Reverse Engineering Success With Kent Clothier

How do you make business problems disappear? Wrap em in bacon for business owners, marketing execs, and anyone trying to grow your business, pump your profits and make more while doing less. Welcome to Bacon Wrapped Business with Brad Costanzo. Sizzling hot business advice guaranteed to make you fat profits. Every week, our chefs will serve you proven recipes for ramping up your revenue.

Now here's your host, Brad Costanzo.

Welcome to bacon wrap business. This is Brad Costanzo and if you are a longtime subscriber and listener, today is going to be a special treat for you. If this is the first time you have stumbled across this show and you don't know who I am, you don't know what this is about, but you like bacon and you like business and you're like, well, this kind of makes sense. Well, welcome to the show. As I mentioned, I'm Brad Costanzo and I'm a serial entrepreneur, angel investor. I am a business and marketing consultant. I run my own business is completely separate from the consulting that I do. And this is my platform to sit down with some of the most inspirational, high achieving, peak performing successful entrepreneurs and pick their brains clean on how they did it, what makes them tick, what's working now, what's not. And I think of it as my way of asking somebody if I can sit down and have a coffee and pick their brain, which they would normally hate. But because I've got a big old audience, they happily do it and they let me extract all of the goody good information from them free of charge. So I like to think that of this as you eavesdropping on me having conversations that I really, really want to have with people I really, really want to talk to. And I think you're going to get that out of today's episode as well. By the way, today's episode is about two years overdue. And that's because I started the show two years ago and at the time I was already working with today's guest, KE Clothier. So Kent and I have been friends for, oh, I guess about three and a half years at the time of this recording. And he started off as a referral from my buddy Drew Canole to work with Kent and help him. Initially it was just publish a book, right? And then Kent and I did such good work together. He said, listen, I'd really like to hire you and bring you on as a consultant to help me grow my marketing business and use your strategies to see if we can grow together. And I took him up on that and it was one of the biggest best things I've ever done because not only did I get to be a part of a multimillion dollar a year company and utilize marketing campaigns that helped him, you know, grow tremendously, but I got to be a witness to an entrepreneur who is extremely inspirational and has, you know, had major successes, major failures back down to zero, which he'll talk about and then back up. And I have learned so much from him as a friend, as a mentor, as a friend tour that it's a real honor to bring him on the show to talk to you. And it's interesting though, because I know so much about Kent and anytime I am curious about something, I just pick up the phone and call him. But that being said, I tried to ask him some questions that I didn't necessarily know, but get him to shed some light on really what it takes to be an entrepreneur who moves with intention and gets things done despite all their fears, despite any disadvantages or drawbacks they may have. And because I've already done the episode, I can tell you, man, it's going to be a really, really good one. A little bit about Kent. Kent's the founder and CEO of a company called Real Estate Worldwide, which is one of the fastest growing companies in the country. In fact, the Clothier family is the only family who has four companies on the list of the Fortune, I'm sorry, the Inc. 5000 list of fastest growing companies, all in real estate. But in case you think that Kent was born into a real estate family with a silver spoon, it's quite the opposite. In fact, he'll tell the story about starting off in the grocery business, making a fortune, losing it all and coming back like wildfire in the real estate business. It's been a dramatic rise, fall and rise again. He'll talk about some of the lessons he learned along the way, as well as some of the things that you can take away no matter what you're doing or what business you're in. The company. Real Estate Worldwide is the premier top educational based system for learning how to invest in real estate, as well as the number one software platform for generating leads of buyers, sellers and private lenders that's used by real estate investors all over the place. So Kent made an amazing transition from simply being a real estate investor to also being a software entrepreneur and then a coaching provider. So he's got his fingers in a lot of different pies. He's seen it all. He knows how to grow a business very big and do it the right way without, you know, jeopardizing his reputation as one of those carnival barkers out there who's preaching get rich quick. You'll never hear things like that from Kent. In fact, he's going to tell you it's going to be a, you know, it's going to be a lot of hard work and that it's not always easy, but it's definitely worth it. I could go on for days about Kent and his qualifications, but I want to jump into the interview that you.

Have asked to hear.

So let's go ahead and bring Kent on the line right now. All right, Kent, you with me, buddy?

I'm here, man. All right, dude.

This has been a long overdue podcast.

Yeah. We have talked about this. I mean, forever. Yeah.

And it's kind of funny because we've worked together, we've been such good friends for, I mean, three years now. Over two, almost three years now. And there is so much that we could talk about. It was kind of funny because whenever I wanted to pick your brain, I could just walk into the other office or pick up the phone and talk to you. It kind of makes doing a podcast where I extract the things that I don't know difficult.

Exactly.

As I mentioned in the introduction, you've had probably more than any. Well, definitely more than any other person, especially in my professional life, you've had a bigger impact on me personally and professionally than really anybody else. I was very fortunate to get to work with you and help serve you and your business, but I was also very fortunate to get to work with you and do things that a lot of people pay very, very big money to spend just a couple days with you and to see how you operate. And I got to see it firsthand. So just personally, I want to thank you very much for all of the business lessons, but also the personal lessons in friendship that you've given me over the past several years. And I definitely wouldn't be where I'm at without a lot of your guidance. So I want to appreciate you and acknowledge you for that.

Oh, dude, I appreciate that. And the feeling is mutual, brother. As you know. As you know.

Thank you. Thank you. So, for my audience, this should be pretty cool because there is very rare that I've ever pulled somebody on where I've got a deep, deep understanding of their background, their knowledge, and why the things that they. That my guests can share can be so impactful. And instead of just talking about little micro tactics and sizzling hot little business ideas, whenever I think of you, I think of you as, like, the true entrepreneur who makes Big things happen. Who takes big risks and jumps in. You know, you always talk about moving with intention to build a real lasting impact. But before we dive into that, let's give people kind of a quick back story on where you came from and the things you've kind of done. So they go, oh, crap, this is somebody. I really need to be listening to.

Somebody give you the three minute view here, the three minute pitch here. So I started as an entrepreneur when I was 17. I came from a very entrepreneurial family. And so my dad and I started in a business of actually grocery wholesaling, of all things, but not in the traditional sense that we were doing grocery wholesaling in kind of an off market sense. What we were doing was most people don't know that groceries, when you see a grocery item, that little upc, the scan code, the barcode on every item, you see, well, that little code represents a unique identifier for that product. And it is the same identifier everywhere in the world. Everywhere that product is sold, that same little 10 digit number exists. And what's interesting about that and why I even bring it up is because although the number is the same, and although the product is the same, and although everything is the same, one thing that is considerably different from just one city to the next is how much the manufacturer actually sells the product for. And so, you know, a case of Kraft Mac and Cheese, for instance, in Miami, Florida, you know, Kraft General Foods may sell that product for $40 and the exact same item, no difference whatsoever. They may sell it in Denver, Colorado for $20. And anytime that happens, you are creating a very inefficient market. You're creating opportunity for guys like me. And at a very young age, like I said 17 years old, we quickly figured out that we could go into one market, buy something, put it on a truck and turn around and ship it into another market and sell it at below what they were paying for the manufacturer. And it was called diverting grocery wholesaling. And this little company we started in Memphis, Tennessee, was doing, you know, roughly by the time I was 23, was doing $50 million a year, by the time I was 28, was doing 800 million. By the time I was 30, I was running a $1.8 billion a year company.

So no stress, no pressure.

Yeah, yeah. And so, you know, as a very, you know, in my 20s, I had a very unique business resume. Right. I mean, I basically grew up in a situation where things move very fast. You know, I learned very quickly that you could Accomplish great things and big things, if you. I just didn't know any different than to go big and hard and. And I saw, you know, I was on the front row, front lines, if you will, have seen things happen in a really dynamic way. So from the time I'm 17 to the time I'm 30, you know, I've got the Midas touch. I just had this amazing journey that created a really, really big company. A lot of money, a lot of opportunity, a lot of things go right. And then about that time, as most people, you know, that would experience that kind of thing in their 20s and 30s, or I should say in their 20s, basically I turned 30 and then three weeks later, I walked out of the company. I had a run in with my partners and basically just walked away from an operation where I was making just ungodly amount of money and was just pissed off and full of, you know what, that I just said, hey, I'm gonna go do this on my own. I don't need anybody else now. And over the course of 22 months, lost everything. You know, I had a nice big nest egg that I completely pissed away. And millions, right, millions, Millions of dollars burnt every bridge, every relationship, every. I mean, as if you can imagine out. I mean, without having drugs and alcohol. But if you can imagine every other way you could possibly just completely fall flat on your face from business perspective and a personal perspective, I mean, I was there. I was morally bankrupt. I was financially bankrupt. I mean, I was just a complete mess. I lost everything. And it was devastating.

And all you knew from like an early age, because you got started so early, all you really had known to that point was success. I am a big badass baller and probably felt like you had the Midas touch. So I can imagine.

No doubt. I mean, it's one of those things, man, if you don't ever know what failure tastes like, it's really. It's a bitter taste. I mean, and I. And I basically had never failed. I had won constantly. And I was in an industry, you know, the industry here we are doing $1.8 billion, but this little niche industry was doing roughly about 5 or 6 billion dollars. So we were the player. Me being on top of biggest operation in that little niche industry. I was the man, right? Everybody in the industry knew who I was. Everybody, you know, you could call any grocery retailer or any grocery wholesaler, thousands of companies all over the country, and they knew exactly who I was. And so I had this, you know, the money, the power, the reputation. I mean, it was, it was all there. And so the fall from that was.

Hard.

But it's exactly what I needed, man. I mean, humble piece. I was the guy that needed it because I just, I was not humble in the slightest. I was completely cocky and full of shit. Just was what it was. And so, man, you know, so basically from that I got, you know, after I lost everything and tried to get back on my feet, my wife now, but my girlfriend at the time basically saved my life and stepped in and said, hey, I know what you can do. Move in with me. Because I mean, I had to sell everything. Going through everything I went through and basically making bad business decision after bad business decision, trying to start another company turned around.

You discovered real estate investing soon after. And what I love about it is the fact that you took that same general model of operating, which is, okay, let's in essence, wholesale groceries, find out what people are buying and then just go fill the demand. And you started doing that with real estate investing. Like, you know, where people are fixing and flipping. But you. How do you. How did you get started on the real estate side? I ask, even though I know.

Well, so most people have no idea when they hear real estate, they think of just retail. Right. I mean, it's basically what happened. What we see in the news every day, housing markets are up, housing markets are down. Use a Realtor for this, Use a realtor for that. Anybody's idea of investing in real estate is typically what they see in a 30 minute show on HGTV. So most have no idea that there's a market out there called wholesaling. And that's effectively where people go off and they quickly find properties, put them under contract, and then flip those properties to other investors or people that are wanting them for construction or whatever the case may be. So I had no idea this industry existed as well. But I was sitting on my couch, you know, like I said, at my girlfriend's house at the time, watched a late night infomercial, just like I guarantee people are listening to this, have done as well, you know, watch one of those late night infomercials. Was really tough for me to badmouth them because I'm a product of it. Went to one of those events, got excited about it, saw what they were doing. And I was certainly different than most people in the room because I was connecting a lot of dots because I had just come from an industry where wholesaling was my bread and butter.

Yeah.

And I was just saying, oh, wait, I can do this with real estate.

Just A different product.

Yeah, I mean, you know, take extract grocery, insert house, house, or even better.

Let'S go insert contract for a house.

Yeah. And we exploded.

So for my listeners who don't really know what real estate wholesaling is, give us a 30 second version.

You go and put something under contract. You put a house under contract. So I guarant, you know, people have always heard, how do you buy, how do you buy a house with no, no credit, no experience? You know, we've all seen those commercials, pretty straightforward. You go and put a house under contract and upon putting that house under contract, you go and find somebody being other investors, rehabbers, fix and flippers, people that want to rent them, whatever. Right. You go find the people that are, that are really looking for that property for investment. You just got to it first and you assign your interest or flip your interest in the contract. So I go put something under contract for 100 grand and I can quickly go to somebody else and say, listen, I have this property under contract for 100 grand. I'll assign it to you for a fee of $20,000. So now they're on the hook for $120,000. You effectively make $20,000 on a deal that you never really own and you've never really actually closed on the property. You were just smart enough to get it under contract and flip your interest in that contract, assign your interest in the contract. And it happens every day.

Yeah. And the genius of it. And people are like, well, how does that work? How do you get somebody to do that? I mean, obviously the key is you have to find somebody in the situation where they're motivated to sell the property in the first place because maybe it's in disrepair, maybe they're losing money, maybe they're going through a divorce. It could be a million things. And when you're able to do that and you're able to connect that with all the people out there who, all the active investors paying cash for properties, I mean, being that tollgate, that guy in the middle. The nicest part about wholesaling, and I'm putting a lot of words in your mouth just because I'm so familiar with the industry and I've done this myself, the nice part is it's probably the least risky way to get started. The quickest cash flow, the least brain damage. And you went on then after a lot of success to develop software and systems to make this even easier. So, and I know that we personally had success using your software to generate that, you know, finds you all the you know, motivated sellers and cash buyers. Just, you know, for the audience's sake, Kent and I put, you know, we used his system, his leads, his database. Basically, we sent out, and this is not easily duplicatable because of what we did, but 88 letters, just 88. But it proves what you can do. We sent out 88 letters, found somebody who. Who said, yeah, they called us up to say, we were just messing around, you and I. And they said, yeah, I'm happy to sell you this house. And we turned around without even seeing it and sold that contract. And I think we made about, what, $22,000 just on that. We were doing a little test, but it goes to prove that when you have good data, which your systems do, and we'll provide a link to, you know, if people want to check this stuff out. But if you have really good data, potentially motivated sellers, and then, you know, there are people out there who are paying cash for properties. I mean, there was zero brain damage in that entire thing. It was beautiful.

Yeah. I mean, basically, you know, the big epiphany was I got out there and I started flipping a lot of houses, started flipping a lot of contracts, making a lot of money, got back up on my feet, got going, built a lot of momentum, and then got married. And my wife and I were having a little girl. And I quickly realized, you know, slap on the forehead here, that, oh, my God, wait a minute. If I stop buying and selling houses, the money stops. I don't really own a business. I own a job. Yeah, no, the jobs. The jobs pay me good, but it's not. It's. It's not a business. And so then to your point, we got really, you know, we got really dialed in on creating the systems, the processes, the data, the marketing, and created the software, and again, all the things that. That make it. That made it really, really easy for us to take a business. I shouldn't say easy, but really simple for us to take a business to scale over the course of the next few years. And when we did that, we got a lot of people's attention. I mean, we went to. Now we're a business that's flipping 50 houses a month to this very day. And when you do that, a lot of people kind of raise their eyebrows, like, man, I'd love to figure out what you're doing. And that kind of. We kind of got drug into the information business, into the software business and the education business. We weren't really looking to do any of those things, but when you create systems and processes that make it easy for people, opportunities start to arise and that's what happened for us.

Yeah. And it's been a fun, crazy ride. And watching you be able to create so many other success stories with really frustrated investors and people who have answered various infomercial calls and read the books and tried and failed different things. The power of having good data, good systems in a simple process that just allows people to take action and apply the result. I think that's also the difference when you said, hey, I was a product of the infomercial stuff. Infomercials, business opportunities, they get the worst name in the industry. Like, oh, it's one of those scammy infomercials, but it's not true. The difference is you took that information and you connected the dots and you moved forward with it. Would you say that that's probably the biggest problem of why more people aren't seeing success? Whether it's with real estate, whether it's with business and entrepreneurship or anything else? What do you think is holding most people back from being able to get similar results?

Well, I mean, let's be honest, right? There's just some people that have no business being in business. There's some people that don't understand how to hold themselves accountable. There's some people that don't. I mean, I would argue that the number one thing that will contribute to your success in business is what's going on between your ears, period. If you don't have the right mentality, if you're not feeding your mind the right stuff, if you're not surrounding yourself with the right people, if you're not listening to the right podcast or reading the right books or taking the right trainings, none of it matters. Fundamentally, the transaction part of anything in making money online or making money in real estate or. But fundamentally those are just tactics, it's strategies, they're techniques. And none of them matter. If mentally you're not prepared to do what it takes to see it through. And I think that's probably as big a thing as any. As I've been doing this now, I guess I'm now in my, oh God, 13th year, 14th year of doing this. That I can tell you the biggest shift that I see is that there's some people that come out of business or an opportunity and it's. They quite literally, they expect to push a button and it's just going to start raining money. Right? I mean, they truly believe they've got a lottery ticket in their hands and it's just super Easy. And it's easy because everybody told me it was going to be easy. That's just not true. I mean, it's just that simple. I mean, this is hard work, and.

There'S a difference between simple and easy. It can be a simple system that's not always easy to do.

Yeah. As simple is, hey, this is a process. Go from step one to step two to step three. Just like putting up, you know, a puzzle together. The process works. It is simple. You can follow it. And if you have the right drive, the right determination, you're feeding yourself the right, you know, things mentally to keep you engaged and keep you in the game and not yourself, get distracted and go chase after the next shiny thing. You just stay on point and you do follow the process, the simple process, over and over and over and over. Chances are better than not. You're going to get the result. I think what people do is they approach stuff and they believe that it's on their timeline. And business just doesn't work like that. Business is about being relentless. Business is about being passionate and just saying, hey, I'm going to go for it. I'm going to do whatever it takes. Failure is just simply not an option. As you've heard me say, burn the boats. I'm just not going backwards. When you have that approach, I think that's the key differentiator. And so you ask the question, why do some people get the results? And we're all going through the same process, we're all going through the same education. Why does some get it and some don't? Because I believe that probably 90% of the people that go into those situations don't have the foundation of what it takes to actually be successful, regardless of what they're doing. And that's why I'm so passionate about it. You've seen me talk about it. That's what I spend most of my time on.

It is true. It's like most of the coaching that you do, most of the instruction you do really does revolve around that mindset stuff. And the unfortunate part is that mindset stuff, it is always the most impactful to people, but it's the thing that they don't go into it wanting to learn. They want to know the tricks and tactics as opposed to the mindset. Like, how do you get past that fear of starting or that fear of taking the next step, and how do you make that shift in doing it when the times get hard? That's the other part that I've noticed, too. Just as an Entrepreneur and talking to a lot. It is really easy to start something. It's easy to get intoxicated by a new opportunity or a new method. But when you jump into it and you start it and then you realize, yeah, okay, this actually takes work effort, there's going to be some sleepless nights and a lot of confusion and a lot of doubts. Am I doing the right thing? Is it ever going to work out? What do you. I mean, maybe you're cut from a different cloth because of your upbringing, has been very entrepreneurial and everything else that you're able to just kind of move through that like a lot easier than some people. But for people who have that fear of going big and burning the boats and just saying, screw it, I'm going to do it no matter what it takes, how do you get them over that shift or how do you get them to make that shift that says, all right, I'm in, I'll do what it takes?

Well, I mean, I think I'm a big numbers guy. I think when you deal in a world of facts, right? And you've heard me say, hey, it's just math. When you get to the math, right, when you just get down to the simple hard facts of situations, it's pretty difficult to deny. And so for me, you hear me talk about time all the time. For me, it's just very simple. At the end of the day, I have a very finite number of days left on this planet. And the more I face that reality, and the more I help people face that reality, the less. I mean, it becomes very hypocritical for somebody to say you want something and not be willing to take the actions to get it right. When somebody sits there and says, yeah, I'll get to it someday, next month, next year, whatever. When you look somebody in the face and say, you understand that tomorrow, next week, next month, this year, none of that's promised and you have an opportunity to do something now, in this moment, right now, in the next five minutes, next 30 minutes, the actions you take can have a direct impact on your future. When you get somebody to get in reality versus having their head up in the clouds like most people, it's just easier to ignore. I think that's when a lot of magical things happen. I think a lot of people. And I think that's a gift. I think that's what entrepreneurs do to themselves as often as they possibly can. I think we successful entrepreneurs have an ability to trick themselves, to mentally make themselves turn it on and off and that they Just have a way at least. Most successful entrepreneurs I hang around, we have a way of making this moment matter and we understand the impact of it better than most. In other words, I'm going to do the work, I'm going to put in the time, I'm going to follow the system, I'm going to follow the process, I'm going to do it, I'm going to create the leverage, I'm going to hire the people, I'm going to grind out whatever I need to do now because I understand the impact it can have down the road. And I think the more you can deal in reality like that, where you're just, man, just stop screwing around. It's reckless and irresponsible to act like and pretend that you have time. You just don't. And I've been also equally as fortunate. Like you said, my background and my upbringing was really impactful. But I've had a couple pretty serious impactful things that have happened in my life over the years that really have been not so subtle reminders of how fast things can go away. And I'm very grateful for that because it gives me a perspective. Like I just, I simply refuse to believe that I've got time to waste. And I think your question directly, the more often you can put yourself into that kind of mindset, the easier it becomes to take big action.

Yeah, you're right. And I know that on a, just a daily basis. So it's hard to sometimes just remind yourself every day or, you know, have this macabre outlook like, I'm about to die, I need to do this stuff right. So what? But the other thing that I found myself doing as a result of, you know, being, you know, friends and colleague with you for so long is reminding myself that, yeah, first of all, deadlines are everything. Like if I get, if I don't give myself a deadline to do something, it doesn't get done. And the only time I've ever been productive in my life is when I've had deadlines. It's weird how that works, but I mean, it's called a deadline. Maybe for a reason. It's a deadline. Our life is a deadline. But if you give yourself those micro deadlines of saying, yeah, I may not have to get into this macabre mindset daily to motivate myself, but give myself the deadlines to get this step of the process done, I think it takes away a lot of the. It provides urgency, I know, for me. And it creates action and movement.

Well, dude, I mean, at the End of the day, it's just easier to ignore. That's the big thing, right? I mean, that's what everybody should be, you know, should take away, is it. Just be really aware of the way you think about this kind of stuff, and it's just easier. Like what I said, the deep south of me is coming out. It's basically what I call running home to mama. It's just easier to run home to mama and kind of get into your comfort zone and to just not do anything and to just not risk anything, to not go for it, to not try to create this exceptional life, to not go off and create exceptional memories with your family and friends and to travel the world and just do all the. It's just easier to just sit on your ass and not do anything. But either way, the clock's ticking and you get a choice. You can either have everything you want as fast as you can get it, or you can act like and pretend and keep telling yourself that you'll get to it sometime.

And.

And the reality of it is, if you're just honest, you know, that's not right, that you're just full of crap and you're just kicking the can and you're just unwilling to do what it takes to get to the next level. So because you're unwilling to do it, you shouldn't expect it. And it's just that simple. If you want to have great things, if you want to live an exceptional life, if you want to have an amazing business, then do what it takes. Go hard as fast as you possibly can. Do not hesitate, do not wait. Take big risk, you know, be passionate about something, Be willing to lose it all in order to fight for your dream. Because if there's one thing I can assure you that it's worth losing it all for, it's fighting for your dream. And when you kind of get into that mindset, I'm not talking about motivation, rah, rah, rah, inspiration. I'm just talking about literally flipping the switch, where you're just in a hurry to have everything because you're promised nothing. And that, man, is a key, critical component, I know, at least for me, has been in my success and my journey is that I'm just relentless when it comes to thinking about man. You know, I may have 10,000 days left, but I promise you, 9,999 of them are going to be amazing if I have any, you know, skin in the game. And that's just the way I think about it, right?

And I know I've noticed you're very good at identifying the things that are wasteful activities as opposed to either revenue generating activities or personally fulfilling activities. Right. Like spending time with your family and your friends and then doing things that make money versus just doing things for shits and giggles.

And, you know, let's be, you know, candid about. Right? Money is great. Money is. Money buys freedom, buys time. I mean, I focus, as, you know, a lot of attention on creating as much money as I can and turning around and buying moments and buying time and creating freedom for my family. Right. So we have a lot of people that do a lot of things to support our business, a lot of things to support us personally, you know, from. From the mundane things that need to be done around a household. Mundane things that need done inside of a business still need to be done. But if I can actually buy my own time back where I don't have to do them, to me, that's a great investment. And that's the way I view the world. That if I can pay somebody 10, you know, $15 to do something, but I get an hour of my time back. Well, the way I look at it is I just bought an hour of my time for 15 bucks. And as far as I'm concerned, that's a hell of a bargain.

I want you to share with the audience because this was something I've repeated several times about that exact same thing. So when you hired a nanny for your daughter and the conversation you were having with Seema, your wife, about whose time you're really buying.

Yeah, I mean, I mean, most people would view that as we can't afford to do that. Right. And of course, my wife was the same way. We can't afford to pay a nanny. I think it was $28 an hour or something like that to come in and take care of our child at the time. And I did not view it that way. My viewpoint was, we can't afford not to. I mean, as far as I'm concerned, I'm spending $28 an hour to buy an hour of your freedom, Seema. That's what's gonna happen. So whatever you do with that, I don't care if you tell the nanny she needs to sit there on the couch and she's gonna watch TV with her with her feet up on the coffee table. That's cool. And that's the way the conversation kind of started. I was like, but I'm making the investment because I know that if you are able to take that hour and go and do what you need to do and what you want to do and not have to worry about, you know, doing the laundry or not to worry about making the baby's meals or any of that kind of stuff. Right. Where you can kind of just go take care of yourself, whether it's going to the gym or whatever, whatever you choose to do with that time. If I can buy an hour of your happiness for 20 bucks or so, that's an unbelievably wise investment on my time.

Same thing goes in business, right. Because we think, oh, well. And it took me a long time to get over this because I started to just like, oh, screw it. I can do it. I may as well just do it. Why spend the time on hiring somebody else to do this when I can just knock it out? And it took me a long time to kind of get to that point where I was like, wait a minute. I'm not paying this person even $50 an hour to do what they're doing. I'm buying back an hour of my time for a discount of $50. Because I know that my hours. I can produce a lot more.

Absolutely than that.

And even the times where I'm not producing, I may buy it just to have the peace of mind and not have to do anything that. That hour. So. And I know that that downtime makes my uptime even better.

Yeah. I mean, it's. It's. You're quite literally buying some peace of mind, you know, that you're buying something that, you know, kind of gives you the freedom. Right. It's really tough to create freedom if you're not willing to break free. Yeah. And so you got to be willing to step away. You got to be willing to step back and say, listen, I'm willing to make investments to buy my own time. And you worded it perfectly. I'm buying an hour of my time at a discount of $50. Yes. That is exactly what's taking place. And it's a beautiful thing. And that's the game. You know, as an entrepreneur, as often as you can do that, that's how you create that balance. Right. That's how you actually turn it into a business.

Yeah. And we've talked about this in the past, which is. It's the same thing when you're surrounding yourself with. Whether it's mentors, masterminds. You and I are co founders of the boardroom mastermind, and we've done that together. And we know that surrounding ourselves with the right people and. And taking a shortcut to hiring mentors when it's needed. It's the same exact principle. If I come to you and pay you $10,000 to spend a day with you to get everything I need to do from you, I'm not paying you $10,000. I'm buying my time. I'm taking a shortcut. I'm buying all the time that it would take me to figure that stuff out on my own.

Right. You're buying roughly $100,000 worth of time, effort, energy and brain damage for $10,000.

Right. And it's a shortcut.

It would take you five years and tens of thousands, hundred thousand dollars to go through what you could learn and what gets compressed into a 48 hour period. Right. I mean, it's, that's exactly what's going on.

Right. And those are the, you know, those are the types of people I find to be the most successful. The most recent client, Charles the just hired me. One of the things that he said, and I loved it because I knew automatically that he gets it because he does several million dollars a year. He's very successful. He came to me and he said, listen, I could. I love reading marketing. I love doing all this stuff. I know that, you know, these things I would much rather just cut in line, pay you to help me shortcut the entire process because I don't have time to screw around with this. And he, that it's that mindset that I know he took with me that he's taken with the rest of his life that realizes that there are shortcuts out there. They're not always free. But it's not that you're buying knowledge, you're buying your time back. And I think the more people really integrate that into their mentality, the better they'll be. I'm constantly trying to put that into my mentality. I'm notoriously cheap. I, you know that I'm not. It's hard for me to just pull out my wallet and spend the money when I think that I can do it myself. And I know that comes from, you know, the way I was raised with my father. He would never pay for something that he could do on his own, like mowing the grass. It was either him or me. He would never pay somebody else to do it because he could do it.

Right.

I think a lot of people have that.

Well, I mean. And again, it's not a right or wrong situation. I mean, I think it's admirable. But at the end of the day, you just have to decide what you want out of life. I mean, there's certainly there's a million things in my business I can do. I choose not to. What. What I'm a huge advocate of is options. Yeah. I'm not saying I don't do things. I mean, you know me, I love the marketing side of the business. I love getting in there. I love figuring out, mixing it up, how to do, how to do great things, how to engage our audience. That's what I live for right now. And how to coach people and bring them to the next level and open up their eyes and really show them what's possible. That's what I love doing. But I also equally love that I have the option in my organization of not doing any of it. Yeah. And I know for a fact that I created that. Right. I mean, at the end of the day, giving yourself options and actually creating a business that allows you to function without having to do anything, but having the option to do everything, man, that's the best of both worlds because then you've really created it. Right? You've created the freedom, you've created the situation where, man, if I want to walk away for a month, the cash register still singing, things are still happening, everybody keeps going, right. And man, that's when things get really, really cool.

Well, you're about to take a two week vacation to. You're leaving in a couple days. Where are you going? Miami, Bahamas? New York.

Yeah. Yeah. And you know, we're just kind of gonna jump on a couple planes and go hang out a little bit and just take the girls around and chill out. And I have a, I have no doubt everything will keep going. Hell, I was working with some guys in the last few days on a couple little masterminds here we're doing here. And my business partner, he's out on vacation, was at the USA soccer game the other night. I mean it's like we all, because of what we've created, we've created the situation where the team continues to roll, continues to function even when we're off doing these other things. Some are with work, some with vacation, some are soccer games, whatever. It just keeps moving and like I said, that's when it gets really cool. Cool. Yeah.

So I want to kind of digress. I just had this thought because this actually plays really well into this. And I mentioned your, I mentioned your name on one of the most recent podcasts that I did with Mark Winters and he is the co author of the book Rocket Fuel, which you've read, right? Yeah.

So the.

For anybody who hasn't listened to read that book, or listened to the previous episode with Mark, Rocket Fuel is the. Is a book about that but super important relationship between the visionary, which is usually the founder of a business, and what Mark calls the integrator, oftentimes the operational person. The person who integrates all the visionaries ideas and executes and gets things done. And I think one of the reasons I brought. When you put the two together, it's like Rocket Fuel. So that's the name. And I believe I brought your name up because in the past, I don't know, year and a half or so, when you brought your best friend, lifelong friend Jerry, to come in as your integrator and your person who in essence operates the company and allows you the freedom to do the visionary, the creative things while he takes care of the operations, the finance, the necessary evils of business, the spreadsheets.

Right.

Tell me about your experience in just. And I kind of know this, but in working with Jerry and finding that integrator who complements you. But it's still opposite in a lot of ways, like how important that is as an entrepreneur.

Oh, I think it's everything. I mean, I've had many business partners, I've owned many, many companies over the years. There's no doubt that this is the latest, greatest and best situation that I've ever put myself in and put my family in, put our company in. It just happens to be. Fortunately, that is also my best friend, my lifelong friend, a guy that I've known since second grade. Right. He's known me longer than my wife has known me. I think if you're a visionary, what I've learned over the years is you can easily be the guy or girl that's driving your team absolutely crazy. You are, you know, your ideas have a tendency to spin people out a bit. That's what I was doing. Right. I would sit there and talk to my team openly and try to discuss ideas with them. And because I'm the owner, founder and CEO, they're taking those ideas as the gospel. Next thing I know, they're working on all kinds of different things they should have never been working on. And you can attest to that. We were just talking and the next thing I know I've got them, you know, marching, marching in different directions. I think I'm just talking. They're taking it as direction. Yeah. As orders. And so having somebody that me as a visionary can sit here and bounce the ideas off and, you know, vet things out and then have a guy and quite frankly, he's brought in A lot of other people around him now that can take those ideas and turn them into reality and do it in a sensible way. Do it in a very logical way, do it in a methodical way to where we're not just.

Or sometimes tells you, no, we can't do that.

Yeah, totally. I mean, basically says, dude, this is not going to happen right now. We just don't have the. We don't have the resources. We don't have the manpower. You got to take it down a notch. And somebody that I respect enough to tell me that, I think as a visionary man, when you do that, that's the secret sauce. When you can actually get somebody that understands your vision, understands how to articulate it to a team, understands how to drive a team, and it's equally as passionate as you are about the process, but they're not as crazy as you are. That's a good thing. And it's a really powerful combination.

Yeah. And I know that when I started working with you prior to Jerry and then after Jerry, just how much things have changed and operational efficiency kind of came up. I definitely brought your name up and your relationship with Jerry on the previous episode to just kind of demonstrate that. I know it's one of those things that I. I don't currently have as an integrator in my business. And I think it's what most people don't, but it's probably the single most wished for, especially among our entrepreneurial friends, who are almost all visionaries. We're like, I just wish I could duplicate myself and have somebody to implement all my crazy ideas.

Yeah. We have a tendency to basically drive people around us crazy. And then we also. Most of the guys I know, they have a tendency to not want to relinquish control. So I think being able to give up control, being able to understand how somebody can actually take your business to scale, those are massively powerful concepts when you're able to actually implement. Right.

So tell me about some of the biggest mentors and people that you've learned from and go to for advice kind.

Of in your life, whether it was.

In the past or now, because all of us are always reaching out to others to help us when we get stuck.

Yeah. So I had a very unique relationship and continue to have a unique relationship with my father. It's not your normal father son relationship by any stretch of the imagination. We're basically. We're in business together, and that's kind of the relationship we've had my entire life. And it's fine. It's good. It works and it works for us. It's all we know. So my father's certainly been a mentor to me like that over the years. I had a guy by the name of Sal Ricciardi when I was in the grocery business that was like another father to me and really took me under his wing and showed me and taught me a lot over the years. As I started moving into the real estate side of it, you know, I kind of reached out and hired local. I mean, I hired mentors through an education company that came in and helped me with that business. And then as I started taking a business to scale, I started working with some guys, some local or some. Some national masterminds that really helped me and some guys over there, fortune builders that I've been friends with over the years, really kind of helped and were pivotal in my career. Now my business partners with Roland Frazier and Ryan Dice and Perry Belcher, those are all very, you know, those have got key guys in my world right now. Frank Kern, who is a very good friend of mine and has been a great sounding board and mentor for me as well. My network is constantly and consistently evolving, but I think I take a lot from a lot of people and I try to give a lot as well, but there's a lot of people I pick up a lot of great information from and try to implement as fast as I possibly can.

What about some of the things you're trying to implement now? Tell me about some of the bigger visions. Real estate worldwide is growing rapidly and there's always new things going on. What. What do you think the next five years looks like for you and your business?

We're really kind of grow. We're really growing our education side of our business. We've become the go to from a software standpoint. And so we're trying to take that software and parlay it into really providing more services from a financing side of our business to our students. But also our education side. We're really escalating that and creating our Real estate Worldwide Academy, which we're doing it in a very different way than is customary or standard in the industry today. We're really doing it where we're doing the ISD curriculum, instructional system design. We're kind of putting it together in a way with very much like a college course is put together. We brought some PhDs in that are helping us. We're going to go for our ACE accreditation, so American Council of Education. We're actually going to go for the. We're gonna go for broke Here and get our education where you can get college credit for it, which is something that is rarely, if not, you know, ever done on this side of the coin. We're gonna go for it. We believe in ourselves enough that we believe we can bring such value that we're gonna do that. And so we're excited about that. We're excited about, you know, again, our mastermind program where we're continuing to surround ourselves with hundreds and hundreds of investors all over the country and taking a vested interest in their business and showing them, you know, and surrounding them with people that can show them how to do big things. So I'm, you know, I'm. The beauty of it is, is we deal in the real estate side of the business, where whether it's good mark, good market, bad market, sideways, it doesn't really matter. Right. There's always a market for what we're doing, and we're just really dedicated to becoming the gold standard in the industry.

Would you say. You mentioned the market depending on what it's doing. The nice part, especially about wholesaling and real estate, like you said, there's almost always an opportunity no matter what's happening, when times are actually pretty good. Arguably right now, there's no major financial crisis going on yet. There's probably a lot of buyers out there and a lot of demand for these houses. When things get really ugly, like back in 2008 and 2009, there becomes a lot more sellers. So whenever you've got either a big supply or a big demand, there's always opportunity. Wouldn't you say that? So it's almost insulated from a lot of the market ups and downs.

Yeah. When you're in this side of the market, man, when you're an investor, basically, you're investing in crisis real estate. It's that simple. Right. And there's never a shortage of crisis in any economy. Whether it's divorce, death, foreclosure, bankruptcy, somebody's behind on their bills, Somebody's, you know, facing, like I said, facing foreclosure. They've got unwanted rental property. They just inherited a property. All these situations happen every single day regardless. Right? Nobody. Nobody stops going through those situations because it's a good market or a bad market. Those happen every day. And for our particular business, that's kind of where we focus on. We are the company and the industry that is there to step in and relieve people in those situations. Right. We come in and provide a solution quickly to them, get them out of a cat, out of a. Out of a Difficult situation, fast and then turn it into a business where we can quickly liquidate the house. Everybody wins. Right?

I love that. Alright, Kent, so now is the time where we flip the script and I like to help the guest on the show figure out anything that you're trying to accomplish. Now if there's any resources you're looking for, if there's any nuts you're trying to crack and not quite sure where to find it, whether it's people, skill sets, you know, really anything, this is, now is your time to ask us for help.

Ask us for help. Well, I mean we're always looking for, we're always looking for people that are interested in learning how to buy and sell real estate or just buy real estate. Right. So we basically have the ability to help two very specific types of people out there. People that are interested in, you know, they got a little bit of intrigue. They're interested in learning how to buy and sell real estate and actually turn it into a job, a business income, whether that's part time or even full time, anybody that's interested in that kind of stuff, we're always looking for great candidates for our business for that. And equally on the other side, we can help people that are just looking to do it in a very passive way. You know, our investing business that I mentioned is doing 50 or 60 properties a month now is always looking for good clients that are, you know, want to kind of take the hands off approach. They just want to build a portfolio of rental income properties and don't want to do anything, don't want to touch it, don't want to go and collect rent, don't want to basically want, you know, a professional team to manage that entire process for them. We currently manage 3,500 rental properties, single family homes all over the, I should say all over the country. They're in Dallas and Houston and Memphis for roughly about 1500 investors all over the world. So yeah, you know, we didn't really.

I mentioned that in the introduction, but we didn't really cover that. And I don't want to go too, too far into it, but that's, you know, you're, you've, you're the only family as far as we know, right. Who's got four businesses. Is it on the inc. 5000, right, exactly right. All serving real estate investors and the real estate industry. And for all those folks, like you said, who the active side of wholesaling sounds like, that sounds really awesome, but also sounds like a lot of work.

Yeah, I mean again, we serve Very two, two very different type of clientele. Right. The active person, that's. Man, I want to get in there. I want to figure this out. I really want to. I'm tired of my nine to five. I'm, you know, I want to go and do this. I mean, we've got a, we got you covered. A to Z. Right. There's nobody better at showing somebody how to do that than we are. Equally in our actual core investing business, we really focus all our attention on creating a passive environment for that core clientele. So like you said, I mean, it doesn't really matter where you're coming from. There's a lot of people that fall into both those categories. Whichever way you're approaching it or if you just want to figure out what some of all this information is about. We're always looking to help people take it to the next step, the next level, next natural level in their progression on real estate. Yeah, that's awesome.

So obviously, people who want to learn, people who are interested in investing, what else out there? I mean, I know one of the keys to your success has always been surrounding yourself with people who can help really pull levers in your business and give you the shortcuts. Like we mentioned. Is there anybody else out there that you would absolutely love to connect with? Whether it's somebody to maybe a speaker for one of your events? Because I know that you do a lot of great events. Whether it's anybody who has any specialized business or marketing knowledge that could help fill a hole in your business.

Well, I can tell you that if you're a good online marketer or you're a good sales associate, somebody that truly enjoys bringing value to people and loves to stand behind a product and loves to get on the phone and help people to reach their goals. In either one of those scenarios, we want to talk to anybody and everybody we possibly can. You know, we love the team we have and we love continuing to build that team with people that just make us better. And those are two areas that help us with our reach. Right. We have a lot of people come at us and being able to provide them that one on one service and get somebody on the phone with them and help them kind of open doors. We're always looking for people that can help us do that equally. We're looking for people that can always help us to expand our reach. So marketing in any way, shape or form, I said online, but offline, direct response, press releases, I mean, you name it, we're looking for good marketing people. Social media, all the time.

Right.

Well.

And I can attest from firsthand knowledge about just what kind of a culture that you created at Real Estate Worldwide, how amazing it is to work there, how much you foster the entrepreneurial spirit and personal development with your employees and partners and everybody else. So I just highly recommend if anybody out there listening has any interest in that, don't hesitate to take Kent up on that invitation. What are the best places for them to reach out and contact?

One thing's for sure, I'm not hard to find on Facebook. Yeah, I get a lot of flack about how much Facebook advertising we do, so I'm pretty easy to find on Facebook. I would invite you to go there. It's Kent Clothier. Or you can just go to KentClothier.com or just go to Reww.com those are three places where, again, I'm pretty easy to reach out to and begin the conversation.

Awesome. Well, man, as I said, this has been a long time coming in the podcast. I'm actually glad that if anything else, instead of starting off the show with you when I didn't have many listeners, I'm glad that I can bring you on when I've got a much bigger listener base and more people can really benefit from the things you have to share. For those of you who've listened to this and it's really resonated, and what I'm hoping that you're taking away from it, which is what I've taken away from my relationship with Kent here, is that it really is about the space in between your ears, which is what determines your success. It's not the mechanics. Any monkey can pull a lever in a business and set up the little mechanics, but it really takes kind of a different mindset in order to make it happen and to weather those storms and actually just pull the trigger and go. Even when you're scared, even when you don't know how it's going to work out, even when you're worried that you might lose some money or, God forbid, fail at something. I think you've heard from Ken's story about how the mindset is so important, and it's top of his mind. It's top of mind when he's teaching students, when he's working with clients, when he's working with partners. I can tell you the one thing that I've always partially admired and then partially got mowed over with is when Kent wants to move, dude, you just go. It's like, get on board or get out the way, Jack.

Yeah, we're going, baby. Right?

Yeah, absolutely. Now, you also, by the way, in the very near future, by the time this launches, you may have your own podcast up. Is that right?

People can start to turn in, correct? Yeah, yeah, we'll.

I'll link to that in the show notes.

Absolutely.

Cool. So if you like the things Kent talks about, you can obviously check him out on his upcoming itunes shows. And he's always on Facebook live because he likes to talk. So you can go tune in there and follow him on the snap. What are you on?

Snapchat, Kent Clothier, man, I'm not hard to find. No, I. No, I'm not hard to find. I'm out there. Cool.

Well, bud, this has been a blast and I look forward to sharing it with the world. And I wish you a great vacation.

Here coming up and connecting when you get back. Thanks, brother. I appreciate it. Thanks for having me on.

All right, man.

Appreciate you.

All right, guys, if you've enjoyed the show, let me know. Send an email to ask bradakenwrappedbusiness.com and tell me how to amazing I am and how okay Kent is too, actually, if you want, I've been doing this recently. I've been asking for book recommendations from my crowd here, and people have been writing in with awesome book recommendations. I'm trying to think what the last one was. I was trying to pull it up. I should have been a little bit more prepared here. But I'm a voracious reader, so I'm always asking people, people to reach out and give me new books to read. And if you have a book that's really inspired you that has been really cool or really insightful, just shoot that over to ask bradakenratbusiness.com I'll read it and if I remember, I'll mention it on the air. But if you are also in a position where you do own a business and you're stuck and just either profits have plateaued, you're not exactly sure what to do. You, you know, there's a lot of marketing strategies and business growth strategies out there, and that's maybe the problem is there's too many and you're a little overwhelmed going, this all sounds good. I don't have enough hands to do them all. And I don't know which one will actually generate revenue and which one's just not right for me. Send me an email askbradbankonrappbusiness.com and I will take a look at it and we will jump on the phone and if it is something that I can help you out with. I will do that. We will see if there's an opportunity for you to just kind of plug that hole and move on. Or maybe there's a potential to work together, partner up and see if we can do something together. If so, Once more, ask bradaconwrappedbusiness.com until next time, guys. Kent, thanks a lot buddy. And you and I will talk real soon to everybody else. Thanks for sharing the show, reviewing it, and just subscribe and love you guys.

Talk to you soon. Boom.