The Million-Dollar Deal That Changed Everything

I want to walk you through my first million dollar deal. It's not as complicated as you think. It was literally 30 years ago this year and it changed my life forever. Because up until that point I had never done anything even close that. And here's what I'm going to have you look for. And if you want to post it in the chat below when you see it, I'd love for you to take the lessons learned in this one deal because it changed my life forever. It changed the trajectory of my life. It changed the fact that you could play bigger. I realized it was the same energy to put in $10,000 deals as it was to create a deal that was a million dollar deal. And I realized that most people are afraid to play bigger. They're afraid to go after the big ones. Maybe after this you won't. So I want to set the frame before I go the whiteboard and share this with you. I was in my mid-20s at the time. I worked in a collision shop. I drove a tow truck at night. I was getting my feet wet in real estate and I was building my own house and things like that. So I was on my way up, but thinking differently, thinking outside the box, having the desire so strong for more out of my life. I was willing to take uncomfortable actions. I was willing to do things other people weren't willing to do. I had to do the hard part first so life could be easier. Sometimes people think the prize is at the beginning of the journey. It's at the end of the journey. You have to make the mistakes. You have to be bold. But let's go over the whiteboard. I just drew this out of memory, but it'll make a lot of sense to you. And again, you need to look for the lessons on where you could implement this in your life. Where could you innovate, where when everybody says that's a problem, if you could solve big problems, you get big checks. Maybe that's the second headline that you should hear is not only my first million dollar deal, but solve bigger problems. When everybody's moving away from that, that's the thing you should be running towards. So this is real estate. And picture this is a rural road in a little town of 7,000 people. And this is a small little road, right? With some houses on it. These fancy things here are houses. This is a big block of land. Figure a vacant piece of property, about 25 acres. But I'm going to back up and tell you the whole story. I'm in my early 20s. I live in A little apartment. But the fact of the matter is I bought an old house. I made 10 apartments in the house and I was living in one of them. So the apart apartments that were in. And I took me years to get done one at a time. Those apartments paid for my house. I lived there for free and I made money every month. So finally I was going to build my own house. Nobody in my family had ever built a house. I was looking for real estate everywhere and I found this weird shaped property. Picture this without houses on it. And it was a little wet in here. This is the road. This was a piece of property, about seven acres. It was wet in here and most people didn't buy, they walked by because it looked swampy. I realized that there was a stream going through the property like this and the culvert was backed up. I went in. I'm like, if you just take the dirt out of the culvert, the water will go in, it won't be swampy. I made a deal, I got it at an incredible price. Later on I just did clean out the culvert and the property dried up. But here's the crazy part. I didn't have the money to buy the property, even though it wasn't that expensive. But what I did is I subdivided it into lots of like this. And I sold a couple of these in advance. I found out the going rate of what a lot, a buildable one acre lot in that town should sell for. I gave a 20% discount for people who would give me the money up front under contract. I took the money of these two people and I bought the property. I subdivided it and this was my house. I lived right here and I built and sold these houses and I started to get some good momentum in my life. This is a cul de sac. I haven't given you anything special yet, but we're getting there. So as I'm living here, I realized this property is for sale. It's 20 something acres. There's nothing on it but an old grape vineyard. And if I made this much money here, why wouldn't I put a drive a road across here and subdivide this into lots, right? And now I can make lots of money. Well, the fact of the matter is I didn't have the money to buy this property. So lesson number one, don't take no for an answer. The gentleman who owned this property, I'll give you the numbers. It was a long time ago, 30 years ago, $180,000 for the property with credit cards and Credit card cash advances came up with $90,000. I didn't have the other half. I went to him and said, hey, I know you have a lot of people wanting this property. No one's ever offered you the full $180,000. I'll give you the full $180,000, but can I give you 90,000 now and 90,000 in two years? And he agreed. His name was Mark Miller. He's a sweet older man. He was in his late 80s. He became a dear friend of mine. So I had the nerve to ask. He saw my desire, and I said, you can leave a lien on the property until I pay you so you have money up front. And he said yes. And I'm so grateful for him. He's no longer with us, but he said yes. So now I'm super excited. But I don't really have any more money to subdivide and finish paying for the property. So I found another partner that put in some cash, put in some money to help me, because now I have to go through the process of getting maps and subdivisions and going to the town and going through a process to turn a piece of property like this into multiple lots, right? 20 something, 27 acres, probably 15 to 18 buildable lots. And thinking the math of that was exciting. So I'm going through the process, and there's a little thing called not in my backyard. In little towns, it's okay if I buy a house, but I don't want anybody building behind me, right? Well, here's what happened. I put a road in like this, and I put a road in here with a cul de sac here. And I start working on this because this is where all the houses are going to go, right? And as I'm going to the town board, the planning board, to get permits, back then, maybe it's changed now. Thirty years ago, you had to go to the planning board meeting and meet with a board of seven or nine people, and you'd have to show them the maps, and I'd have an architect and an engineer, and where's the water going to run off and how high is the road and will the septic systems fit in and all the things that you have to do. I learned a lot going through this. It was way bigger than I thought, way more expensive. I'm hustling cars and tow trucks and borrowing money to pay for this subdivision, and I'm literally using every dollar I have. My family tells me I'm crazy. Everybody I know is like, you're putting Every dollar into that. I knew it. I felt it. And I knew if I did what my family did, I'd get the same thing they have, and they had nothing. And I'm not trying to be rude, but my father worried about money his whole life. My mother worried about money her whole life. They were choked by it. They were starved by it. And I didn't want that life. So I was pushing, maybe pushing harder, maybe. Sometimes you got to remember what it's like to be a naive kid that you haven't been told, know enough yet. I was in my, you know, early mid-20s. Kept pushing, kept going back, trying to make friends with the people in the town. And there was just a group that wanted this to stop. So finally, we're getting towards the final approvals, and I go to a town board meeting, and they call it the public hearing. Everybody shows up. People in these houses. This house, this house, this house, all the neighbors. This guy, I won't say his name for now, but this guy, his mother and my mother, it's a small town. His mother and my mother were best friends in high school. I grew up at this kid's house. I thought for sure Wade, his name's Wade came out Wade. I thought for sure Wade was going to show up and support me. He knew I built beautiful houses over here. Wade showed up with the rest of them, and you would think that I murdered their puppies. I mean, they went off on, who am I to develop? And I'm a capitalist. I'm going to ruin the beautiful aesthetics. I walk my dog on here. I ride my four wheeler on here. This guy shot his bow and arrow on here. They just lambasted me. I left that day saying, wow, the loud minority can be pretty fierce. Because no one else showed up. Just those people. The rest of the town knew I was going to do something great. I didn't know if I could get this through. So I hope you've gotten some lessons so far, but they're about to get way better. And how I made $ million one is, I don't like confrontation. I don't like feeling uncomfortable around people. It was very uncomfortable for me to be in this town with all people I knew, all talking like I was a puppy murderer. I mean it. That's what it felt like. Even though I don't like confrontation, even though I don't like being uncomfortable. You know what I did the next day? I walked down the hill, I walked up the street. I walked to Wade's front yard. I knocked on his door he was surprised as heck. He was embarrassed. And I said, hey, no big deal. Wade, listen, I really need to know what the heck is going on. Why are you so against this? You bought a house here. Don't you think other people should have the right to buy a house? He's like, yeah, but, you know, I'm like, what is the problem? Tell me, Wade. And therein lies the gift of $1 million. Because I had the nerve to ask him. I had the nerve to go to the door. I had. You know, I was probably desperate because every dime I had was in there. I borrowed money on credit cards. I borrowed money from a friend. I was desperate. Sometimes your greatest gift comes from desperation. And you know what Wade told me? He said, I don't want this driveway so close to my backyard, and if I could have a little cushion, then I'd be okay. So I said, so if I sold you a piece of this property, would you be okay? I said, absolutely. I'm like, well, why didn't you ask? So all I did was let me move this a little bit. All I did was, because I had the nerve to ask, is, move the driveway up here like this. And guess what? I did. Wade's property was here. I sold him this piece. And I was like, wow, that was pretty cool, right? I sold him, actually, I sold him all this. So then he got. Here's sorry. He got this cushion from the backyard, and he got all this. He gave me a good chunk of money, too, and he was happy. He said, thank you, and it clicked. If I didn't face the uncomfortable, if I didn't keep pushing forward, if I wasn't desperate, I never would discover this. So guess what I did? I went and saw this gentleman right here. I was living here. I went and saw this gentleman. I said, hey, I made a deal with Wade. I know you showed up at the town. No big deal. But he asked for a cushion. Is that something you would like? He's like, oh, I was hoping that I ride bikes. I do things. I'd love that. So I sold a cushion to this guy right here. So then he owned this. This went away, and he owned this. So why stop there? I went over to this neighbor. There was an old barn on the property that he used to have a fort in for his kids and stuff. He bought this piece, and this guy above bought this piece. Guess what I made hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of thousands of dollars. I paid everybody back. I was already profitable, and I had all the neighbors happy so I could finish the subdivision. And put houses all along here like this on the property. And when I was getting ready to finish the subdivision, I had a gentleman, Joel from New York City come up and offer me $750,000 for this property. And I sold it to him. Between all of it, $1.3 million came in and my life changed forever. I went and bought more real estate. I ended up teaching real estate education. This is one of the things I taught as my first course was called think a little different. This was thinking a little different. This transformed my life and I hope you got some lessons. If you're still watching, put in the chat the lesson you got. Maybe it's to be brave, to be bold, to fight like you have no other opportunity. To burn the boats, to go all in, to not take no for an answer, to face uncomfortable situations, to take uncomfortable action, to be more bold than anybody you know, to not listen anybody. I had people trying to talk me out of this deal forever. And if that didn't happen, maybe I wouldn't be here today. Because it was a catalyst to give me the stamina, the energy to go into the self education industry, to start multiple companies, to write. I had a New York Times best selling book on real estate, sold a million copies. I wrote millionaire success Habits about success, a million plus copies. Went on to own and co found mastermind.com with my partner Tony Robbins. I hope I would have done all of it, but if it didn't start with being brave and being bold, jumping out of the plane, growing wings on the way down, it never would have happen.