Episode 574: Why a "Dead Lead" Might Still Be Worth Five Figures with Derek Dombeck

Welcome to the Smart Real Estate Coach Podcast, your source for actionable, real-life, practical investing advice. Each week we help you make a quantum leap somewhere in your business, your finances, and/or your life. Subscribe, leave a rating and review, and learn more at smartrealestatecoachpodcast.com. All right guys, welcome back to Smart Real Estate Coach Welcome to the podcast. If you're brand new here, we focus on 3 paydays. As always, we focus on experiences in the community and outside the community. We focus on building you. We focus on the 3 paydays, meaning cash now, monthly cash flow, and long-term wealth. We're going to dive in today, and I hope this is a reminder, but let me just say it today. From August 26th this year onward, we made a pivot, as some of you know. And if you're new to the podcast, this is worth reviewing. I do one solo cast every month. It's the first Wednesday, and the third Wednesday of the month is a guest. And the guest is not an outside guest.

No.

The guest is from our community. On occasion, I'll make an exception when someone's amazing and I think you can glean a lot of value from them. And, but it's very much community-centric. So, you hear real life, real stories, real people getting it done and see some clear pathways for yourself, hopefully, and some aha light bulb moments. We're going to hang out with today, Mr. Derek Dombek. Derek's been with us for about a year now, coaching on our team. Yeah. Derek and I met years ago podcasting. We still love podcasting together. He has a great show, Generational Wealth, and of course, this show. And today, I wanted to bring Derek on, though, and have him share with you some of his light bulb moments, some of his aha moments after working with us and our community at the highest level. Derek coaches the President's Club with me personally because of his experience, as well as backing up with the High Six Associates. Those are the 2 highest levels in the company. And so, you are really going to love our chat today. All right, Mr. Derek, let's dive right in here. Welcome back, my friend.

Oh, it's been forever since I've seen you, Chris.

Yeah. Well, as I said in the intro, we've been hanging out now, not just hanging out doing podcasting, but now that you've been with the company. So, I wanted to twist this up a bit. I wrote down, I don't know, we'll see if we get to them, 5 or 6 things because it'd be really cool to get your perspective that nobody listening to this has really heard someone come from the outside into our community and coach at the level you are with me, and then, you know, share thoughts openly because that's what you and I do. So, it'll be good. All right. Yeah.

Well, you've been putting up with me for a year now.

Yeah, I think it's already a year.

So, that's, I think, a good thing.

Yeah. We're off to the right direction here. So, here's the first thing I wrote down, Derek. I actually wrote some things down unlike you and I usually, we just we kind of riffed, but I thought of this last night. I'm like, I want to see what's going on in the community in this brain. So I wrote down, what's the biggest difference between now that you've had a chance, like a year, the students who take off, like let's just say no set timeframe, but let's say in the first 6 to 12 months, right? Just take off. Versus the ones who stay stuck. Like what's the— I know it's a lot of things, but if you had to pinpoint it, what do you see? Like what you need, Derek? And I just want everybody to know, like I told Derek nothing I was going to ask him. So I wanted this to be from the heart.

Yeah, it's easy. The number one thing is the people in the community that are engaged in showing up to as many live events as they can, spending the time. So for example, when I come to Deal Lab, Deal Room, and we're at the office, we're working our asses off all day long, but Some of us go out in the evening for dinner and to keep the conversations going. And that doesn't have to be work, work, work. That's building community. That's building network. Those people are moving faster because they feel more comfortable. They feel more comfortable with themselves, with each other, with us coaches. And those are the ones that I'm seeing that are really, you know, Getting to that next level faster. Yeah.

So I guess we should elaborate a little bit. So we run Deal Lab and Deal Room, as Derek talked, and Deal Lab is every single one of you that are in the community. If you're not in the community, you probably need to look at a couple ways you can get in the community because Deal Lab is free. It's a classroom we built adjacent to our office. Now it's part of our office now. And Derek comes to almost every single one of them. So you're sitting in a room and this is not an ego statement, Derek, and I like your comments on this, but they're sitting in a room with me, you, Zach, Nick, And sometimes another coach. You can't— most people can't afford to do that. We bring you in our office for free. It's the only environment we're able to do that for obvious reasons. And we literally work like Derek will pull you out and do calls.

I'll put—

it's just, it's a workroom. So I don't know if you have any comments on that, Derek, compared to what they can see out there elsewhere in the industry. Like, it just doesn't exist.

Well, so before I came on board with Smart Real Estate Coach, You know, I've been through my own coaching programs that I paid for over my almost 2 and a half decades in this business. I've coached people one-on-one. I've coached people in group settings. I've run national mastermind groups. And what I've seen compared to what we do different is most of the time the coaches have done deals in the past, maybe, But are not currently active in real estate, right? They're kind of like the college professor that's teaching business classes that's never run a business. And to me, hands down, that's what's different, right? All of us coaches are actively doing deals. You and Zach are actively doing deals and Nick. And so we're up on what's happening in the current market. We're from all over the country and, you know, hell, some couple in Canada and other things, right? So we're collaborating, we're seeing what's happening all around in all these different markets. And I feel like that's what really sets us apart from everybody else.

Yeah, no, well said. You mentioned 2 and a half decades. I said 20 years earlier in the intro. Let me ask you this one. Let's just say, act like you weren't at the Smart Real Estate Coach and you're Is there something you believed about the industry or about creative that changed maybe a little bit after all these years, after getting in and coaching Presidents Club and High Six? Like anything that comes to mind? It's a little bit deeper, I know, but I just didn't know if like, I don't know, what comes to mind?

Yeah. What comes to mind is it still blows my mind. How many people out there in this industry that have been in the industry for a long period of time, realtors, a lot of house flippers, landlords that still don't embrace creative. Because it honestly is not hard. It's just solving people's problems. And the first thing to do that is you actually have to know what the people's problem is, what their needs are. And that just comes from conversations. And as you know, I'm very passionate about how you communicate with people beyond the surface level. So when I'm coaching people or if I'm doing my own deals, I'm just having conversations and pulling the needs and the wants, but primarily the needs out of the seller or the buyer or whoever we're talking to, and then solving those needs. That's all that creative is, is solving somebody else's problem.

You know, it doesn't matter if you're brand new to real estate or if you've been doing this for several years or a whole bunch of years. I learned the hard way back during the crash that doing creative deals is much better. It's a much better path in real estate in general than, let's call it, the old way, getting paid once, using banks, signing personally. 3 paydays, getting paid 3 times on a deal. It's better 3 ways, not one. Money now, money over time, and money long term. And I don't care if you're in an up, down, sideways market, it doesn't matter. You can and should operate with the utmost confidence. There's literally nothing I love more than helping people create systems and simple systems and processes to become massively successful with our 3 Payday System, and doing so in literally any market. And doing it geographically, literally anywhere. So if you've been learning and learning and listening and studying and not taking action, I'm telling you, after going through it myself, it's costing you tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of dollars by not taking action on the 3 paydays the way you should be getting paid. Many of the people that were brand new, just like you, that joined our community have fast-tracked their startup. Now, I mean, wouldn't that be ideal?

Yeah.

If you said, okay, should I go fast or slow? Should I take action now or later? It's costing you too much money to wait. Each one of you are at a point in your life, I'm sure, where you want things to be easier. You want things to be better for you and your family. You probably realize that you not only want more, but you deserve more in this life. So, to be able to give your family everything they want, build a legacy for you personally too, and to have time freedom to start enjoying life, frankly, whatever else you're seeking. And for some of you, now's the time, for example, to just focus on security. Maybe it's building a big solid bank account for retirement. We take these things super, super seriously, and it's my life's biggest reward to help you achieve them. I want to give you a free discovery session with our team. It's free. It's 15 or 20 minutes. You have zero to lose and everything to gain. And to understand how you might fit into the 3 Payday System that we've done now in over 80 markets as of this filming, go to smartrealestatecoachpodcast.com. .com/discovery for a free call with our team. smartrealestatecoachpodcast.com/discovery. Because it's not whether or not you can do it or whether or not you fit. You can do it. It's whether or not you'll take action and do what it takes. And we can guide you through that process. smartrealestatecoachpodcast.com/discovery. We'll see you soon. So yeah, and, and I guess if I'm, if I'm tracking with you, you saw a lot of that. You see a lot of that now that you're in the classroom. And maybe before we both were probably like, Aren't these guys doing that? Like, I still am surprised at what you just said. Yeah, I agree. They come into the Deal Lab and we show them how to do their deal and they're like, oh, I didn't even know you could do that. And we eke out, you know, $100 grand, $150 grand. They were going to rent the stupid thing. It's just crazy. Yeah.

Oh, and we see that a lot is people that not even just in our community, I get those calls from people in my local market. They have a lead and they have no idea how to monetize it. They just think it's a dead lead. Because I tell people, bring me your dead leads. Maybe we can do something with them. And when done properly, oftentimes you can pull out 5 figures, even 6 figures from just tweaking the metrics a little bit or how you structure.

Yeah. It's become a norm now at Deal Lab where there's at least 1 to 4 investors in the room who have 10 to, gosh, we've been up as high as 30-plus years in the room and they didn't know how to do it. It's an eye-opener, guys. I would encourage you to get there. Let me give you 2 links to things. We're going to say a lot, Derek and I, in this short 20 minutes. So Derek mentioned that he's passionate about communicating in language. He has an amazing course in our academy. Go to smartrealestatecoach.com/nomeansnotyet. You will be blown away. And I guess you can give a— well, I don't want to give a whole snippet, but give a Give a 30-second snippet on what that is, Derek, because all our coaches, all our high-level people have been through it. So give them a snippet.

Yeah. No Means Not Yet is a system I built after years of just studying all different genres and platforms of negotiations and sales. And I break it down into basically 4 steps. The first step is you have to be in control of the conversation from start to finish, which is called frame control. I believe that you have to talk to people in a way that they can hear you, which means you need to know their personality type along with your own. I believe that you overcome objections before they're voiced ideally. And I teach you how to do that primarily through using storytelling. And the 4th step is actually closing the transaction, meaning asking for the close. Which should be the easiest part if you do everything else right.

Yeah. Leads up to it. Yeah. And the second link I want to give you guys so you can come meet Derek and I in person for free is become an apprentice. It's like dipping your toe in the water and looking behind the green curtain. Go to 3— it's the number 3— 3paydaysapprentice.com/podcast. Okay, back at it. Without naming names, Derek, or you can if you think it's like it's an okay thing, but is there any coaching— I'll call it aha moments Um, that, or surprises that you can think of since you've been working up the higher levels? Like anything, any ahas in, in that, like something that sticks with you? It could be, it doesn't have to be an aha, something that really sticks, stuck with you.

The ahas are things that I've already expected when I came into the community. Um, and I, I hope that I've brought that to the community is Helping people through their personal challenges that are affecting their business. It's something that I've done for years, you know, hosting masterminds, but getting the people to open up about what's going on in their personal life. Because so many people, students, and just people outside the community, right? We're all humans. We all have everyday challenges that happen.

Mm-hmm.

And I love the fact that now the community is opening up not only to the coaches but to each other and supporting each other through challenging things, right? I mean, deaths, divorces, financial trouble, you name it, it happens every day. And so, most recently at the office, we've been doing mini mastermind sessions.

Yeah.

with some of the higher-level students. And, just what comes out of that room in 2 to 3 hours and the changes that that has brought on from the people that were in that room, night and day different.

Yeah, game changers. I hear it weeks after, months after in the community, game changer. If you could— you can't see everyone, you can't talk to everyone, you can't coach everyone. You and I mainly are hanging out with President's Club and help with High 6. If you could, say, talk to every associate for 5 minutes before they started, what's one— now you have some hindsight— what's one thing you'd hit them with? What's one thing you'd leave them with?

Um, I'm passionate about having a vision figured out for your life, right, and building a business that supports that vision. And I see the vast majority of associates that are just like the other 98% of Entrepreneurs, they're, they're trying to work their ass off to someday enjoy the fruits of their labor. And you don't have to do it that way. If you get your vision figured out, you can enjoy life while you're building up your business. And that's another thing that, that I want to continue to bring to the community and help people with because That just comes down to choices, right? And first of all, knowing what that vision is, but then time blocking and starting to make it happen. Yeah.

Because every step you just said in the normal conversation that you said it, if done properly and if adhered to long-term, you can't screw it up. You really can't. And especially if you have a coach or an accountability partner on your shoulder helping you along the way, right? Because challenges happen. Just called normal. Derek, I should mention too, and you can comment on these if you want, but we do, you know, we do weekly rants and what we call the Monday rant. If you're in our community presently, it's on Stripe— sorry, on Stripe, on Slack. And that goes out every Monday morning. It's whatever the coaches or I are thinking about, right? So Derek and I, once we were together in my office and we did one on what he just said. But my point of sharing this, and then you can comment, Derek, on the weekly rants is, We, we, the coaches and I, Derek and I and the coaches, we labor over, we obsess over, okay, what, how can we improve things? Like what's going on this week? And that's what we do in the rant. So these, there's all these things that you, you probably wouldn't know about, right? So I don't know if you have any comments on the rant before I shift gears on the questions.

Well, I think the, the biggest comment on the rant is, is there's always a handful of people that listen to it every week and that comment every week. And those are the people that we see excelling in the community. So, you know, make it a habit, put it on your calendar to listen to the rant and then comment on it, you know, comment what you got out of it. Oftentimes there's a little call to action and those little things make a huge difference.

Um, okay. You said that you see those people who, who watch that are usually the ones, you know, consistently, usually the ones having success. Is there anything else now that we're on that small topic? Is there anything else you're seeing consistently that is like, because that's one, but there might be 2 or 3 others. What's one more that you see that consistently happening and those people are always at the top or they're just consistently doing deals to support their goals?

Anything else? I kind of have to reiterate, Chris, it's the ones that are communicating with each other and with their coaches, But with each other, you know, there's, we've seen some incredible friendships come out of the community with people that live on the opposite sides of the country. And now they're communicating with each other. And that might just be as simple as, um, well, here, they're, they're setting up their own schedule to, um, practice phone calls with each other.

Yeah.

That's one, right? There's, there's other ones that are there just for accountability. And making sure that, did I get all my dials in? Did I— I said to you, I want this before the end of the next quarter or trimester. Just the accountability groups, those little things.

Yeah. And we have, again, for the listeners outside our community, we have nightly accountability with some of the more serious and committed people. It's their choice. We don't make them do it. It's their choice. I might have 8 or 9 myself. that reports to me every single night, that gives them 5 touches, 5 coaching sessions additional to everything else the community offers. So, Derek, let's do this. Let's fast forward, say— well, no, let's not. Let's go back. You've been working with me for a year now. You and I have known each other for maybe 5 total. What's something that certainly the smart listeners, but what's something the associates even in the community might not know or appreciate about what goes on kind of behind the scenes? Because that's something you're privy to now, but most people are not, right?

Well, the biggest thing, and I'll hit it with a personal level, you know, I went through some major challenges in June with the death of my mother and just the way everybody stepped up in the in the staff and the community. Because I had to be away for a little bit and the amount of caring and the amount of family atmosphere that's at Smart Real Estate Coach, second to none. And it wasn't just lip service, it was action. So greatly appreciated. And I know that I get that same feedback from students as well.

That's cool. And you and I know if it's lip service because we're kind of on the blunt side of the spectrum.

No better way to be.

General question, then I want to have you talk to the listeners, whatnot, community. But general question is, after a year of coaching at this level, is there anything that is sort of encouraging about creative in general? Since interacting with us and everyone, right? Just, just this pod— this chapter of your life, anything that's encouraging or that you're looking forward to creative-wise, creative, you know, this niche?

Well, you know, this has been my world for a long time before I, I joined you. Right. And I'm, I'm very passionate about, about another aspect that we don't do a lot in the community. Which is just getting options on property. And I, in my own business, I deal with a lot of people that are in default on, you know, their properties and foreclosure and/or estates or divorce situations. And a lot of times it's not buying the property today, it's getting control of the property using an option. And I know that over time, even if it's just a deal here or deal there, that students stumble across, they can come to me as a resource for that. And I'm happy to provide that. So it's not what we do every day, all day, but just knowing that the resource is there and the ability to do those deals are there. It's a great way to have a future paycheck with a pretty minimal amount of money out of pocket.

And that's a touch, so everybody understands, a touch of why You're so great with the President's Club and 96 because they can throw deals at you and I and not be in a box ever. And that's probably what keeps us both in the game too, I'm guessing.

Yeah. Boxes are boring.

So, I have a couple things for the audience, but I want to ask you, talk to them now, Derek. Like, you've had a year behind the scenes, right? You've had 24 and a half or whatever on your own in this world. Talk to them. Let's just say you and I are on stage. We got, I don't know, 10,000 listeners and you have a couple minutes to say why they should be looking at what we're doing because we're changing the industry. Really? Yeah. It's just going to take time because it's been around since before banking. But any words for them? Any last-minute nuggets or calls to action for them in particular?

Well, people have asked me, depending on the market cycle, Is there a better time to do creative? And the answer is every day, 365, you can do creative deals. And it doesn't matter if you're in a seller's market, a buyer's market, there's always going to be people that need help in a creative manner. And right now, quite frankly, it's just getting better and better and better because there are lots of sellers that are not able to sell their properties. conventionally. And there is no better time to get started. I don't care when you're listening to this. Today is the day to get started. I don't care what the market is, but as of the day that this is released and we're recording this, this is a really great time to learn how to be creative.

Love it. And if you guys, I, you know, we gave Derek's link for the course. That's for every single one of you in real estate. I also gave you the apprentice for those of you who go, you know what, good, I'm done. I heard this enough, I'm in. If instead you're sort of on the fence of, hey, I kind of just want to talk to someone. This is not about selling you something. I want to know, or whoever gets on the phone with you wants to know, just from an advisory session standpoint, where you are now, where you're trying to go. Hey, I heard Derek and Chris, I think I want to do this, but here's my life. We'll help you through that. It's a free advisory call, guys. Okay? It's a no-brainer. Go to smartrealestatecoach.com. That's it. We'll pick each other's brains. We'll figure out if this is a fit for you, at what level, and how aggressive we can get to get after your goals. Derek, appreciate you. I know you got a hard stop too, my friend. I will see you, I'm sure, 18 times before tomorrow, but if not, I'll see you soon here live at Deal Lab. Thanks, buddy.

Absolutely.

All right, guys, listen, if this helped you in any shape, form, or fashion, make sure you subscribe so you don't miss any episodes. And if you're serious about doing deals, The right way, the new way in this market so you can thrive, head over to smartrealestatecoach.com. We look forward to working together. You know, guys, for years I've been at the business now, 34, but for years we had some rent collection things in place, we had bookkeepers in place, we had marketing to go to all these different websites. Now we simply go to prosperity.io. It was built with us and you in mind. You can market your first property if you're brand new. You can scale if you're already in the business, but you can market your properties across 50+ platforms in one click for way less than hiring a pro. You can easily collect rent online, so it's like an escrow service for you. You can track payments, you can get monthly reports so you know how your investments are doing, or if it's your first investment. And no tech headaches, no guesswork, just smart tools to help you grow with confidence. Get started now at prosperity.io because every portfolio All right. Thanks for tuning in to the Smart Real Estate Coach Podcast. If you got value from today's episode, guys, be sure to subscribe so you never miss a future episode. It literally takes one nugget to access some of the things we're doing. And when you're talking the amount of the size, rather, of the paydays, it's an opportunity cost that you can't let go. So don't miss an episode. And for goodness' sake, share it with someone who needs to hear it. If you're ready to find your find next deal, let's get started. All right. your best path for getting started on your real estate investing journey in general, head over to smartrealestatecoach.com/getstarted. We're going to help you take the guesswork out of your next steps. See you in the next episode.