Kris Krohn | Mindset, Markets, and Millions

The common strategy everyone uses. At age 65, the average balance is $254,000. If you give that to your financial planner, they're going to annuitize that around 3%. You're going to get around $600 a month for the rest of your life. Now you can't retire on Social Security plus 600amonth. So that means that 40 year strategy is not good. Meanwhile, the average equity in the average single family home in our country right now is $327,000. What that means is that a 40 a 40 year intentional retirement strategy, your single family home beats it. Which is why at age 65, I think the most common thought that a retiree is having is if I bought five more homes over the course of the last 40 years, I'd probably worth a couple million dollars and all of a sudden I'd be in a good situation instead of a bad situation.

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People think about wealth creation.

We dive deep into his strategic approach to real estate investing. How he finds high growth markets, leverages other people's money, and builds powerful cultures within his organization. Chris shares why mindset is the real key to scaling any business, and how daily visualization aligned with decisive action can create exponential outcomes. Whether you're scaling your company, pivoting towards passive income, or looking for a mindset edge, this conversation will open up a whole new playbook for what's possible. Let's dive in.

My name is Dr. Fleet Mall, your co host for this session. And I'm really thrilled to be here today with Kris Krohn. Welcome.

I appreciate it. I'm excited to be here and hopefully I can be useful and share some beautiful knowledge with everybody.

Let's start off with a little bit of how you got into this entrepreneurship vein and becoming an expert real estate investor. Where did you start and how did you get to there? And I know it's difficult to encapsulate that in a couple minutes, but we like to let people know who you are and so they can identify with you and their journey.

And yeah, so I, for me, it all started in college. I actually had that German immigrant father that said you can, you need a college degree to go anywhere in life. And while I was there, I also was putting myself through college with this telemarketing job. And in that first year at that job, while in college, I must have talked to a couple thousand people that all were now in their 50s and 60s. They had built their 401ks, their IRAs, they had been financially responsible, they tried to pay off their houses. And most of them, with maybe 30 years down the road since college, with a decade left to go, they were falling heavily short financially. And that's when I started realizing that, that I'm just getting trapped in someone else's maze. And so I decided to do something fleet, very, very different. And I found a couple of mentors that had each made, you know, millions, tens of millions of dollars in the game of real estate. I asked them to mentor me. One of them turned me down. Two of them said yes. And while I was in college, I learned how to acquire Real estate with no money, no credit. And by the time I graduated, I had 25 homes. They were paying me a modest, you know, passive income of $12,000 a month. And it meant that graduating college, I didn't actually need to get a job. And so I just kept doing more of that and then it became 100 homes and it became a thousand homes and then it became 6,500 homes and basically learned how to scale single family investment and get it to consistently produce an ROI 75 times higher than a 401k over a 20 year span. So we basically averaged 60% a year on our money by investing in real estate as opposed to the chaos of the stock market. And I kind of built, you know, my social media, millions of followers. Now I just help people basically in that niche learn how to master single family investing to basically create alternatives for retirement.

Wow. Well, you were very fortunate to have that. And you know, telemarketing often sounds like a terrible job. I think you can learn a lot in telemarketing. But nonetheless, you had that great insight because of the audience you were reaching out to through telemarketing and seeing the limitations of that approach to life and success. You're really fortunate on your part that you had two mentors that said yes. So, you know, you've built two businesses. One, you built your own real estate empire, real estate portfolio, and then you started teaching others to do it. So in some ways, two different businesses you scaled there and on. Today our focus is scaling and you know, there's launching a business and there's beginning to grow your business. But scaling really takes us into an entirely new game where we can meet a lot of new challenges, whether it's growing our team or seeing profits squeezed or just the complexity. You know, we have to become a different person to run a business at that level than somebody who's running it at a smaller scale. So I wonder, what did you see as some of the challenges in scaling your business as it became more complex? Both, maybe in both stages. The one of building your real estate portfolio to such a high level, but then turning around and building the business of teaching others to do so.

Yeah. So I discovered in the game of real estate that if I could make my project homogeneous, that it would allow me to basically create a duplicatable system. And so I decided to drill down hard on a niche. I don't actually believe that single family investing is smart. When I say it, I mean that if you buy a three bedroom, two bathroom minimum new home built one of the top five markets of the United States, and you purchase it 30% below the median. If you can meet all that criteria and hold that home for five to seven years, that's where I would essentially squeeze out this average 60% annual ROI. That really kicks trash out of 401ks, IRAs, savings or other investments. And so, because I was able to turn it into a system, if you were to evaluate my last couple thousand deals, you'd say, well, Chris, they all look identical. They all look the same. There's strength in that. The box that my buy box is so narrow, and what that does is that gives me scale. And so the last $2 billion of real estate transactions, all the product looks the same, acts the same, behaves the same, and as a result, so is the roi. That's different than what most people do in real estate. They're looking for this cute, you know, Airbnb. And then we're going to do this development project, then we're going to do this multifamily. And you never really develop mastery because you're not specializing, because you're doing a little bit of everything. And what I really learned from mentors is that's how to fail. So what I did is I said, well, let's pick a niche where we can make the most money for the least time, effort, risk, and then we're going to exploit it, and then we're going to run hard with it. Well, that's systems thinking. Not very different. When it really came into my educational business of showing people, I don't actually like to consider myself a real estate guru or an educator, because those that can't do, teach. For me, it's the opposite. I buy real estate every single day with a team of 200 experts. What I do different is I leverage my social media and go out there and say, hey, if you've always wanted to make money in real estate, but you're not confident that you're going to put in your 10,000 Malcolm Gladwell hours, then partner with me and I'll just do it for you. And that, again, is another system. So instead of me teaching you, saying, well, I hope you figured out and I hope you'll implement it the way I'm showing you, I just say, we're going to dummy proof this. If you partner with the right person, then everything becomes a known in this algorithm of ones and zeros, which means it's a return to predictability. I don't think you can scale a company ultimately unless you have total predictability.

Oh, fascinating. So just so I understand your business. Small mid. So you're actually buying single family homes.

Yes.

And you're holding them for a period of time. Now in the meantime, I assume you're renting them out. So you have a, you have a whole property management, rental agency business, everything. Yeah.

And so if you look at the United States, it's made above 324 major cities, but only five of them. The population's booming. We've got an inversion on, you know, the supply demand scale. The home are still deeply affordable for income in the area. There's 10 macroeconomics I dial in before I can select a market. So one of my markets, for example, is Orlando, Florida, where In the next five years they're expecting a 17% population growth. And I buy in a specific area, brand new builds with the highest appreciation that we have in the United States. With a half a million people leaving California and 600,000 leaving New York last year, the majority of those are flooding into Florida. What we're doing is we're capitalizing on that major supply demand curve issue.

And you buy within a certain price range.

Yeah, everything is in a really narrow box. My average house is purchased between 200 and $250,000.

Wow. These are in those markets. Those are almost starter homes.

Yeah. So if you take a look at all real estate, condos won't appreciate, or a townhome won't appreciate, or a two bedroom, one bath won't appreciate as much as a starter home. Meanwhile, starter homes also outperform luxury or any mid grade. So yeah, it's a very specific niche.

I know there was a big crash in the luxury home market in Florida, especially back in 2008.

Yeah, sure was.

So that seems to make a lot of sense. So you mentioned 200 experts. Do you have 200 employees or you have a network of experts or as you built this, I'm sure you must have a lot of people finding the homes you're going to buy and you know, there must be a big operation to make sure you're getting that home that fits that narrow niche.

Well, this actually comes back to the conversation of scale. Some are employees, some are 1099, some are realtors, some are third parties. I used to run everything in house and I found that scale was easier when I could actually tap into existing companies and forego making money on those fees, but have efficiency and accountability. That was harder to produce internally.

Uhhuh. Quite interesting. So you have agents that are actually doing the purchases for you then? Yep.

Yeah. So basically these 200 experts range from portfolio managers internally that are, you know, interfacing with my partners that find me online that want to produce these 60% returns. I mean, the reality is if I can help someone buy one rent, 20 years later, you can turn that into a multimillion dollar portfolio. They're not getting that in pensions or 401k. So I'm really an alternative, but it's a done for you option. So I need portfolio managers. And then of course there's realtors and loan officers and title agents. I've got to have people that can, you know, fix up the homes, do the title work, et cetera.

What were some of the challenges you met along the way? I mean, I assume as you begin to unfold this strategy and so forth, there must have been some bumps in the road. And also just personally in terms of not burning out the sustainability that it's taken for you to take this and get you are today. Could you talk a little bit about that journey?

Well, at first my real estate was very local. I live in Utah, so I was building all my real estate portfolio in Utah until I Learned after the 2008 crash that there's a lot of other great markets. I went into one market that was a nightmare. It was a blue state and I was licking my wound on a million dollars that I lost. But then I hit it hard with the right markets. Phoenix and Vegas are two of the markets that I bought thousands of homes in.

Those were ones you were at?

Yeah. And you know, within five years, I made my investors over $100 million. And so we made mistakes and did things well. And what we did is we ultimately learned about macroeconomics and data as opposed to hunches and local markets. You know, when they say in real estate there's an adage location. Well, if you're looking locally, you're looking at the cities around you, but if you're looking nationwide, you have a chance to really poach a handful of markets where you're going to outperform everyone else.

Well, it sounds like in your business model and that you're also providing other investors. There's a lot of leverage because you picked the best niche with the most leverage of the investment. And also, you know, the idea of recurring revenue can be very important to a business. And often when we say recurring revenue, people think about subscription programs and membership programs and so forth. But any system that you know, if you do that system every day, is going to produce X amount of revenue is recurring revenue. So I wonder if you can Talk about that in terms of how you built your business and being able to count on that recurring revenue stream.

Yeah, part of my reoccurring revenue just comes from the way that I buy real estate. I've got partners that will set up an llc, put money down, qualify with the bank. That's kind of an old school methodology that increase you maximum leverage, so maximum roi. But a lot of my partners are looking for convenience and they don't want to apply their credit or they have reasons why they don't want to go through the that criteria. So I put together real estate funds. I currently have more than a dozen different real estate funds. Partners will put their money in, will buy real estate that way, use the same strategy, except we go in and buy cash and then I use DSCR loans to pull the money out. Well, these funds have management fees, and those management fees are paid out every single month they're reoccurring. And so in my reoccurring model, I get millions of views every week on my social media. People, you know, every week will find me, they'll decide to become partners with me. They'll invest in my funds. Those funds are ever expanding. You know, in the next year, we're going to take on another $100 million of real estate. Well, when you add your fees to that, you know, which we disclose to all of our partners, that produces our reoccurring revenue. And, you know, if I keep doing this for the next five years, the reoccurring revenue is over a million dollars a month. So there's a model. And I think that is an important part of saying, well, your company has expenses. You don't want to start the first of every month starting over, saying we got to generate new revenue all over again. If you have some of it reoccurring, obviously that's going to lighten your load and make things a lot easier.

Yeah, absolutely. So again, kind of digging into your business model here. So you're buying starter homes, you're renting them out and holding them for a period of time, and it's a pretty leveraged investment. So do these cash flow, is that part of your revenue stream on the rental or you just want to break even with them and you make definitely.

Do not want to break even. Like that would be a really, really. That'd be a crass model for sure. No, part of the reoccurring revenue is that there's absolutely. I don't think we pay a ton of attention to it in the beginning because, you know, if I Help a basic investor buy one, two or three homes. In five years, we want to double it. So let's say we start with two. In five years we want four. And in five more years we want eight. And five more years we want, you know, 16. And over 20 years, someone can build a portfolio of 15 to 30 homes. Well, the cash flow on 15 to 30 homes is actually pretty exciting. It's like, well, If I'm making 400 or 500 a home and I've got 20 homes, you know, now I have a residual income that allows me to have more of the retirement that I want.

And what percent of your rental income is then dedicated to property management and the rental agency, whoever's doing the job of keeping them rented and managing the property.

You know, it's pretty typical for property managers to charge 10%, but because they view me as one client with 2,000 partners, what I do is I get everything in bulk. So when I open up a new area, I negotiate with that manager to do it at 6% instead of 10%. And anytime I can drive those fees down, that's a 40% fee reduction. That's pretty significant. By doing that, that also boosts my roi because there's a lot of people that look at my report over my longitudinal study over the last decade and they see the, on the last 2130 rentals that we're producing 60.65% a year on our money. They want to know, how do you do that? And part of that is you got to get your fees down. And part of that is the game of real estate in bulk will always create that driving force.

So, you know, the housing market can be a bit volatile. There's some probably long term trends and then there's some crashes and so forth. And then there's the rental market as well. So you're exposed to both markets in terms of the pricing on homes and then rental prices. Now, I don't know how closely real estate prices and rental prices track. I'm sure they parallel, but there might be some way they differentiate, but I'm curious about that, of how the rental market impacts your business and then how changes in the housing market impact your business.

Yeah, two things on that. You know, the first one is that the rental market will usually be about 18 months delayed behind the housing market. So let's say that the housing market comes, you know, crashes or comes down or we have a change in supply and demand demand, the rental market will come in tow. And so that meant that real estate for the last couple Years has had some crushed cash flows under this administration. Donald Trump is saying to make real estate affordable again, he wants to get rates back down to 3%. If he achieves that, that's going to create a, you know, as rental rates are rising and people refinance, you're not going to see cash flows of 5, 6, 7, $800 on a property. So they do move and you have to play a long game to play that one well. But as far as the market crashing, the stock market crashes every seven years. Real estate is usually every 15 years. But it's very predictable and it's not all at once. It's really about supply and demand. The 2008 crash happened because we had too much real estate and not enough buyers, because a home is only worth what someone's willing to pay. But in this economy that we're in historically at this point, we never recovered from 08. We're currently missing 4.5 million single family homes. If we have every builder on the streets building at maximum capacity, it's in nine years it's possible to break even, which is when the next crash could be. So single family is a space. There's a reason why billions of dollars from hedge funds are pouring into the purchasing of single family homes is because for the next decade it's going to actually be a very safe market.

So, you know, in stock market and in buying, owning securities and so forth, equities and so forth, generally the conservative, even not so conservative, is buy and hold and asset allocation and so forth. Being a day trader and trying to actively beat the market day to day is very risky. You make it your full time job, better be pretty smart. But it sounds like in some ways you're doing that with real estate, but in a longer game by choosing the right markets to be in at the right time and having that be data driven.

Yeah, it is true. You know, the stock market, when you take a look at its ebb and flow, real estate moves much more predictably. It moves very different. I can drill down to a zip code and I can know what our supply demand looks like in that zip code. So I know when it's time to pull out after X number of times. And so we're basically going to sit in that market and we're going to ride that market and then when that market has basically saturated, we're going to pull out of it. And that's part of how we create predictability in that game. It's actually a very simple economic engine to be able to predict and 2008 I owned a lot of real estate, over a hundred homes. I didn't lose a single one of them because part of the strategy is about insulation. When we talk about how do you scale? Well, it means that when the stock market goes down, the real estate market actually increases. For example, 30 year averages on 401ks and IRAs sit between 4 and 5%. Most people don't know that with inflation at 3 or 4%, you're pretty close to a break. Even real estate, you get the game of leverage. Leverage means the bank will put up 80% of the money. So you're going to whatever the appreciation is. If I go to Florida where my appreciation is 10%, then I can multiply it by five and now I'm making 50%. That's how I'm targeting these 60% numbers on average over the last decade is we're able to actually ride that market, predict that market. And because it moves so slow, it's very easy to move in and out of it. And then we're also 30% below the median. You know, the national median right now is around 430 grand. My average purchase price is, you know, probably around that 230, $250,000 price point. That insulation means that if the market were to drop, a million dollar house might get cut in half, a $500,000 house might get cut down 35%. But a $250,000 house is going to experience a little bump while rents go up and your cash flow increases.

Wow. So in terms of leverage, you know, in the 2008 crash, a lot of people got hurt really bad because they had homes that were over leveraged. And yes, loan market was giving all these no money down loans and all that crazy stuff. So I mean, do you put standard 20% down and use 80% of the bank's money or because of your size, you try to get better deals with the banks and get away.

I don't want a better deal than that. If they said you can only put 10% down or 5%, that actually breaks my model. Yeah. So there's rules that we abide by that actually create some safety. You know, it's really weird. Warren Buffett in his book Snowball talks about how he became so wealthy. And one of the most important principles in the book he talks about is margin of error. And he also calls it a safety margin. So for example, if I could buy a piece of real estate for 50% off, that's a lot of safety compared to buying it at market because the market could drop 50% before I'm at risk for losing my first dollar. Well, very similarly in the game of real estate, because I have a 60% average annual ROI, a lot has to go wrong for me to even cut that number in half. So the goal is to make it as profitable as possible in the safest zone possible. Because what that ends up doing is it gives us safety.

I love that. Make it as profitable as possible in the safest zone possible. That sounds like a formula for success for sure. So you also mentioned, I think at the outset that you're buying these homes at this kind of starter home price range and you're getting them more or less around 30. Your target is fine homes at 30% under market value, was that correct?

Not under market value. 30% below the median.

Below the median, yeah.

So for predictability, if we're going to get at 30% under market, those exist. You can't really do them in bulk. And every home, you lose systematization because now these homes have to go through individual appraisal, repair, etc. As opposed to me going into a market and buying 500 homes and I can order, you know, carpet from China, buy the roll and have everything consistent, or that word homogenous again, with the way that we do colors and repairs and everything that lends itself to the systems theory that we leverage in the game.

And you mentioned before you're buying newer.

Homes mostly, I would say 70% of my inventory is five years old or less, most of them being completely brand new.

Right. So you're not doing a lot of renovation.

Nope.

But in certain markets, you know, like one of the markets that I'm in is Memphis. That's one of my top five. I buy in the area of what's called Blue Oval, where Ford has built a $12 billion plant which produced 11,000 new jobs and they're missing about already 17,000 single family homes in that submarket. What that means is that average home that I buy for $200,000 in the next five years is probably going to be going for $350,000, you know, according to our data and information. And so that's an example of drilling down into a market, you know, that has huge potential because of a specific economic problem that it's facing.

Wow. Wow.

Yeah.

And operating at the scale you do with the team you have, you're able to take that data driven approach and really find those sweet spots. That's amazing. So you mentioned Warren Beffert before and his strategy for wealth building. Let's Talk about wealth strategy for a moment because even for the individual, and of course, you know, you started your career because you're doing all this telemarketing. You're connecting with these people who've done all the right things and are still struggling as they're approaching retirement. You didn't want to do that. But in general, for a lot of people, the only way to wealth wealth for the middle class in our country be to own a home. And over time it appreciates. And if you bought it at the right time, you write the mark. Maybe you do. All right, Right. So real estate has long been considered a wealth building strategy, even at the lower level. Right. So how do you see that? And I'm thinking both in terms of people who maybe really want to get into the real estate game in the way you are, or people who want to invest with somebody like you, but also thinking of entrepreneurs who are in other industries or, you know, completely different businesses. But you know, it's good to diversify your income sources. Maybe they want to do the real estate thing. On the side is the wealth building strategy. They're doing well in their business. They want to start siphoning off some of that profit and some of their contributions into something else. And so as a wealth building strategy, could you talk about real estate?

Yeah. So 401k, the common strategy everyone uses. At age 65, the average balance is $254,000. If you give that to your financial planner, they're going to annuitize that around 3%. You're going to get around $600 a month for the rest of your life. Now you can't retire on Social Security plus 600amonth. So that means that 40 year strategy is not good. Meanwhile, the average equity in the average single family home in our country right now is $327,000. What that means is that a 40 year intentional retirement strategy, your single family home beats it. It like it's crazy. Which is why at age 65, I think the most common thought that a retiree is having is if I had just bought a few more homes, if I'd bought five more homes over the course of the last 40 years, I'd probably be worth a couple million dollars. And all of a sudden I'd be in a good situation instead of a bad situation. Well, Stanley Thomas wrote a book, the Millionaire Next Door, and he evaluated what created the most millionaires in this country. And, and hands down, the one thing that these what I'll call accidental millionaires did because they Weren't accidentally millionaires through investing in Tesla and 401ks in the stock market is they made one choice different than everybody else in their life. As it came time to grow and graduate to a bigger house or downsize, they chose not to sell the house and put gains towards the new one. They just kept it as a rental. And so the average person over 40 years will probably move or live in 3, 4, 5 homes. If someone simply made the decision, I'm just going to keep every one of them and turn it into a rental. By age 65, you're going to be worth a couple million dollars. And so that's just one little thing. Now, I take that to an extreme and say, now let's do it intentionally, now let's do it on purpose. For example, if the average American has $327,000 of equity in their home, they probably can get a home equity line of credit for free. For 200 grand, I could show them how to buy two or three homes in these markets. And if they just bought one and had it growing at 60%, that one home would turn into $6 million for them 20 years from now. So maybe not very impressive for someone who's 60 years old, but if someone's listening, that is 20, 30 or 40, it's like, I got news for you. If you have a home with equity in it, don't pay off your house, not until you have a passive income that meets your financial needs. And so this goes very against the grain of maybe like Dave Ramsey, no debt, get out of debt. As an entrepreneur, it's the opposite. It's actually create as much good debt as possible to make money for you, and then your good debts can pay for all your stuff, cash, pay off that house eventually.

Well, in terms of the idea of using other people's money or using the bank's money, that seems like a pretty solid approach to using the bank's money. It's a lower risk approach anyway to using the bank's money. Yeah, absolutely. So just to distinguish your approach here a bit and not to cast dispersion on other models necessarily, but you know, there's the whole thing of flipping, the whole world of flipping, and that's another business that's not your model. And then there's the whole notion of being able to buy real estate with no money down and move on to the next thing and no money out of pocket. These ideas, how do you view all that?

Well, first of all, I love all of it, you know, because I do have two companies One is I just buy real estate for people and build their portfolios and we're partners. And then I have some of my, you know, some of my other folks that are coming into me and saying, hey, Chris, I don't have equity in a home. I don't have a 401k, I don't have iron, I don't have wealth to transfer into a portfolio. I'm kind of starting like you did, Chris, with nothing. And I say, well, then you need a coach and a mentor just like I had in the beginning that knows how to do these no money down strategies. After all, $3,300 is all it took for me to create a $1.6 million net worth as a college grad. And so there are people that will get in touch with my company and they'll say, hey, either I do have money and I would like for you to help me invest it. Let's partner up and create these great returns. And others will say, I don't got the dough, but, but will you teach me how to flip and wholesale or lease option or do these other strategies? That's how I built all of my wealth in the beginning. So, for example, you know, one of my coaches on my team, he's done over 700, no money down deals. So my team are, we're experts, highly qualified, really good at what we do. And so for those that just say, hey, I'm starting behind on the resource game, it's like, great, then we can coach you and show you how to do these deals too.

So I know you have, you know, kind of coaching and you have do it for you. And you have different and you have your funds and your real estate funds. You know, for the entrepreneur who's pretty focused on building his or her business, right? And that takes a lot of bandwidth. You know, how much can you get into something like what you're doing? I mean, how much time do you have to dedicate to kind of really master that game? Because, you know, being a kind of a dilettante and dabbling and stuff can be a failure. Right?

Yeah. Well, here's my rule of thumb for people. I always try to help people to delineate whether they should become a real estate investor that is active or a passive, passive real estate investor. And my rule of thumb is simple. Malcolm Gladwell says you need 10,000 hours to master something. If you're a do it yourselfer, you better be signing up for the Malcolm Gladwell 10,000 hours, which means that it's really a job. It's not passive and it's not on the side. When I talk to my partners and I ask them, it's like, well, which are you? Those that are like, do it for me. What they do is I say, well, good, then partner with someone like me. I'll do 100% of the work and then we'll split the profits equally. And that's actually a model fleet that I use in every area of my life. So I own companies in all sorts of industries. I own franchises, restaurants, all sorts of different types of companies. You know, mineral and gold and oil. And when I look at all these companies and my tech plays, I never allowed myself to venture into a market I didn't understand without partnering with somebody. So my rule of thumb is simple. If you want 100% of the gains, if you want the whole grape, then you need to pay your 10,000 Malcolm Gladwell hours. If you are going into an area you don't have expertise in, then instead go for a slice of watermelon. And by the way, a slice of watermelon is usually a lot bigger than a grape. The watermelon is an analogy for finding an expert that doesn't just have 10,000 hours, has a hundred thousand. Me and my team, I've got a hundred thousand Malcolm Gladwell hours in the game of single family. And so it's really simple. If you're not going to pay the price for the expertise, then partner with an expert. If you're willing to pay the price for expertise, then get a great mentor and learn how to do it yourself.

Wow, that is incredibly sound advice. So I'm just soaking this in myself, both for our audience and personally. So there are many wealth teachers that talk about one way or another, we have like this internal blueprint or can be like a thermostat we inherited from our family, from our culture. And, you know, we kind of have permission or we deserve to earn up to here right now, we shouldn't earn less than this heater. And we're in there, right? And if we start earnings less, you know, the heater comes on the fire under our butt, we get busy, we get back into that zone. But if we start making too much, we get uncomfortable. We somehow don't have the mindset, cultural permission.

There's a barometer that's been set.

Yeah, yeah, it's been set. And we have that blueprint in us. And, you know, one of the real strategies for change is not to struggle, but go in and change the blueprint. So I wonder, in your experience, was there A pathway to you being able to imagine that you could kind of create the wealth for yourself that you have created and now creating for others that you know from your upbringing and what it took to imagine yourself and give yourself permission or what, just have the vision to be able to create wealth in this way.

Two things on that. The first one is there's two types of books someone should always be reading. The first one is how to go deeper in the trade that you're mastering. Because we all have a Malcolm Gladwell something that we're mastering. And you should read what other thought leaders say about that on your trade journey. Personal development books, anything that deals with psychology or expansion of self, you will always get a huge ROI in every aspect of your life by reading these books. I never stop reading those books now. Aside from that. When I was young and getting started out, I made one crucial decision that really affected me for the rest of my life. When I was a telemarketer. That first year I made $18,000 was more money than I had ever made before Fleet. But as a college kid, it wasn't enough to keep my head above water either. And so what I ended up doing was I said, I want to manifest a goal for this next year. This telemarketing job had a commission component, there was a sales component. I sucked at it. And I said, you know, if I'm going to be here, I might as well get good at this. And since the average American at the time makes $44,000 a year and I only made 18,000 last year, I'm going to choose to believe that I can double my income. I believe I'm at least average. I don't. I'm just young and dumb. I don't really know, but I believe I'm at least average. Well, I spent that entire year no different than Olympian that meditates and practices what they want in their head. Stanford did a study and they said that half the Stanford team actually practiced mentally their free throw shots. The other half actually did it. And who had the greatest actual performance increase at the end of the season? It was those who had practiced mentally where they could practice perfect. Well, every day I practiced, I doubled my income. I doubled my income. I doubled my income. I doubled my income. At the end of the year, I made $50,000 dollars. I was in a job in a situation where it was possible and I did it. And because I had 365 days of believing that I could, that when it came to the next year, I said, well, I should just do that again because I'm so habituated. In other words, we don't really get what we believe we can get. We get what we believe in, we practice we can get. And so I practiced flawlessly for another 365 days. And I made 100 grand the next year, and the year after, I made a quarter million, the year after I made a half a million. And what I learned is that I get what I believe in practice. And so that's actually become a huge part of my personal financial and overall psychology, which is. And the late Wayne Dyer taught that you can create something in your mind so real, like a placebo, where if you can allow yourself to feel it energetically and emotionally, it's no less real in the mind than reality. In other words, your dream state and your actual state, the mind can't tell the difference. And the subconscious mind is ultimately what's determining what we perceive in the real world. Which is why everyone needs to become aware of their limiting beliefs and stop saying things that counteract what they want and every day have mental practice time. I do it in meditation, where I practice what I want. Everything I've never had, I practice it here, for example, since January 15, 2009, I have practiced that I'm a billionaire. I'm in actuality not a billionaire yet, but I have a path and I know how I'm going to get there. And I think. I'm pretty sure when it's going to happen, but I've been practicing it since 2009, which means I've been at it for 16 years. But here, inside, internally, when I become a billionaire, it won't shock me because I've been practicing it for such a long time.

Well, that's incredibly sage advice. You know, you're kind of referencing the power of the mind there and what some people reference as manifesting or manifestation. And the problem with some of the manifestation world is they get the belief, they get the mind part, but they forget about the practice part. And that you have to practice and practice and practice. And that's what actually changes our neural architects, changes our energy, and changes our relationship to the world. It takes that practice.

Well, and not just practice, just taking action. Because the reason why we go internally is to develop a frequency. When I see myself with the object of my desire, when I see myself feeling it no less real than when it's in the real world, then I'm generating a frequency. That frequency will allow me to meet people, have conversations, but I gotta take action. It's like, wow, that's really weird. I met this mastermind meeting, felt inspired to talk to this person. No, I got nervous and I didn't. Well, you defied the frequency that you'd been practicing. We generate that frequency so that we can go find the resonating, matching frequency. And that's what, in hindsight, will show us the breadcrumbs to get what we want.

Yeah, absolutely. And generally, I mean, if we're really practicing, probably the actions are going to follow, but you're absolutely right. I mean, just visualizing again and again, there's a Rolls Royce is going to show up in your driveway. It's not going to happen if you're not taking the actions to create the wealth which you can buy a Rolls Royce. Absolutely. So what about. You know, I think a lot of entrepreneurs, even if they're early to market with a new idea or they're trying to decide what market to be in, or, you know, they worry a lot about the competition. And I get the sense when I was listening to you, I mean, I know there's a lot of big real estate people out there and teachers of the real estate game and so forth, but it sounds like you've narrowed in on an approach where I doubt if you're that worried about. I could be wrong. Maybe you have competitors in the same niche you are, but it sounds to me like you found your way into a niche where you don't have a lot of competition.

Yeah, actually there's a secret there, which is that if you will niche down to be in a place that no one else is. And by the way, when you look at my niche, it's like scaling single family. In my industry, everyone says crazy, can't be done, impossible. And that was the clue that if I could solve the impossible, that I could build something meaningful there. So I actually selected it knowing that everyone said it couldn't be done. And the reality is, if you can solve the impossible that no one else is willing to, then you get to reap a disproportionate amount of reward for doing that. So that was by design.

Wow. So you mentioned before that you have employees, you have used contractors, you're also working with agencies of various kinds and so forth. But I assume within your company you do have some employees. So I'm curious about the culture and how important that is to you, the kind of company you have and the company you lead and your people and the culture you're creating and even the people you partner with. I'm not talking about your investors necessarily but the agencies and so forth that you partner with, whether there's an alignment of culture there and how that has to do with scaling, creating culture that's scalable, as well as the systems and the repeatable processes that are scalable.

If you don't have a designed culture, the people you hire will create it for you. And anytime you put a mix of good humans together, you're going to get a mixed culture. I think it was important to have a good culture a decade ago. Today it's especially with bringing together Gen Z and millennials. They expect it and they require it. And so my company has a culture committee. My CEO leads up exactly who we are, who we're not, what the culture is. I think part of that culture is really defining precisely who we are. And then we stick to it. And then you let go of anyone that actually doesn't meet that culture. And the stronger the culture, the harder it is to be a part of it, the more powerful that culture will be. And so culture is actually a really important dynamic inside our company. When cult culture has been weak, drama's been high, and drama is the most expensive invisible align item on the balance sheet. And so culture is what you do to combat drama.

Yeah. My early consulting career for almost two decades was all about helping companies eliminate the drama inside their organizations and created no drama.

If you don't know who you are and you don't know what you stand for, then you get drama as a byproduct, as a tax, for saying you haven't invested in your culture.

Culture, Absolutely. So what were your strategies and your steps as you've built your business and scaled to actually create that culture? I mean, you embodied something yourself and you learned that you followed the breadcrumbs of other success and you got a sense of what a high performing cult, no drama, highly accountable high performing culture would be. How did you then build that into your team and your company?

First of all, there's great companies out there. No rules the Story of Netflix Cynics. Got a great book out there on the Infinite Game. There's fantastic books to read that will help you witness the cultures of others. And I think it's important to be inspired by other great cultures before you can sit down and then design your culture. The culture shouldn't be too complicated. You know, I think our culture has eight tenants, which is probably just even a couple too many. But in our it doesn't matter if you have one unless you actually teach it and reward it. So in our company, in our weekly meetings, Our monthly meetings and our quarterly meetings. Culture is always brought in to what we do. And then the other part of culture is if you don't enforce it, then everyone understands that it's fake, it's not real, it's lip service. And then no one will treat it as real. And so that's how I'd go about finding one, building one, and getting inspired by other ones. And then whatever you do, sit down, design it, and then enforce it, whatever it is. That also means hardest decisions I've ever had to make regarding Culture Fleet is that sometimes you hire someone that's really competent, but they don't fit the culture. If they're really good at what they do, fire them. Competency cannot make up for a non culture fit. And so I expect competency. But that's not how you get hired on. In fact, even if you read a, you know, when we do our job postings, we always also post the culture so that before your first meeting, they've already been exposed to it where they can already pre select in or out on whether or not they even agree with what the company believes in. But that's been some of the most important decisions that we've made is was firing really competent people because they weren't a cultural fit. Because there will always be damaging costs to the company when you do that.

Yeah. In fact, in some ways, the most toxic employees are highly competent. Highly.

Every time culture. And that's why we wrestle. We're like, how could I let this person go? They're so dang good at what they do. And I'm like, yeah, but if they're not a cultural fit, then you've made your choice and you will be rewarded with drama.

Yeah. At the other end of the scale, you have the cultural fit, the person everybody likes, but they just don't get the job.

If you got the person that is like, like the mascot for culture and has no competency, you also mishired and Tony Hsieh says it best, which is, you know, hire slow fire fast.

Right? Yeah. Great. So much there. So were there any steps along the way when you were small? I assume you kind of start off by yourself. Obviously you were a solopreneur doing real estate investing, and then you probably started to build a bit of a team around you of some kind. Was there any time that you got the potential for scale or the specter of scale? As you saw your business expanding, you saw the possibilities, that fear set in that who am I to run this big company or how am I going to, you know, like, was there any stages of fear you had to break through?

I think I did one thing opposite than most. The reason why a lot of entrepreneurs don't scale is because they have trust issues. They really have this mindset that they're the best person for every job in their company. And when you believe that when you hire people, you end up hiring people down that you can control. And you think you're smart because you're saving money and it looks good on the P and L, but what you're getting are people that are not free thinkers, when the reality is there's people out there that can do the job better than you. And so I had to break free that mindset because in the beginning, I had this belief that if you want something done right, you have to do it yourself. And my dad taught me that as a German carpenter running his own company. And I remember just being a teenager hanging out with my dad. And I remember I would also answer the phones in the morning and all sorts of people wanted to work with my dad. And I remember when I said, dad, we should scale, we should. I didn't use those words. I was 16. But I said, yeah, we should expand the business, we should grow it. We should hire another team and have two teams going at the same time. And my dad said, I'll never forget it. He said, if you want something done right, you do it yourself. I did it his way until I was 25 years old. Until one day the revelation hit me. I'm going crazy. I'm doing everything. I'm doing too much. I'm a full time student and I've got a full time job and I have a full time business and I never see my brand new wife. And I was going crazy. And I said, maybe dad was wrong. Wrong. And I remember when I wrote this down, if you want something done right, don't do it yourself. And that became my motto for everything in business and scale. And a couple summers ago, I was hanging out with a billionaire friend of mine, sold his company for 1.6 billion. And I remember asking him, David, like, what's your job now in your company? He says, if I do it right, I don't have one. And what he was exemplifying in the highest order was, if you want something done right, right. Find the very best people. So Richard Branson says the same thing. Surround yourself with the very best people and get out of your way. Get out of their way. Right?

Yeah. I think there's two aspects of that. One is hiring the very. Exactly that hire the very best people and get out of their way and surround yourself with people who are smarter than you. Because there's a lot of things about your business that there's a lot of people that can do a lot better than we can. But you know, especially early on in business, a lot of entrepreneurs were perfectionists and at least in terms of some aspect of our product or our business. But I love what Dan Martel says. Even in that aspect, if you got somebody can do it 80% as good as you, that's be going to enough to keep scaling, move forward. Right?

It is true. And also that's part of just actually duplicatable scale. Henry Ford was an early mentor of mine, Justin Books, who taught me, you know, invented this, you know, the conveyor belt for the Model T. The dude didn't know how to fabricate a car, didn't understand combustible engine, but he had a vision. And what he did is he surrounded himself with the smartest people. And that became really inspiring to me. Never be threatened by someone who's better than you at a job. In fact, be the leader that finds those people and empowers those people.

I picked up on something you said a few minutes ago. You mentioned you're CEO, so you're not the CEO in your company anymore, which means you've done really good job of replacing yourself. So what is your role now? I don't know whether you're chairman of the board. I'm sure you're not just a passive investor in your own company. But what is your. You have a CEO, you have a whole team, they probably have a CEO and so forth. So what is your role goal now?

Yeah, there's a book, my favorite business book, that I would recommend to every entrepreneur called the Close. Eli Goldenrod has this great narrative where he talks about what happens when you're an operator in the business versus an owner who can work on the business. In the business, your brain and energy just goes towards optimization and expansion. But when you get out of the game and you can work on the business, you can make the big moves that will give you double growth, that will allow you to really make the smartest moves. And so I always tell the entrepreneur like what you're striving for is to get to the point where you're an owner, not an operator. And I was at a Tony Robbins event six years ago. It was the first intervention he did. I'd paid a hundred thousand dollars to go to this financial event and he comes up to me and for an hour just berates me standing in front of a room of entrepreneurs. But by the time it was done, I had tears run down my face. I was passionately excited about what, like understanding what my problem was. And when it was all over, I called up my director of marketing and said, on Monday, you're going to give your welcome speech as the brand new CEO. I'm stepping down, I'm out. I'm empowering you. I want you to do this. That year, he grew my company 400%. I just had to get out of the way. So my best idea is when you ask what my role is today. Yes. I sit on my monthly board meeting and then I am the social media talent for my company, which I do. You know, that's one day a week. And outside of that, I'm now just looking at strategic relationships and opportunities, but I don't do anything inside the business.

Wow, Fabulous. That's quite, quite a success story there. And everything that. I mean, this has just been so, so illuminating, Chris. So we're coming near the end of our time, Chris, but I wanted to give you an opportunity. I think you have a really cool free opt in gift for our audience so they can learn more about your work and so forth. So could you talk about that? Yeah.

I believe that the most valuable gift I could give someone is a fresh perspective from my point of view of what they could do to financially better their life. And I call it a game plan and I offer it for free. And if you go to livegameplan.com it's going to ask you a handful of questions. And when you submit that me or a member of my team will actually reach out to you and say, hey, based on financially where you're at, whether you're a business owner or not, whether you're W2, we're going to look at it from a real estate perspective, we're going to look at it from a business perspective. And if I can do something that can massively create financial elevation and meteoric rise in your life, we're going to tell you what that is so you can walk away empowered with some great steps of, hey, what would I do if I wanted to, to take all of the knowledge and wisdom that Chris has gained over the years, leverage his system and make a whole lot more money passively without creating distraction. You just go to livegameplan.com fill out that form, and then me and the team will be in touch with you and we'll share with you your options that's great.

And you all can see the link right down below where we're speaking here. And so write it down or click on it now and go there. Check that out. Absolutely. Thank you so much, Chris. This has been absolutely fabulous.

You're welcome week.

Thank you for joining me on the Radical Responsibility podcast. Remember, real change happens when we commit to our growth, face our challenges with compassion, and stay open to transformation. If you found this episode helpful, I encourage you to subscribe and help us spread the message of healing and personal empowerment. Stay grounded, stay present and stay true to you. Take care.

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