15 at 5 #19: Narrow Your Focus, Explode Your Results

What is going on? 15 at 5. Fixing my— we're having some audio issues, so we both have our headsets on, you know, so we look like— I'm actually getting a wireless headset, so upgrading a little bit. What's going on, man?

Yeah, nothing much. One second, I need to close this door. Yeah, so everything's good.

Nice. Yeah, so this one we are going to talk about— I almost like, we usually have a subject with these, but I kind of just like talking about what's going on in the business. Like last time, I kind of just brain— or kind of just shot the crap about what was going on. Now I just want to talk about focus of like focusing on one part of the business because we started out super unfocused in the business. Like when we were in college, we had an opportunity, really good opportunity to go in the realtor route, like one of the best opportunities we could have gone if we want to do the realtor route. So we took it for that reason, right? It was like, oh, it's such a good opportunity. How can we not take it? So we kind of went that route and we always had maple birch that we were doing since like sophomore year or something, end of sophomore year. But it got to a point and we always knew this too as a thing. Like we always knew like, oh, build one bridge. Like I clearly remember from BiggerPockets, dude, like Brandon Turner, like OG, like when I first started learning about real estate, he's like, yep, you just got to build one bridge. Can't build multiple bridges. We're like, nah, we can do it. We'll be fine. So we started out realtor investing and then we slowly went away from the realtor route last October, which is a big jump for us, went full-time on this. And then we're still kind of doing multiple things and we still want to do these two things. So now we're kind of doing some multifamily stuff, which is a whole beast in and of itself, right? Because it's not only the acquisition, but it's like once you accumulate them, then you got to do operations and asset management and all that stuff. So it's a whole nother thing. But then eventually, as of late, last few months, even the last probably month and a half, we've really gone all in on the wholesale business, which is kind of like a whole separate business. But we've gone all in on that. So like me doing the acquisitions, focusing on the acquisitions, Isaiah focusing on the dispositions, and just going all in. And even since we decided to kind of go all in, we've been getting a lot of deals since April.. But I even think since recently, uh, we've had a lot of clarity about like kind of the best, the best way to go about things. Um, but it also just kind of feels good to just be all in, you know, you put all your time and effort, energy into it. Um, but, uh, we're just going all in. Isaiah took, um, Tony Montt's Dispositions course, which is pretty great. Um, I think it's like $2,500, right? But, um, it's literally the blueprint for dispo and they're cranking. They are crushing it. They're doing like, I think they're doing over a million a month, right?

Yeah. Yeah. They're doing, yeah, definitely a lot. Uh, yeah, it's good that we're kind of focusing on that. Um, yeah, cause I was initially doing the multifamily, um, side and then I realized like I could be a lot more efficient if I just stuck with one side. So my goal is to build up the dispo side and then go back into the multi side. Uh, I try to do, try to do both, but it's been tough.

Yeah, it is tough. Because then, well, once we have the Dispo Manager, because what does a Dispo Manager do specifically?

The Dispo Manager finds buyers in certain markets. And then once you have a deal under contract, I guess it's up to 5 deals they can handle. They're basically just doing a listing for them.

So managing the buyer. Oh, I see.

Managing it. Yeah, exactly.

So you still have someone overseeing the Dispo Manager, right?

Overseeing the manager. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Cause like for like Tony Montz, kind of how he structures it is he, he is the one that closes, like basically closes the buyer in the end, but the dispo manager is kind of sending it out to the buyers, doing all that, that legwork initially. Yeah.

Yep. That makes sense. Yeah. Then I just bought Eric Cline's sales course and I did Mike's, Mike Gomes' one, which was phenomenal. But now I'm trying to add to that a little bit. Dude, Eric Kline's— this guy's insane though. He literally doesn't even know anything, like doesn't know much about real estate. At least he only been doing wholesaling for a year and he like scaled the business up to like a million, a million a year in assignment fees, which just goes to show that it's really a sales and marketing business and it's not a real estate business because he didn't even know anything about real estate. He just took his— he had 12 years of previous marketing and sales experience and he just brought it into the industry. Tweaked some of the scripts and some of the things and just went full bore and just blew it up. Um, which just goes to show that it is marketing and sales. Um, but I think there's just so much to, um, it takes so much to get like a business off the ground when you don't have all your focus and energy into it. It just, I don't know, it takes much longer. And I'd rather just personally, I'd rather just put all the time and energy in, build it up. And then get out and focus on something else and build it up, you know?

Yeah. And the one thing that stuck with me is like Hormozi, he was saying how like this one guy he was helping, 'cause Alex Hormozi, what he does is like once you reach $3 million, his goal is to like acquire you guys, acquire the company and then build you up. He was saying for this one client that he had, he had like 12 different companies he was working on and they're all like doing okay. And then Alex Hormozi asked him the question of like, hey, if you could just focus on one, like, how much farther do you think you could go? And he said he could like 10x his—

Yeah. Well, yeah, because when he met, I think when he met, um, Leila, he had like 7 or 8 businesses, right? He literally had 7 or 8 businesses, 7 or 8 businesses. And she was like, why? What would happen if you just ditched all these and just focused on one and went all in on one? Because he, I think he was having success in one and he was just like trying to do a bunch of different businesses. But which is a classic entrepreneurial thing to do is like try to do a bunch., but then he just dumped the other ones and just went all in on one and just blew that up. You know what I mean? Um, but, uh, exactly.

And he did that for a client. So he explained that to a client of his, uh, who's been the same exact thing. Uh, but really just shows though, just managing your, your focus rather than your time. I think it's a big thing that we both try to, uh, be aware about.

Yeah. Managing your focus rather than your time. It's definitely huge. And also just realizing how simple the business is. Like, it's so freaking simple. And that's why it's so easy to overcomplicate it. But like, Eric Klein just keeps it so freaking simple. Like rehab estimate, just use a quick rehab estimation guide. Like he's just taking them through the sales process and making offers and they're just locking up deals. But it's really just so simple. Like people asking, what list should I pull? Da da da da da. Like he literally just pulled absentee owner. For a year. Like no filter, no liens, no none of that. And just like went through all those lists and was just pushing leads to the CRM and getting a sales guy on there. But yeah, even then trying to focus because now, right, we like, we just decided this morning we're going to bring on 2 more cold callers. It's a big deal. So because one of the things we realized too is like we just did not have enough marketing. We had 1 cold caller. One cold caller who's calling and texting, and we're trying to do 3 to 5 deals a month. Like, it's just not enough marketing. Like, you need to do way more marketing. And when Eric started out, he was like, this is excessive. But when he started out, he got 10 freaking cold callers. It's like, right, I'm getting into the business because he already had the knowledge of like what he needed to like be successful. But he had 10 cold callers. We're over here with one, like thinking that we're going to do whatever, which we've gotten deals and it's been great. But like, if we're really trying to ramp it up, we need to to get more lead generation for sure. And obviously sales is a huge part because you want to convert on more of the leads, but you do need to have more, more leads coming in.

Yeah. Like going off of that, the big mindset thing I think we have had over the past few months was like spending money where you spend money like you should be 4Xing that. So if you're trying to make a lot, say like, what was, I think it was Forrest, that video with Forrest Blackburn. Yeah, Forrest Blackman. He was like spending like, I don't know, like $400,000 a year, but he was making like $2 million on the backend. So it's just like, it's just direct correlation to how much marketing you spend. Obviously there's like, you should have a good foundation in order to operate effectively, but if you do, then more marketing is kind of where it's at for this business. Yeah.

Like you have to spend a certain amount in marketing to get a certain number. You know what I mean? Like he's spending $400K. Like we can't expect to make like $2 million a year for only spending $5,000. Total for the whole business. Like there's just no, there's no way we would get that many deals to be able to do that. So it's like a mindset thing.

Okay.

Oh, we got to go up to $20K a month or whatever. Like that's pretty high, but we had to have $20K a month, but then you go up to $20K a month and you're making $150K a month or whatever you're making. Right. So like initially the jump up is like scary. Cause you're like, oh crap, like that's a lot of money to spend every month. But then once you start hitting deals and stuff, It just, I don't know, starts converting. But I do, I think a big part of that though is you have to be dialed in though on your systems and stuff. You don't want to go start spending fricking $10K a month on PPC and all these things, right? Pay-per-click, which is like Google Ads and stuff, which are the hottest leads. If you don't have like a sales process, if you can't convert, and if you don't have like the CRM and the lead follow-up managers and the infrastructure to like convert on all that,. But yeah, there's just a lot to figure out, you know. So I think the focus on one thing, and our goal recently has just been to automate this business, get out from it and just be working on it like, I don't know, 5, 10 hours a week, hopefully 5 hours a week, maybe an hour a week. The Ken McElroy, just going for 30 minutes, you know, check on everything. That would be ideal.

Yeah, I thought it was good what you said about you don't want to Like the Michael Jordan versus the owner. What was that analogy that you were saying?

Oh yeah. Um, Brian Daniels said this, he's like, you can be Michael Jordan or you can be the owner of the Bulls, right? In the business. Like, I, we could just sit in these roles. Isaiah could dispo, I could just do lockup deals and we could probably make a little bit more money. I don't know if that's true, but you could maybe make more money by just being in the business and locking up deals. Or you can be the owner of the business.

Yeah.

You got to sacrifice some money, maybe to your closers. You got to give them, obviously a good slice of the pie so they can stay and be incentivized. But then you get more, more freedom, right? So you're the owner of the Bulls versus being Michael Jordan. So I think our vision is the same, and we want to be the owner of the Bulls. We don't want to be Michael Jordan. Like, I'll be Michael Jordan for now and whatever, like, I don't mind it. It's good. Don't want to be Michael Jordan for the next 10 years.

So, um, yeah, yeah, no, in the position that you're in, uh, no, so that makes, uh, That makes sense. But yeah, I think there's a lot of potential though next few months. Pretty excited. Pretty excited that we're narrowing our focus and really, I don't know, just being a master at us being having two different sectors of the business, which is—

And I think Hormozy talks about it all the time too, about how you just need to do more of the basic thing. I feel like that's one of the biggest realizations we've had too. I think key theme here is that we've put all a lot of our time and energy into this one business. So we're like a lot of realizations I feel like are coming up and we're investing in courses and doing all the things just for this business. Um, but just doing more of the basic things I think is the biggest kind of mindset shift for me at least, right? It's not about like some secret sales process or obviously that helps, but it's really just about doing more. Like I said, more marketing and just getting more leads in, making more offers, right? We're making a few offers a week. Like we need to be making multiple offers a day. But this, this is a, this is the conclusion I came to last week. It was like, okay, everyone says it's about offers. We gotta be making multiple offers a day, but I'm just like, we don't even have, we don't have enough leads in the system to make a couple offers a day. So where's the issue? And I was like, okay, well, the issue is we just don't have enough leads coming in. So then it goes back to marketing and you trace all that stuff. And then you realize, okay, we just need more marketing to get more leads in so we can have more motivated people to make offers on. Cause it is a numbers game. It's a numbers game, but You say you have a saying about that, how it's like it is about numbers, but it's also about skill, right? Like how effectively you do it.

Yeah, I think Jeremy Lemire, I think that's his name, said something like that. But yeah, it's like it's kind of a balance. It is a numbers game because eventually you cast a huge wide net, like you're gonna get some, but you can, I guess, really, uh, I don't know, convert those, those, those numbers if you have some skills. So there's a, it's a balance.

Yeah.

But if you could just, if you're insane, insane skill and then you're hitting a bunch of people, you're just unlimited, unlimited opportunity right there. Yeah. So I think we're doing both though, right? You're getting better. We're both getting better. And then we're also doing more marketing, more, more quantity. So I think we're killing, kind of hitting, uh, two birds with one stone.

Yeah, exactly. I agree. But yeah, focus, focus is key. And it's tough to focus too sometimes because this stuff is so simple and basic sometimes. Like it's not, it's exciting 'cause I'm always like looking for the deal, like that's exciting. But it's just, it can be tedious, right? You're just doing the same things over and over, but you just wanna do it at scale. But sometimes you can kinda work yourself into different things and think, oh, maybe if I do it this way, it'll be better. If I do it this way, it'll be better because you're getting bored in your mind when in reality you just need to sit in the seat and fricking do the thing every single day. Sit there and just make the calls every day, get the talk time in, get the offers in and just, just go up from there. But right now I think a big mindset thing too is like, this is just a season for us. You know what I mean? Like I said, being Michael Jordan is a season. So, because sales is a tough spot, like it's just a grinder position. Like you just have to fricking bang the phones, make a ton of calls, make a ton of offers, get fricking cussed at all day long and just wake up with a smile on your face. That's sales.. So definitely a tough, tough space. You can make a lot of money, but I think realizing that's a season, you can get out of it eventually, be the owner of the bulls is the good thing.

That's good, dude. And I think you ended with simple scales, fancy fails, you know?

It's facts. Simple scale, dude. So good. That's why, dude, Eric's business is so simple. That's why. Cause simple scales, fancy fails. He doesn't even do anything but cash offers. He just does. I think at that point he was only doing cash offers because he was just like keeping it simple. Right. And that's scalable too. Right. Cause if you want to hire, I'm just talking about the acquisition side, but if you want to hire closers and all these people, like it's so much easier to teach them how to make cash offers than it is to try to teach them how to do creative and all these things. Right. That's another thing that we, I feel like we should talk about too, is like focusing on cash. I think we should do both, but I don't know. I was thinking like maybe the closers focus on cash and then acquisition, the sales manager, maybe they're like more versed in creative, you know, and then they can come in when cash doesn't work with the closer. But it's interesting. I think Mike runs his business like that. He tells all of his, I think he tells his acquisition managers like, just don't even pitch creative. Like if it's a creative, just send it to me as, and he's like the sales manager.

Um, but yeah, anyways, we should do something like that. We don't want to reinvent the wheel. So just grabbing a few things from other people.

Yeah, we're big, we're big ripoff people. We just like to rip. We just like to, no, we're not a ripoff. We're, we're cutting. We're a big cut and paste people, you know, not trying to do anything. It's like we take these courses and it's like, this is how you do it. Like, all right, cool. Just do it this way.

Well, it works.

Exactly, exactly. But all right, that's that. 15 at 5, 1620 at 5. But, um, that's good. Uh, next week maybe we'll talk about mindset. Um, Jeff, what's up, brother? Jeff is a real estate agent in, um, Maine. He's the man. Um, yeah, let us know when you get some multis up there. We'd love to, uh, Love to take a look at those. But cool. Yeah, I think next week we can maybe do some mindset or something, but we'll see. Maybe if someone comments what they want us to talk about, we'll talk about that. But till then, we'll just keep shooting from the cuff.

Nice. Are you just swinging that bat right now?

Yeah, this is my new bat. It's my sales bat, you know.

It's pretty funny.

Got my name on it. I got this when I was like, I think a kid. Thing's so heavy. But yeah, also, if anyone— kind of a sketchy area of Manchester, so if anyone comes in here, I can lay down the law if I need to. But yeah, that's that. All right, everyone have a good week.

All right, peace.