AIPIS 235 - Holding Weasels Accountable with Client Sean

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Thank you for joining us today for part two of the last episode. The concept that the world, I mean, this is just amazing that this exists anywhere in society, okay? I think there are two industries that are abusive with billing. One is contractors and the other is lawyers, okay? And accountants to, you know, anybody that bills by the hour, right? But here's the thing. The concept that you write someone a blank check, like a lawyer, for example, I mean, lawyers, just so many of them are so bad. You know, they did this huge study many years ago, I remember, I think it was on 60 Minutes, I saw it, where they audited all these law firms and they found out that the lawyers were billing more than 24 hours a day. You know, it's just unbelievable, right? So the idea that someone gives you an invoice and decides to put whatever number of hours they want on it is absurd on its face. That whole concept needs to completely disappear from society at every corner of the earth.

I agree.

It's pathetic, okay?

And I built people for my work and if I do copywriting for somebody, I'm not charging, charging you for an.

Hour by the word.

Like, hey, you want, you want a blog post? Great. This is the agreed upon price. You don't care if it takes me 10 minutes or 10 hours. You just want it done.

And you got to figure out how much time it takes you so that you can charge the right amount for your time, okay?

Precisely.

So that's called piecework. And a lot of things are done that way, okay? But fortunately, software is coming to the rescue on a lot of this stuff because the world is getting fed up with this stuff. So I really do think it's getting a lot better. Some of these apps that are now out there and are being used by various repair companies and property managers and so forth, basically use the workers cell phone. They geotag it so they can't cheat, okay? Because the phone knows where you are, okay? And they upload pictures, they've got geotags, they've got time tags, they've got Date tags, and it's getting harder to cheat. Okay, so that's good. It really is. It's an amazing time to be alive. Okay. But the other thing is that now more than any time in history, we all have recourse. And I want to kind of take this to the next step, because in just in the interest of time, two of the recourses that I think we have that aren't used enough is complaint websites like scambook.com for example. There are many of them out there. And the Better Business Bureau is a joke. Okay? I wouldn't recommend that one. A lot of people say, oh, I'll go file a complaint with a Better Business Bureau. They will not do much of anything. Okay? I think. I think they're pretty lame, But I think just the general free speech concept is a pretty powerful thing. It's a pretty powerful lever, okay? So people need to inform the world of bad actors. Now be careful because you can get sued. And I've been sued over this twice. One by the property management company I mentioned earlier, who I think is a very bad actor, and then also by the tax lien company I've talked about on the show, and I'm in litigation with them now. Okay? And you know, I've been sued for this stuff, but at the end of the day, you just got to tell the truth. Don't be malicious. You know, just tell the truth, okay? And that's your defense, okay? And make sure you can prove you're telling the truth. Okay? So that's one thing, the complaint websites, right? But the other one, that is free, okay? It's free. Filing regulatory complaints. Complaints, okay? Then this is when you have a real bad apple. You file a complaint with whatever agency is appropriate in that particular jurisdiction. Might be the Department of Real Estate, the Bureau of Real Estate, the real estate commissioner, the contractor, state license board, whatever it is, it's free. This is what we pay taxes for, folks, to have all these government agencies that oversee these people. And you know what? Most of the time, they really do pay attention. If nothing else, the other party is going to get a letter and at the top it's going to say real estate commissioner or contractors license board. They're going to pay attention to that and try and remedy the problem, okay? Because usually these agencies will just send a letter to the other party and say, fix this. Work it out. And if you don't work it out, we're going to do something about it, okay? So. And they don't want that. They don't want to go there. So these are two things that are pretty easy, you know, these are not difficult things. Anyway. Now you haven't done either of these things, have you?

No, I haven't. I have talked. There was a period where we had some issues with the purchase, like the condition of the homes that we purchased. You know, some things that I felt were not disclosed and whatnot. So I have spoken for free to some local attorneys and whatnot, just to explore and it just hasn't gone anywhere.

Yeah, you know what? That's a mess. The problem with the legal system, and this is why I'm working on that startup freecourt.com. right. The problem with the legal system is first you get screwed by the other party, then you get screwed by your own attorney. That's the way it usually works. Okay? And you know, attorneys, they just don't litigate stuff. If they actually went to litigation, which I understand their side of it, it's really onerous. It's very expensive, very time consuming. I get it. Ok, so, you know, there's a balance to that discussion. But if they actually litigated it and you got your day in court, it might actually work. The problem is they don't. And the whole thing gets splintered into a million half truths. And the other side just says such absurdly untrue things about you. You can't even believe it. It's so. It's so soul crushing. It's just, it's like for example in my case in. In Missouri, in Kansas City, right. For eight years, Sean, I have been asking for a simple thing. The invoices from the actual people that they are billing me for. Right? And a copy of the canceled checks. After eight years, they can't provide that.

Jeez.

Guess why? Because it didn't happen. Okay? The charges are bogus. They provided 1600 pages of responses to my discovery. No canceled check, no invoice from the vendor.

All the attorneys got very wealthy on those pages.

I mean, and well then there's way more pages than that later. But I'm just saying the legal system, it's a mess. It just doesn't work okay. Most of the time, okay? I mean, sometimes it works okay. But the regulatory complaints, I think are the thing to do. You just go to the. And you just Google complaint against a property manager in whatever state. Boom. There will be a little online form. You take 15 minutes, you fill it out, you say what happened? And you don't. It doesn't have to be perfect. Just file it and you know, get some attention. Okay? And then it's free. You know, it's free. It's easy. It's easy, folks. It's easy to do this. So don't let that stop you. Okay? But listen, I don't want to be, you know, I'm getting off on a negative tangent, tangent alert here. It's not all bad. Most of the time it goes well, but there can be some problems. And if you get a real bad actor that is unresponsive or you know, that they're lying, get some justice. That's all I'm trying to say. Thoughts, Sean?

Yeah, I agree. I think I consider myself a pretty positive person. I do. I run a business. I believe in personal development and abundance and all of that stuff. And so I always weigh, is it worth it? And I never considered the option you described. And so the main reason that I hadn't move forward with any type of complaint is, number one, I didn't. I didn't even think about the regulatory thing. And that requires not a lot of heavy lifting at all. But then the other thing is, you know, do I want to continue to invest energy or do I just want to say, okay, I've learned my lesson, it cost me some money and what mistake will I not repeat next time?

Fantastic thing. I'm glad you said that. Okay, so look it, folks, you could take this to the extreme and just get consumed with resentment, and that's not going to work. It's not going to be good for you. Okay. It's going to be bad. But I think there is and hope. You know, hopefully everybody listening to this is a logical, reasonable person and they weigh that out. But remember, part of what we do in life is not for ourselves. It's for other people to prevent this from happening to somebody else. And, you know, I look at it as my obligation as a business person, as, you know, I guess it's a bit of a legacy issue. Right. Not that this is going to go down in history as some big legacy for some massive injustice or anything, but look, if I got a. Someone who's wronged me and I file a complaint against them, you know, they're going to be less likely to take advantage of the next person. Okay. And if there's a few complaints with, you know, ABC regulatory agency and such and such state, and then they get another one, you know, this person's gonna have a problem eventually. Okay?

Yeah.

Because they're keeping a file. So that's all I'm saying.

Fair point. Yeah, yeah. And just so that everybody's clear, like What I was talking about with the property manager here is not the necessarily the issues that were my biggest challenges. This is, I wanted to bring those, you know, just kind of to empower people so they can be in being in charge of their property management process. But prior to this with these properties, we had some really sketchy stuff go on with a previous manager and provider that I know, Jason, you don't do business with anymore for in large part because of that.

But yeah, I think we're talking about Merv, right? We got rid of Merv. Yeah, he's terrible.

You know, it just didn't work out for us. And you know, I know they're still in business and I'm sure that some people have had good experiences with them. I mean, I only know my experience.

Oh, no, some people have, but it was just surprising. And the reason we had to just end that whole relationship is that his attitude is what really bugged me. It was like, it was sort of like treating the client like they were wrong for asking. And I'm, I'm thinking this is ridiculous. You know, it's just an attitude of instant gratification which is the scourge of society. You know, the, the attitude of dealing with everything on a transactional basis rather than long term thinking. Right. So. Yeah, yeah.

Well, I will say the one thing I will say for anybody who's now scared out of their wits to ever buy.

Yeah, I know we just ruined it for you. Sorry.

But so here's the thing, right? So we've continued purchase property beyond that and we've had some wonderful experiences with some other providers because of what we learned from these. I will own that it's my responsibility as a buyer to do a better job, as good of a job as possible, and due diligence, not only on the provider, but on what it is that I'm purchasing and where. And so I learned some valuable lessons that have made me a better investor. I see it as tuition. I never want to lose money on any deal.

Right. But, but the tuition, the tuition is cheap compared to college.

Totally cheap.

Yeah, Yeah. I mean, if, you know, if you're thinking that all the stuff I just said, and you know, I've totally like discouraged you, you know, getting ripped off for 200 bucks here and there. For your, your tuition, if you will, is way cheaper than 80 grand for an overpriced university education, I'll tell you that. Okay.

Or some of the, some of the real estate gurus who will sell you a $40,000 in rental property, another Another complete rip off. But we could talk about that another time.

Well, hey, you know, there's a Trump University. And as much as I've at times supported Trump's decisions, which I haven't always, but I, I do like the new tax plan and I do think Trump will be good for the economy. I will say that. You know, I mean, I think he probably did rip a bunch of people off with that Trump University. That was, that was probably an overpriced scam. Just like a lot of these coaching programs that are $40,000 that these gurus charge. And I mean, yeah, it's, it's just, you know, look at, education is cheap nowadays. You know, real world education, it's out there. The information's accessible. It's not free, but it's pretty cheap. Okay. You know, you can listen to my podcast for free. You're going to pay a little bit of money if you come to some events, but it's not much. Okay. It's not $80,000 or 40,000. It shouldn't be. Okay.

That's the other thing I'll say. Once we did encounter some challenges because we were part of your network and because I have an investment counselor, I always felt like I had somewhere to go for an answer. I always felt like I had somebody with more experience than me that I could lean on. And if Sarah didn't know the answer, she got the answer. That's priceless. And that didn't cost me anything, aside from just purchasing a property that I was going to probably purchase anyway. And to anybody listening, just know that you're going to hit some bumps. But one of the great reasons to purchase inside of a network like this is you have other investors to lean on. You have Jason's team. It doesn't mean that everything always goes perfectly. It just means I didn't feel like I had to figure this out on my own.

Right.

I was able to pick up the phone and get some help. Yeah. And move on to the next one and do a better deal next time.

Yeah, good stuff. Good, Good point. And that's what we're here for. We are your leverage network. We help you leverage that relationship because we, we give these vendors so much volume of business that most of the time, not out of goodwill necessarily. Sometimes it is, but, you know, more often than not, it's just out of capitalism and good business. Right. They're gonna take good care of you because they know there is a large chunk of business here. You know, it's not perfect, but most of the time that's how you get some leverage, and that's how we can really help you, by exerting some leverage over them. And also being a mediator, you know, just kind of helping you understand what's reasonable and what's not. So hopefully we've done that today. Sean, what else would you like people to know? We got to wrap it up here. Just any. Any tips or best practices questions. I didn't ask you, you know, two.

Points to close with. Number one, just. I know a lot of people like me were listening to the podcast for a long period of time and hesitant to get in or whatnot. And I would say just do the best research you can and make your first purchase if that's you, and lean on the network and get in the business. You know, just get in the business. The other thing I would say is you always talk about compared to what. While this income stream is definitely more passive than, say, going out and swinging a hammer, myself and whatnot, just know that you will get out of this business. I believe what you put into it. And if you make the decision to take responsibility and say, I'm. I'm going to advocate for myself. I'm going to make sure that I'm holding people accountable. We're not talking tons and tons of hours here, folks, but if you make that commitment to yourself and to your investments, I think you will do better in the business. I really believe that. Versus, I think a lot of folks that I've seen that maybe lose money or get surprised. It's that set it and forget it approach, and they don't look at their statements, and they don't even know what's going on. And so I implore you, like, get in, learn what you need to learn, and then be a business owner, you.

Know, because it is a business and it is a business. And that's great advice. Treat it like a business, give it the respect of a real business. The time, the knowledge, commitment, etc. And you will do very, very well. I think that's great advice.

Awesome. Yeah, it's. And through all of this, and my mom's got a whole nother host of stories, Jason, that you could talk for a couple of podcasts. I got to get her on the show because my mom's, you know, she's in her late 60s and she's. She comes from that get a job, retire, cash in your 401k. And she and I, we always laugh about it. We're like, you know, like, we're still in the game. We're still having fun with it. And because we've. We followed your principles of having reserves and being more conservative, this. These bumps in the road did not break us.

Yeah, right.

You know, and we're still here, and we're still having fun with it. We're still. We're still buying property. So anybody who's like, oh, my God, I'm not getting in, just know, like, we're still here.

Absolutely. Well, if we ever discouraged anybody, we probably did it pretty good today.

So it's just the real truth of, like, you know, I think a lot of times people don't hear actual, like, real things that can happen and do happen in the business and how to deal with those.

Yeah, yeah. You know, income, property is the most historically proven asset class in the world. So, folks, you're never going to figure it out before you do it. You will never figure it out. You will only figure it out by actually doing it. That's all just the way the world works. You got to jump in and. And figure it out as you go. So, Sean Carroll, thank you so much for sharing your story and also for allowing me to rant a little bit. That was cathartic.

Hey, it's your show, man.

All right.

I'm glad to do it.

All right. Thanks again. We appreciate your business, and we appreciate you sharing your story in the case study.

Absolutely. Talk again soon. Jason, thanks.

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