay. But now we're moving more into an impact. We're moving more into customer service.

We're moving more to testimonials. And they hired a recruiter. Mhmm. I'm like, hire a recruiter? That's ridiculous.

We we don't have enough we don't have enough money to pay for all these people they're gonna recruit. Mhmm. Scarcity. Right? Not realizing that, oh my god.

This is an absolute funnel that has to happen in a real estate business. Because we were just a turning you know, revolving door in and out, especially because we didn't have that culture. Yeah. So we're restarting from scratch. Jared and Ren with a with a recruiter, with a new set of core values, a new orientation, and a new whole new onboarding and training schedules.

So we're hoping that that works here.

Steve: Oh, it's gonna work. It is gonna work. Yeah. So alright. So moving forward, I mean, when did you because you got all these different I'm looking right here.

Right? Are you on Unleash, Home Buyers, Premier Properties Okay. Property management. Right?

Nick: Yeah. We got a

Steve: lot of things going on. Yes. So when did all of this, roll out?

Nick: Roll out? Well, we had so property management came, right, because of the all the 2010 stuff Mhmm. With the SEC and me needing to have control issues and take charge. I need to take charge. Yeah.

So we had some rental holdings in Pennsylvania. I couldn't buy rentals because I was unfinanceable until 2015. Mhmm. So I knew I I knew to build wealth, I had to buy rentals. So I would do, like, four rehabs or fix and flips in the Boston area, and I would take some of that money and go and buy a rental in Pennsylvania, where you could be all in on a single family house, fixed up for $25,000, and you can rent it for $600 a month.

Steve: Wow. That's really good.

Nick: So so with my first three out there, I only bought it was, $537.48 tax certificate. Thank you, John Bach's tax lien system. Yeah. The infomercial. Yeah.

But, anyway, that was where so I started managing out there for our portfolio, and we slowly brought that to third parties in Madison, New Hampshire. But everything else, short sale, the short sale company was also based around the same time I got my broker's license. Mhmm. Right? Like, 2010, 2011, people needed a viable short sale negotiator.

You and I have that in common. Right. Like, we tried using attorneys. We tried using other third parties. And two big issues.

Right? Lack of communication, lack of follow through. Like, the two biggest issues, and we couldn't get around that. So we

Steve: And they had no problems charging us for every time we called in. Yeah. Indeed. Alright. So then any other resets on the way, or is everything gonna smooth sailing after that?

Nick: We covered there's always more. We like, there's there's there's quick ones. Right? Like, the the one we all any rehabbers have this happen. The one rehab that goes wrong because you went outside your rules that wipes out somehow wipes out 20 positive deals.

Steve: Yeah. You made the exception. Like, this we'll make this one work.

Nick: Yes. Yes. The sex oh, wow. It's it's nine acres on a beach. I've always wanted to do a luxury beachfront mansion.

Yeah. Let's do this. And then you it you you lose everything.

Steve: Right. How did, because you you dealt you did that deal in Dallas. Right? It was 200 of your own money and 250 of investors. Yeah.

How

Nick: did that

Steve: work out with those other investors? Did you work anything out with them?

Nick: Or That was the worst. Right? So that was the worst. One was a family member, and two were not family family. Mhmm.

I I had to take that on myself. Yeah. One of them was great and said, listen. I knew the risks. This was one of them.

I'm like, you're better than me. Like, what does it take for me to get there? Right? And but either way, I took that into myself, and I knew I had to make it right. Mhmm.

So over time, I just put them on a monthly bad debt schedule. Right? Yeah. And started just, allocating some funds. And then once in a while, I would I would do a payout to them until they were made in full

Steve: for that. So everyone's made whole?

Nick: Everyone's been made whole, except for me. Still working on it. Well Just kidding. We're doing okay.

Steve: Unfortunately. Right? The way it works when you borrow money is we're last to get paid back. That's it. But I think that, you know, it's easy to say you knew the risk.

Right? Too bad. Mhmm. It's easy to say. But as a matter of integrity, matter of being financeable again.

Right? If you don't pay people back, like, it has a way of coming back. Absolutely. So I applaud you for for for paying them all back. Alright?

Nick: Thank you. I should have done bankrupt someone ever all the attorneys said I should have done bankruptcy the first time in 2005 when I had that $480,000 in debt, because because I would have wiped it all clean. I didn't do that. It was, and I I finally ended up paying that off in 2011 after those monthly debt schedules. Right?

You just have to kinda put it in in place. You're a

Steve: better man than I. I would not have paid the banks back. I would pay I would pay people back. Yep. I would pay every human being back.

I would not pay back a corporate entity that got bailed out by the United States government.

Nick: That's true. We pay for that anyway.

Steve: Yeah. It came out of our taxes. Anyway, so Sam Bayes wants to know, what advice do you have for someone with analysis paralysis? And I don't not trying to judge here. On a PI, are you a maverick, or are you close to it?

What are you? You're high a and you're high b.

Nick: High a and high b. I know DISC, and I know Myers Briggs. I don't know that one so much.

Steve: So you're high d, high I?

Nick: High d and high I. Yes. I would say that. Yes.

Steve: You do not suffer from analysis paralysis? That's correct. Okay. But you are a coach? I am a coach.

So what do you tell people Love it. That have analysis paralysis?

Nick: Oh my gosh. I love this question. So as an as analysis paralysis people, I'm assuming, and if you don't already, you should have an Excel sheet or a buy box or a set of criteria that you work with. Mhmm. If you don't have that, you're gonna look at every single deal that comes in your house and be like, that looks like a good one.

But I I I don't know. Should we do it? Oh, I don't know. Let's run the numbers eight times. Mhmm.

You have to have a rule. So if it depending on I don't know what, Sam was doing. If he's doing fix and flip, if he's doing multifamily. Right? Like, if it makes x amount in a certain amount of time frame, I'm gonna say yes.

I'm gonna execute and pull the trigger in my whole tagline. Right? So you know Steve, shameless plug. Steve's on episode 43 of the Shut Up and Do It Real Estate podcast. Right?

Like, we our whole tagline in the office, it's on all the walls, is what I had to do when I came back from the 2005 issue. I had to take my this is a whole tangent again, but this is important. So pull the phone out of my drawer, which to me, I still remember it like trauma. Like, I remember pulling the phone back out. It was six months later after all the collection calls.

I turned it on after it was charged, and I remembered expecting the ring. Like, expecting the same vibration ring to have the collection calls came in, and it didn't happen. So that's when I had I I started treating my my phone instead of as an enemy, it became my tool because I needed it for wholesaling. Right? I had to start using it again.

Mhmm. And in order to not lose money, I needed to have my own set of rules. And so it became, right, if, if it the markets all shifted. Right? If I'm gonna make 12% or if I'm gonna make 20% on my money on this rehab, we make the offer.

Period. Doesn't matter. Aspirate doesn't matter. Doesn't matter. If it was on the market, if it's with a seller, we're doing twelve, fifteen, 20% depending on the market.

Mhmm. Right? Like, if you have a set buy box, if you have a set execution button or a trigger, that's what you need to fight analysis paralysis. Makes $200 a door, put the offer in. Makes $1.50 a door, you don't put the offer in.

Or you put the offer in to make it to who 200 a door. Mhmm. Right? Like, submitting offers and shutting up and doing it, shutting up and taking my phone out, shutting up and saying, I have to make my calls today, but I'm not gonna make my calls yet because I have to I'm gonna get my lucky pencil and put it right here next to my notepad. I'm gonna take my other script.

Do I have the right script out? Oh, no. I have the probate script and not the fire damage script. I gotta bring the script out and I'm gonna I'm gonna remember. I can't say that this time because last time I said that I got screamed at it.

Won't say this one. Shut up and do it. Yeah. Just shut up and make the call. And that it's become all over, and now it's it's how we fight our analysis paralysis.

Yeah. It's better don't let perfect get in the way of better. Right? We're done.

Steve: And then let's see. What books are Sam Bay is again. What books or exercises do you do to help you with perspective and mindset in good times and in tough times?

Nick: Oh, I love it. This is gonna get deep again, but Yeah. One of my favorite books is Breaking the Habit of Being Yourself by doctor Joe Dispenza. He had when we start to realize and then, again, this is going deep. But, like, you start to realize that we're not humans having a spiritual experience.

We're actually spiritual beings having a human experience, and that everything that comes around to us and everything that we say and do and and attract is all from scientifically as a doctor, he he puts out proof, physical proof, tangible proof as to we are what we put out into, like, our our our emotions. And being in the habit of being ourself, like, if we wanna be different tomorrow, we're just a series of our own habits. Right? We're a series of automatic subconscious actions that we have set up and stories that we've been programmed with since we were young. Right?

Like school. Don't ask for help because you it's cheating. Okay. I I got this. I don't need to ask for any help.

Right? I'll do my first five deals by myself. I don't need anybody. Right? Like, we have these programs that don't serve us, but we don't know that because we just keep going by default, living by default every single day.

So we do that. Know. What is it?

Steve: We do what we know. We do what we know.

Nick: Alright. So doctor Joe Dispenza goes through a fantastic, like, how to clear it, how to reset, what is it that you want, what's the new story that helps you get you there?

Steve: On Facebook, Dan Milonazo wants to know, what helped you recover from the broken trust of these failed partners to jump back into newer partnerships and make them successful?

Nick: Yeah. That's an awesome question. I'm happy you're on, dude. I still have a lot of issues when it comes to trust, and I've been learning. One of my colleagues, Ewan, just helped me with this a little bit saying, if you go into business with somebody and you already don't trust them because of what happened to you, you're bringing all that baggage in.

Mhmm. And also, what are you attracting? You're you're you're expecting the no. You're expecting it to break up. And so you're that's what you're putting out there, so you're gonna get that back.

Steve: Yeah.

Nick: So only the last year and a half have we been open again to partners and JV partners and this and that. And if I start from a place of trust, love, and impact at this point, right, what would love do? Trust but verify. So, to be honest with you, Dan, it's really, really hard. But but trusting, but verifying, and knowing what I know, just getting the right legal team in place Mhmm.

To dress it up, the way it needs to get dressed up because everything's a great honeymoon when you meet the first three meetings. Right? Right. It's preparing for a a a partnership sinking ship is what someone else told me. An attorney told me that.

But, also, expecting it to succeed is better than expecting it to fail.

Steve: Right. So Absolutely. Yeah. And then, Bossbroker Logistics. What is next on your to do list?

Nick: My to do list. What are you

Steve: trying to accomplish next?

Nick: I love it. We have so the projects that I'm excited about, we don't wanna jump back into the big multifamily. We're finding a really nice niche between the 20 and a 100 unit buildings right now in different markets. So we're getting in there, doing the normal multifamily thing with the value add and do what everybody else is doing. But we're also adding special touches, I feel, to where we see the technology going.

And that's providing and it's simple as, you know, smart technology, but also keeping rents affordable, because right now, they're not affordable. Right? And it's difficult when people are buying at a five cap and then refinancing at a three and a half cap, and they have, like, one and a half to play with in that whole thing. It's like if one thing goes wrong. So we're we like the multifamily space, but we're doing it smaller, and there's a lot less deals because of the cap rates being compressed.

Got it. But what am I really excited about is similar to what you do, Steve. Like, we have rebranded, I did in 2011 came out. I I published all of my standard operating procedures for how we marketed and and closed deals. It's called the complete deal flow system.

Was great, but it would never I never marketed it because it was only for me teaching people in my market so they could send me their deals and we would buy it. Right?

Steve: Right.

Nick: We're pretty good. And now with my new mindset of impact and giving and and and service, I know that real estate is a fantastic vehicle to build wealth and gets people out of a nine to five. It gets people to feel more confident in themselves, which even helps them in their relationships. Mhmm. It helps them be a better father when they have opportunities in in a freedom lifestyle to take their kids places.

So I'm using real estate like you are as a way to benefit the masses, really. Like, how to let's teach people how to start up this business and not just make it a hobby, but make it a real business. Right. And by impacting those folks, they're gonna hopefully impact thousands and thousands of motivated sellers, maybe landlords, maybe and so that's kind of another thing that we're really excited about. That's that REI Accelerator that we're doing.

Steve: That's awesome. Candice Inu wants to know is, would you get married again?

Nick: Oh, a bomb was dropped. Mhmm. If I found the right person, I think I would absolutely get married again. I might have found the right person, but I can't say that on a national podcast.

Steve: And are you investing in mortgage notes or stocks?

Nick: Mortgage notes or stocks. We I have a I have I would love to invest in mortgage notes. I don't know that game as well. I know our friend, Eddie Wilson teaches that. Mhmm.

A Speed. Sorry. A Speed. Stocks, I have we I have a liquid portfolio of about, like, $200,000. It's just sort of doing what it does with Betterment, but I don't actively trade stocks.

I don't do like, I know people to play with the options and put options, and I don't do any of that, though. I keep that for real estate deals. And I'm like, I almost have enough money, and then I implemented profit first, which is another whole thing. Right? And so we actually now have money for new deals instead of me draining everything I have for this next awesome deal and hoping the next one sells before I get the next one in.

Steve: Right. Yeah. That's the the game we'll play will pull money from our businesses that are profitable to chase other things that are not proven.

Nick: Amen.

Steve: Yeah. And then, Glenn Bennett here, he says that he lost a 100 k last year, but he's closing his first Brewer Method innovation deal for 37 k. So that's awesome. So yeah. So Eric Brewer, he's got his, you know, innovation program, and, we're helping people do it.

So that's awesome. That is awesome. Happy to hear that, Glenn. Alright. So then, other questions.

So with all these different ventures, what does your organization look like? And then follow-up to after that is what does your day look like?

Nick: Sure. So organization right now, again, we went through a reset. Mhmm. But, as a reset, so it's it's myself as, Matt gave me the title CVO, chief visionary officer. Because I'll just keep opening up new entities.

I know you feel that way too. So Yeah. Whatever whatever works. But I'm I'm proud of our entities because everything that we do feeds each other. Right?

We're not totally distracted with one because the property management assists with, right, the the our motivated sellers, especially we're dealing with burnt out landlords. And then the brokerage is there. Doesn't make a lot of money, but it's there to push the retail listings, right, if it doesn't make sense for an investor offer. So we have, myself, Matt, the COO, is essentially running the show with a new director of ops. So, Matt as CEO oversees everybody.

Director of ops oversees pretty much all workflows, procedures, and the the rehab company, and she's kinda his number one. Mhmm. We do have a recruiter, and director of HR.

Steve: That's awesome.

Nick: Thank you, Jared and Wren. And that's been obviously instrumental in in helping rebuild this new team. Mhmm. So, she's there doing her thing. We have a, receptionist, like an office manager, that's that's in there too.

And we have a, you know, a bunch of we have three different contractor crews we work with. We tried to bring that in house one year. That didn't work well. Mhmm. So we we are now working back as a GC model.

Yeah. Maybe one day we'll try it again, but, you know, we've learned some lessons. That's it. And then we have, you know, about 37 agents now in the brokerage, which is better than the first 40 that we had.

Steve: Higher quality.

Nick: It's much higher quality.

Steve: I remember so when I first joined Collective Genius, this is a year and a half now, Leon Mhmm. Right, said, hey. You need to talk to a handful of people so you can create this sales training program. And one of the people that introduced me, he he asked me to talk to two people. Ren was one.

Yeah. The other was Matt. And when he told me Matt's last name, I was like, no. Like, you're pulling my chain here. Right?

So, yeah, you need to talk to Matt Perry. He's like, you sure? Alright. So what does your day look like then running all these different companies?

Nick: Sure. It's very different now than it was even a

Steve: year ago.

Nick: Right? Yeah. A quick story about Matt too. Matt applied at my company as an entry level sales job. And it was funny because he he did exactly what I asked him to do because I said, okay, guys, put a resume cover letter in or a three minute video, and send it to this and just tell me what you so this video comes in and no one's sending videos.

Right? So my team disregards it as spam. We don't even see it. And finally, like, he follows up, and he's like, hey. Did you guys check my video out?

And we looked back. I'm like, oh my god. This guy left this video. And he's like, you know, bought and sold, you know, over a 100 units in The Carolinas, worked for for Blackstone. I'm like, dude, I have no place to put you.

Like, literally, the best COOs are the ones that just appear. Mhmm. Right? And he's like, I'll just do whatever. I just I'm bored, and I just wanna help out.

Like and I'm so forever thankful because he literally gave me the freedom I didn't know I wanted or needed. Yeah. Right? Like, he's literally freed me up to you know, we we had a few things on the table before COVID and before the pandemic. One of those was gonna be we're launching this massive fund.

Mhmm. I could not do anything with that, if it weren't for him overseeing the operation. I could not do anything with, you know, my vision for the property management company if I didn't have him to help oversee the operation. So what do I do on a day to day basis? I I have my habits in the morning.

Right? I take care of my fitness, my body first. So I have to do thirty minutes of sweating. I have to put some some sort of minerals or green smoothie in my body. I then have to do some meditation work.

I have to do some journaling. For me, I found that if I don't do that, I'm just crabby all day long. I then send out some messages, right, to my relationship or to my kids or to my family that I that I care about to make deposits into them. And, then I do for business, I will learn one new thing, and then I have to share it with a group. Whether that's my own internal team, whether that's an external team or on social media, like, that's sort of my morning routine.

That's what I do up until until 09:30. Mhmm. And then at, 09:30, at that point, I either have meetings or I don't. I have an amazing one thing I did is that we have three amazing support people in The Philippines. Can't do what we do without them.

And one of them sends me my agenda via Voxer. Right? All of my appointments, and she checks my emails for me, and she gives me journal it's like she summaries and oh my god. So I'm just so thankful for her. But I'm literally now I'm either doing podcast recordings.

I'm trying to, we have the developments going on in Manchester, New Hampshire that I'm working with attorneys, and it's boring stuff. But it's like, you know, we're trying to take down a four unit in Manchester too, and there's always fun, issues that arise when you try to do that, and you have sellers that are very antsy. So I deal with the high level issues.

Steve: Gotcha.

Nick: And I try to set the tone. You know, we have a a very in ten years, we're gonna be overseeing, 500,000,000 in assets. We're gonna be making 50,000,000 a year, and we're gonna be giving 5,000,000 away of it away. But that's still a finite goal. The bigger goal for us is that in five years, we're gonna start to have financial synergy centers strategically placed across the country where people can go to, like, a retreat.

Mhmm. And people can go and restart their financial game. So, like, motivated sellers when they hit a reset button. We We we might call them reset centers. Mhmm.

Cut you know, come over here, and it's gonna be all free training, but in an environment that's separate from where they are so they can feel exactly what they need to do to get back on their feet to to start. And then, ultimately, right, how to start a business, how to build a business, how to give back. Yeah. That's our main goal.

Steve: That's awesome. So then when you say that's your why, or is your why different?

Nick: That's our infinite game as Simon Sinek would put it. Mhmm. It's we wanted to have that happen. Our why right now, everything about what we do on a day to day basis is how many people can we touch. Right?

Testimonials and service. The deals will come if we focus on testimonials and service.

Steve: Well, that's the motivation. Right? And that's how you you're measuring your activities. But what is your passion? What is your why?

What's getting you excited?

Nick: My why I I do like the fact of the financial synergy centers, but I still there's a big piece of me that still wants to travel every single country and just have really good food and and beverages with my kids or or my, you know, my spouse or whatever.

Steve: Got it. Cool. Yeah. What's your biggest struggle right now?

Nick: Talent. But we're hoping to fix that soon. Right? So finding, recruiting, and then maintaining talent. Mhmm.

And as we said before, being a leader and a manager is a journey, not a destination.

Steve: Right.

Nick: So I'm learning to be better at that every day.

Steve: And you've faced adversity, quite a bit of it. How do you stay motivated?

Nick: It's a great question. How do I stay motivated in the face of adversity?

Steve: Yeah. Because, I mean, it's easy to wanna conquer the world every day. Right? I mean but there are things that can, you know, that knock you back. Yeah.

Knock the one out of your sails or whatever. Like, how you get up and keep going.

Nick: Yeah. I think for me, it's flipped. And the best example I can give to that is last year during the pandemic, when it was another member of the Collective Genius, and I forget his name. Someone said, like, I live for this shit. Oh, I said I said

Steve: a bad word on the podcast. Sorry. Like Skin is deleted now.

Nick: In in the face of adversity Mhmm. For me, that's almost easier. It's like, here's my purpose today. What where's the learning? Where can I extract the learning?

And what do I have to do my next three steps? Like, for me, that day, I know exactly what I have to do. And while I don't like chaos constantly, I feel like that's there's a there's a gem there. There's some sort of jewel or light that's in the dark that you gotta reach in and find and extract that learning Mhmm. And then apply it to whatever you're gonna be doing next.

Yeah. And if there's no darkness, if there's no struggle, there's no adversity, there's no learning. Right? Like chess. If you win every single chess game you've ever played, what are you learning?

Well, everyone's either letting you win. Right? And and until you finally face someone. So I I love the learning part. I think that's what keeps me going in the face of it.

Lifelong learner. Indeed. Just like you.

Steve: So then the next question in is what's the greatest lesson that you have learned?

Nick: Greatest lesson that I've learned, letting go, surrendering. The hardest part of getting bigger and growing the company was not wanting to let go of team members, of procedures, of a coaching platform that I built. It took me a year in 2012, but I knew it was outdated, needed to get redone. Like, every time you take a step forward, I needed to let go of something Mhmm. And hold office space, a relationship, a toxic relationship, whatever it is.

And we're human. Like, we don't wanna let go. Mhmm. Right? Especially, you know, parents and grandparents being from generations they were, like scarcity.

Right? Like, I have to finish everything that's on my plate. I can't go to bed without it. Right? Like and and that has been my number one.

And when I know that I'm about to get into something really, really exciting, when all of this stuff starts hitting me and I'm in the chaos, and there's a whole bunch of of of a storm that I see brewing in front of me. And it's like, okay. I know what I have to do get out of the storm, but it's it's telling me that something has to be let go. And it's okay. Yeah.

Right? It's not a bad thing to let go or surrender. That was my biggest lesson.

Steve: Got it. Is there a book you've gifted more than any other?

Nick: Book I've gifted more than any other. I love getting your ducks in a row. I'm trying to remember the the author of it. It's a tiny little book. It's, like, 35 pages.

Someone probably can tell us the author of it if they're if they're in here now. It's it's just a quick way of getting your office organized and your head organized and and prioritizing your tasks. Mhmm. And then it follows by the one thing. Right?

But, the the new one I'm giving out is that breaking the habit of being yourself, Joe Dispenza.

Steve: Got it. Yeah. Gotta check that out. So I want you to think about something you wanna leave the listeners with while I make just a couple of quick announcements. Mhmm.

Guys, if you got value today, please like, subscribe, share, and comment. I ask this every week, but we need to do this because that's what tells YouTube and Facebook to share this with more people. So please help me help more people. We have our all day sales training in a couple of days. Well, I got a couple seats left.

If you guys are interested, go to disruptors.com/salestraining. And then next week, we got Chris Miles on the show. Last thoughts we wanna leave the listeners with.

Nick: When you can make the shift so there's there's people who are early on in their wholesaling or rehabbing or landlording or unit building journey. Those people are so focused on where's my next paycheck, where's my next paycheck, where's my next paycheck, where's my next paycheck. Right? And it should be like, how do we market better? How do we close better?

How do we, you know what training do we need to get there? What coaches do we need? It should be there. But I think that as you grow, like, the biggest, biggest shift for me in my own mind and heart has been when it comes stops being about money and starts meeting about service and impact. And don't lose sight of that.

You know, whether you're a new wholesaler or a new rehabber or a new landlord, like, don't lose sight of the money part, but make the shift into pouring into a team. Pouring into if you pour into a team, right, you're you're now able to impact a lot more people, which the money comes. Like, make it about service and impact. Make it about the testimonial. Don't make it about the contract.

Yeah. And that was, I think, the biggest takeaway I want people to get from that.

Steve: That's awesome. How can someone get a hold of you?

Nick: Love it. They can follow me. I'm on Instagram. I'm also old school on Facebook. Like, I'm really, really old.

But, Instagram is Nick Allerut, and the the website, they can go to is aarealestategroup.com. And we also, do have a podcast. Yeah. Shut Up and Do It Real Estate podcast. And Steve was thank you for being on that.

Steve: That was a fun one.

Nick: That was cool. Yeah. So, be sure to check that out too. And and that's all about people who have overcome struggles. Pete, you need to get on the show, you need to have gone through a struggle.

So Yeah. Steve even had one to share. Alright.

Steve: Thank you.

Nick: Good to see you, man.

Steve: Yep. Thank you guys for watching.