0349 | Samson Jagoras

Hey, this is savior Sinjagoris and you can check me out@thegrowthvue.com and you're listening to EA interviews.

EA interviews, episode 349, inspiration, transformation, success stories and the imperfect action round. Seven days a week. Join Mario Ficcini for today's expert authority effect interview. Personal branding, real estate, investing, growing your business, growing your business experts exponentially. These are all things we're going to address because I have none other than Samson Jagoris on today's episode. And I am excited to bring them up right after we thank our sponsor. Every business needs a book, including yours. And that's why I'm launching my new book to help you regardless of where you think your current writing abilities are. Visit eapublishingmethodbook.com today to learn the seven steps to publish and promote your nonfiction, lead and profit generating business book in eight weeks. Once again, that's EA publishingmethodbook.com Here he is, ladies and gentlemen, Samson Jagoris Sampson. How are you feeling today, man?

I'm feeling good. We were just talking about how incredibly hot it is across the United States. So sitting in my nice, cool studio right now, feeling wonderful.

Well, it's a great day to have you here and I'm excited for what you're going to share because you're clearly successful. And I gotta be honest, there's so much I have on your one sheet here. I'm like, should I ask you about your background, your business? You helped grow the company from.

35 employees to 600, from 7 million to over 100 million. And then you walked away from it. Why real estate? Why personal branding? Why is all of this important? So I apologize for not having that clear and concise, but there's like 58 things I want to ask you. So where do you want to start?

Well, how about we start about my background, how I grew up and how I got to where I'm at today.

Just great. Where did you start and what is your background? Because you alluded to something right when I was hitting the go button. But.

Tell us about Samson. Where did it start?

So I was born and raised Los Angeles, California. Kind of moved all over. If you know anything about Los Angeles, it's huge. So I was born and raised in Culver City, which back in the day was the hood. It wasn't as nice as it is today. It's been pretty gentrified by the movie studios, but grew up in a blue collar household. You know, my dad was a contractor and a woodworker and a craftsman and had a lot of really successful clients in the, you know, LA market. And for what we lacked in money, you know, we made up for in hard work. And, you know, my dad taught me a lot about hard work and work ethic at a young age. When I was about three years old, I got my first skateboard. And I think that really set the tone for a lot of just how I operate in my life. You know, I was pretty dang good skateboarder and raised on a lot of skateboarding and punk rock music. And, you know, when you're trying to land a trick and you do it about 100 times and don't execute and fall and repeat over and over and over again, you learn how to be pretty relentless. So definitely commend my dad for just instilling that me in a at a very young age. And I played a lot of sports, soccer, played baseball, skated. And then something clicked. When I was about 14 years old, I decided I wanted to play football. Growing up, I didn't even like football. I don't know why, but something clicked my freshman year. So I showed up to my first football practice, not really knowing much about the game. And the coaches are like, you look like a linebacker. And I'm like, sweet. I don't have any idea what that is, but. But do I get to hit people? Because that sounds awesome. So. So we line up when we do an angle tackle drill and coach says, strap up. And when this guy runs down with the ball, you're just going to hit him as hard as you possibly can. So I run downhill and I just completely unlaced this kid. And when I jumped up, the coaches were just going nuts. And I was like, man, I love this. I got to do this for as long as I possibly can. So that. That shifted all my goals, all my focus. You know, while most high school kids are worried about, you know, doing the cool guy thing and partying and doing all that stuff, I got good grades. I trained twice a day, I had a running coach, I studied film. And I was just focused on getting to college and playing. I wanted to play D1 ball. And I knew that was the only way that I could really get my college paid for. Went on, was a great high school football player. And when I got to my senior year, I didn't have any offers. And so I reached out to one of the alumni from the high school and he said, man, you're good enough to play. And he called his coach at a Division 2 school called Western New Mexico. And about two weeks later I was on a recruiting trip. Thirty days later I had a scholarship offer. And a few months later I was on my way to a little tiny town in the middle of southern New Mexico called Silver City and went on to be a true freshman linebacker. Was getting my school paid for, but something just didn't feel right. When I was heading into my sophomore season, I knew that I wanted to go bigger, so I was going to walk away from my scholarship. So I called my running coach, who reached out to University of Utah and the University of Colorado. They both gave me the plug to walk on. I just had to have a really good sophomore season. Trained my butt off all summer. I was in probably the best shape of my life. In the middle of a summer training session on a breakaway drill, I planted off my left leg and pop tore my hamstring 3 inch by 2 inch tear in the middle of the muscle belly. And saw my entire career flash before my eyes. I probably could have done the expected thing, which is, you know, take the red shirt and take a year off and nobody would have really blamed me for it. But that just wasn't enough for me. Man. I wanted to play D1, so I cut like £20 and I swam in a pool all summer and did everything I could to just show up to camp in the best shape I possibly could. I showed up, I had like a 75% healed hamstring and went on to have the absolute best season of my entire college career. Little note there is, you're never going to feel 100% in anything that you do. It doesn't mean you can't go and do like amazing and incredible things. And after that season, I walked into my coach's office and I told him, you know, thanks for the opportunity, but I was going to leave and go take a walk on at the University of Colorado. And he probably could have said anything to me at that point and probably convinced me to stay. But he made the fatal mistake of saying, I don't think you're ever going to play. So I stood up and I shook his hand and I walked out and, you know, drove to the University of Colorado, never came back.

How did that make you feel in that moment?

Oh, my gosh, I've always had a chip on my shoulder. I think it's just that blue collar work ethic of, you know, he's got something to prove. You know, my dad, he's been living on his own since he's about 13 years old. So he spent a lot of his Life just figuring it out and really having to care for himself. So it was just kind of instilled this like competitive drive to just best yourself and keep pushing and doing more. So when people tell me I can't do something, that's like the best motivation you can give me? Uh, you know, it's just nothing better than proving somebody, proving, proving somebody else wrong, right? Yeah, exactly. And so, yeah, so I showed up to University of Colorado and I still had to try out. There were seven guys that showed up to my tryout. Three of us made the team and by the end of that spring, the other two had quit and I was the only one that ended up making it. Thankfully a year later got put back on scholarship and was starting fullback for the University of Colorado.

Yeah, thanks. I went on to get a degree in human physiology. I thought I wanted to be an orthopedic surgeon, but playing football full time and trying to get the human sciences degree, I probably wasn't the best student. It's probably more distracted than I should have been. Didn't quite have the grades that I wanted to get into med school. And I don't think I was really ready to, to go back to school, which is actually good because I discovered business and had an opportunity to kind of shift gears and go from science into the financial world. So I graduated on a Friday with a degree in human physiology and walked into a futures and commodities brokerage on a Monday. And about three months later I was a newly crowned Series 3 broker. And September 29, 2008, the Dow Jones fell 777 points, which set off the economic housing crisis. So I just got literally just tossed into the deep end as it relates to investing and.

Sales and marketing and entrepreneurship, you know, because when you're a broker, you're effectively running your own business. And so while most people were running out of that industry, I was running in and built a million dollar book of business. And we were doing a lot of managed money and trading programs and trading systems, making damn good money for a 24 year old guy. But when you're sleeping with a laptop next to your bed in order to watch the coffee market open at 2am, you start to question a lot of things.

What didn't you like about that? I mean, I envisioned the laptop next to the bed. And I know now there's people that probably have a laptop, phone and tablet or one or the above, but what did you not like about that? And especially from such a young age.

You know, it starts to just eat into every aspect of Your life, you're just always on, you don't have any ability to unplug.

I've never, you know, I think a good part of building your own business or investing is so you can get back your time. And I had a very lucrative job and that job required me to wake up at 2 and 1 and 2 in the morning.

Six figures, right?

Yeah. And so.

Yeah, I was going to walk away and I was going to go be a financial planner. And then I was presented with an opportunity to join a fast growing marketing and technology company called Mad Wire. And I came on and basically ran strategy and business development for nine years where I built the sales and training and recruiting platforms and then, you know, eventually hired north of 400 people, helped scale that thing up to over to over 100 million. And then, you know, I like to build things, you know, when I was an intrapreneur within a company where I could grow departments and scale up, incredibly exciting to me. But you kind of reach a point when you're that big where you have to take maybe more of a less business development role and a little part of your soul just kind of dies inside nothing. No hard feelings toward the company. I'm still an equity holder in that business and incredibly thankful for that opportunity.

But you just knew you didn't want to do it the rest of your life.

Yeah, I never really planned on being there for nine years.

Yeah, because that's a, that's nearly a decade of your life and especially at a young age. But the same token, there's so many people that are striving to get to the six figure mark and you're just like, even now I'm, I'm watching and listening to you and you're just like, yet grew it to, you know, 400 plus people, $100 million. Like no big deal. Like nonchalant, like yeah, I'll take another latte or yeah, I'll take some dessert or something. Like no big deal. Yeah, because everyone on the planet's done that like a hundred times over.

Well, man, we had an incredible team. And I think if I wasn't, I didn't have the ability to be a part of such a great team. And we were growing so much and really got to flex that entrepreneurial muscle within the organization. I probably would have jumped ship a long time ago.

Because you just knew you wanted something more though, that the entrepreneurial spirit came.

Out of you and autonomy, time, freedom. I look at business and entrepreneurship a lot like art, you know, it's like writing music or Painting a picture. You know, most people don't think of it that way, but there's just this song inside of you that you need to sing and you got to go out and sing it. And so for me, you know, I had this vision to one, you know, build a multifamily real estate portfolio and help other people get access to passive investments and real estate, but also leverage all that skill set that I had over 10, 13 years of business development, investing and scaling companies to help other businesses grow. So, you know, the other part of my business now is I'm a strategic commercial real estate and business advisor. So I consult people on how to either build a commercial real estate portfolio, how to add commercial real estate into their business, how to expand their company by leveraging some key programs and debt in order to acquire real estate for their business.

Why real estate?

Why real estate?

Why not another industry? I love that you left your job, you knew you wanted to do your own thing. That's awesome. I can totally relate to that.

But why real estate?

Well, it's a pretty bread and butter investment asset class. I love all the benefits that come along with it. It's just purely a balance sheet play. You're sitting there and literally you're buying a P and L statement and looking at how you can optimize it and make it better.

It's one of the most necessary assets that's never going to be disrupted. Like it's never going to be ubered out of existence. You know, it's one of the most human, basic human needs, right? Maslow's higher good needs food, shelter and water. And so on top of that, you're just providing something really valuable to people. So it feels pretty good to, you know, buy a community and make it awesome and make a great place to live, safe, clean place to live for your tenants and then at the simultaneously, you know, give a safe and consistent return to your investors. And so I can get down with that. You know, Blue ocean technology and being in marketing is great, but man, running a 600 person company is, it can be brain damage, you know, like that's a lot of people. As the company grew in my final days at the tech company, you spend a lot more time managing people and personalities than you do actually getting to like be in the trenches and make, make real impact like you used to. So the other part about having a real estate investment firm is it's real lean. You know, you can manage 500 million in assets with 10 people.

So there's a lot that's attractive about that. And then you leverage a lot of third party partners. And there's so much meat on the bone when you're buying one of these apartment complexes that you don't have to build your own property management team. You can effectively just be an asset manager and get back a lot of your time. I mean, that's what I'm chasing ultimately is time, so I can build a real skinny, lean company that gives me a lot of time for them.

That's fantastic. And I love that you talk about the apartment complexes because there's people who just go for a couple of houses here. There's people that are doing commercial real like big, big, big things. But why apartments? And what size are you normally looking for when you're looking to acquire?

Yeah, so 100 units or more is about the critical mass when there's enough meat on the bone to really get the scale that you need.

Apartment complex specifically is because residential commercial housing is just a basic fundamental need. And affordability is probably one of the biggest challenges that we're going to face here in the next 10 years. It already is. And so, you know, just based off of population growth and demand alone, we need to build about 4.6 million new apartments by 2030. We can't build them fast enough. So unlike the residential housing market, which is more directly associated with the highs and lows of the economy.

Residential, commercial multifamily is tied to demographic patterns that last 30 to 40 years. So the demographics suggest that this asset class is going to have a very long Runway. And if you look back even to 2008, you know, the default rate on large commercial apartment complexes was less than 1%. And you can't say that about the rest of the commercial real estate sector. Nobody needs 67,000 square feet of office space. You know, nobody, Nobody needs a 20,000 square foot industrial building.

But you could ride a segue through it from one desk to the next.

This is true, and I've done that before. It's awesome. But the reality of it is just, you know, being a futures trader for as long as I was, it's all about de risking the trade. And to me, the most fundamental human need is housing and getting 100 doors. You have a lot of scalability that affords you an opportunity to withstand vacancy, which is probably your second biggest risk behind, you know, some sort of cataclysmic economic event.

What would you say is the max you'd ever want to invest in? I mean, I know there's complexes with hundreds, 500, maybe even a Thousand. Would you ever want anything that big? Or now, do you get into other types of risk just from the sheer volume in that one community?

Now, bigger is ultimately better. I mean, the ability to have a singular address with multiple doors and multiple tenants makes the business just that much more efficient. Your marketing gets more efficient. Your, your property management, leasing, maintenance gets more efficient. There's just a lot more levers to pull. You know, if you think about COVID crisis, you know, I can effectively make a small change to my rents and reduce my rents across a thousand doors and make a significant impact on the bottom line for the tenant without, you know, critically damaging the business. If I have, you know, one unit, let's say a single family property, and that property goes vacant, well, I'm 100% vacant. If I have 100 doors and 20 of them go vacant, well, I'm still 80% occupied.

You're reminding me of J. Paul Getty. I'd rather have 1% of 100 man's efforts than 100% of my own.

You got it. That's exactly right. So scale, scale is the ultimate reason. And bigger is better ultimately in my book. And on top of that, you can get some of the best, most favorable lending on the planet, non recourse debt on these large apartment complexes. So even the banks love these assets because they're just cash flowing, diversified machines.

What's your target goal? How many complexes do you want? Or do you have a. Maybe not a big end goal, but you say I want to acquire so many per month or year.

I mean the 10 year target is to have a billion dollars in assets under management. But we just kind of put our head down and just focus on one deal at a time.

We see about 100 deals a month on average. And of those hundred deals, you probably.

Go deep on 10 of them, so about 10%. And of those 10%, you probably offer on, you know, 10 or 20% of those. So like one or two deals. So, you know, it's easy to get grandiose ideas, but it's just like one more and just throw it in the portfolio and go to the next one, you know. So I don't really have that, that plan as much as the plan is to just create, you know, a very large scalable portfolio, create good, consistent cash flow for our investors, deliver on returns and get a bunch of time. I'm trying to build an untethered life, you know, I don't want to be. I live in Colorado, I love Colorado. But if I want to go live in Florida, for two months. I want to be able to do that. So you know, building an apartment business affords you that ability. And so I'm more focused on those kinds of things and spending time with my family and I got two incredible little girls. And so just, you know, being at swim practice and building a lifestyle that allows me to do that. So if I can keep doing that, then I'll do it as long as I possibly can.

That's fantastic. How old are they?

7 and 9. About to be 8. 8 and 9. So got our hands full.

Fun ages.

Yeah.

So do you set a goal for how often are you working? You take a bunch of days off, you go and going nuts six days a week.

You know, commercial real estate's. It's funny because it moves fast, but it moves slow. At the same time.

You'Re constantly screening deals, you're constantly raising money and you.

Can do that on your own time pretty much. Right?

Yeah. We have a team, right. So we have a deal sourcing team and 300 brokers that we're constantly communicating with and the team's calling on off market opportunities and calling on family offices and just sourcing and screening as many deals as they possibly can.

And then once that's how you're getting the hundred a month roughly.

Yep, yep. And then from there you're just, you know, making offers and then, you know, when the deal looks really good, you're traveling out to those markets. But my belief is, you know, I spent a really long time in the corporate world when we're scaling up the technology and marketing company and you know, you wake up at 4:30 and hit the gym and get to the office by seven and get home by five, six o' clock and you're just a freaking zombie. And you have, you only have so many creative hours in a given day and to me that's like four or five when you can really get real work done. So you know, being in strategy and business development for as long as I was, I spent a good portion of my time building systems and processes and putting people in the right seat to be successful so that I can offload some of these tasks that I want to call them meaningless but are just not the best use of my time. Okay. Right. There's other people who are better at executing on that where they can own one aspect of that business and just control that so that I can focus on the big picture visionary stuff on how to scale and how to move the business forward.

I can relate to that. I totally agree because there's so many things on any given day where it's like.

You want the wheels turning, but at the same time, are you the one who's supposed to be turning them?

Oh, 100%. Well being, you know, big part of being at Mad Wire, we were in small business marketing. And so small business is a very broad term. Right? I mean, you're dealing with people who are in startup mode to people who've been in business for 10 years. And the reality of it is, is the ones who are successful are the ones who are able to build systems and processes and scale their team and build a business that doesn't actually need them. You see it constantly where people would come to us and they would think that somehow, you know, as a marketing company, that we were going to, like, fix their business. And it's like there's three components. There's sales and marketing, there's operations, and there's HR and finance. So we can tee up the leads, but if you can't close them down, we got a real problem.

Absolutely.

If you close them down but you can't service them, we got a real problem.

The fulfillment's always a bottleneck. And then, heaven forbid we even talk about expenses, profit margins, and that whole component.

Exactly right.

So when I'm addressing audiences, one of my favorite questions. Let me rephrase that in person. When I'm on stage and I'm going, okay, how many people would like, you know, more leads? And, you know, when I'm helping them with business, book publishing and marketing, I go, who would like 10,000 leads? And it's always interesting because I can see their faces.

But then I go, who can serve? You know, who can fulfill that this week or even this month? And you see.

Yeah, everyone wants it, but I believe what's happening is subconsciously your brain's going, this doesn't compute. And that's why it's not happening.

You got it. What gets measured gets done. And so building systems and processes is just how I've built my company and my businesses and also own a really sweet strength and conditioning facility where I just get to go work out, you know, but same kind of thing. You just put the right kind of people in place and they run it and they make great money. And I get a cool gym to go work out at, you know.

What inspired you to invest in that?

Man, I love health and fitness. You know, I got a degree in human physiology. I actually have a master's in sports nutrition as well. I love physical fitness. Being an athlete for so long, you know, Physical fitness is a big part of my life. And so a lot of people don't have that skill set. You know, it's what I would consider one of the seven categories of goals is your physical well being and health. And most people don't know how to eat, they don't know how to work out, they don't know how to train. And so there's just, I get a lot of joy out of seeing people come in who've never worked out before. All of a sudden, you know, completely turn their life around in a really positive way and leverage fitness, which, you know, helps their mental health and helps them crush it in their business and with their family.

I was just going to say, I was just going to ask you, how has fitness helped your business? And what do you feel is the correlation?

I mean, you look good, you feel good, you play good. You know, it's a long time ago I heard Zig Ziglar talk about the seven categories of goals. And basically he says you got to have a goal for your faith, your family, your finances, your career, your social life, your mental growth and health and your physical health. And so he always represents it as a wheel. And so if any one of those areas dominates your life and you're neglecting another, imagine a lopsided wheel rolling down the road. It's not going to be a very smooth, smooth drive. And so if it turns, if it goes at all. Exactly. There were times in my career and times when we were scaling up businesses and departments where I just let my health just completely go to the wayside. And slowly but surely my fulfillment and happiness and my marriage, my home life, my work just slowly started to decline. You pick your head up. Oh, my gosh, what happened? I gained 30 pounds. What the heck, you know, So I had a few of those moments and, you know, I turned it around. You know, I just decided to change things. And I think there was one point when I was like 230 pounds, not healthy. We had a newborn, our second one, and I was just having too many drinks and smoking too many cigars and just woke up one day and said, I'm not going to do that anymore. And went literally 13 months without a sip of alcohol. Went from 230 down to 180 pounds, did a bodybuilding show. And that was kind of the catalyst. People started asking for you, like, how did you do that? How did you get in shape? And I was like, I'll teach you, I'll show you what I know. And then pretty soon I had a bunch of people that wanted to know. And then so I started recruiting a few other people to help coach people on nutrition. And before we knew it, we had this business and then that, that turned into a gym and here it is, you know, five years later.

Yeah, it sounds to me like you just enjoy helping people regardless of what the industry is.

Yeah, I. When I see something that's exciting and I see there's an area to add value and help people and serve people, I just jump all over it. I genuinely love human beings. I'm the exact opposite of my wife. She's more introverted. You put me in a room of a thousand people, my energy goes up. You know, I love it. I always have. I've always been that way. And so that's what I think makes me a good consultant too. You know, I just love serving people and really digging into their business and figuring out where they have blind spots and helping them create a path forward so that they can go achieve all the stuff that they want to create in their life.

That's fantastic. I'm glad you're sharing that. I gotta ask about the personal branding because you're talking about the health and you're feeling better and it helps your business, but why are you saying that people should have a personal brand outside of the company?

Wow. The company that you work for is essentially just your platform. It is not who you are. You know, I spend a lot of time playing football and really took on an identity of I'm a football player. And then you get to the end of your career and nobody cares that you played D1 football. You're standing in the back of the line like everybody else, getting your own coffee. You know, nobody's there cheering you on when you get out of the car anymore. And I worked, started working with a lot of athletes who were making that transition. Most people don't realize but like 1% of collegiate athletes going to play professional athletics, and of those 1%, only 1% actually make multimillion dollars. The majority of them make a good, healthy six figure paycheck, but nothing to really retire on. And so they get done with their sport and they have no identity. And so building an identity and a platform outside of your career or outside of your business, even if it's your own business, is incredibly important to any future income that you may earn. I never want, you know, one business or one.

Thing to take down the. The entire thing, which is me and my brand, me and my business. And then on top of that, you know, people are going to spend A lot of time googling. You know, 90% of the research process is done before the customer ever picks up the phone. So you got to be able to control the narrative about yourself on the Internet, you know, so if you go search my name, Samson Jagoris, you'll see that I've spent a lot of time going on podcasts and writing content and curating my own website and creating tons and tons of YouTube content to just make sure that the narrative about me is controlled. Because it's not a matter of if you're going to get a bad review or you can't please everybody. It's just a matter of when. And if you don't have any haters, then you're probably not making enough noise, you know, oh, love that.

And yeah, you want it to be desirable because there's always someone with a comment about something. But you know, if it's 1% of the time or one out of a hundred or whatever the case is, you know, it's cool when so many people.

I don't want to say come to your rescue or come to your aid, but you know, they're on your side and they're like, that is absolutely ludicrous. You know, I've had it happen to me where before I could even, I'm like, what's going on? And it wasn't even, it had nothing to do with business. It was more personal. But I was like, what? Who said what about huh? And I started like almost laughing and like dozens of people were like, oh, you must be on drugs or not know him, because this is so far fetched, we wouldn't even believe it in a movie or something.

And it was just your fans come to your rescue. Yeah.

I was like, well, this is cool. I'm like, well, I'm going to go get some food or whatever. We'll see how this pans out in an hour or two. But you know what I mean? It's like, okay, someone might have a misconception or whatever and. But is there enough evidence out there that support, you know, if this was. I always use court as an example because I originally was going to go to law school and be a lawyer. If I'm, you know, and I think of marketing the same way if we're doing marketing for your company and publishing your business book, how do we stack the deck so high? There's enough evidence to say beyond a shadow of a doubt we're right and this is wrong. You know, most people have stuff scattered here and here and it's like, you know, I don't agree with the bad guy, but you know what, he's making a pretty darn good case. You've got two case studies in 20 years. I don't know, I'm actually starting to believe him a little bit. But, you know, other than knowing the person, you know, people don't realize that, yeah, people are Googling you and so many devices now and other people. There was someone even today.

So there's something I'm doing, who.

I kind of got a referral from a thing and then I checked out the company and did the other thing and had a call and you know, they sent a proposal for, you know, I got about a dozen of them sitting in my box. But all these different things. And even today I said, how did you. Like so and so. And was it to the point where you'd work with them again?

And the answer was yes. So I was like, sweet, awesome, everything's good. But this was, this wasn't just like, oh yeah, you know, consider so and so. It was like, would you work with them again? Because you can still have a good experience and go, you know, it was good, but it wasn't great.

You know, when you add in that experience, would you work with them again?

You know, same thing for people selling financial services or cars or anything. Oh, you should get the brand new XYZ vehicle. Well, which one do you drive?

Yeah, the Honda. Weird.

Yeah, there was.

And again, just today there was a video I saw on Instagram of.

Someone selling something and they're like, don't listen to all the people saying. And I'm thinking, yeah, coming from the person selling me.

Right.

So I just. And it makes marketing easier. I love going, hey, don't take my word for it. Here's hundreds of client testimonials. Same thing. I'm going to go get some food. Let me know. Here's the application link when you're in. If, when you're interested.

And I think you hit the nail on the head is, I don't know, I think it's an old school mindset where people just are afraid to give away the information for free. I'm just like, here it is, here's all the information. Here's everything that you need to know about how you can go do this thing yourself. But if you're so awesome, like, why are you talking to me? You're talking to me because I'm the one with the domain knowledge, right? I have something that you want or need and I don't have to necessarily Convince you? You already seen all the information, been on our website, watched our videos, read the content, seen the comments, seen the reviews, and now you're just like 10% more of the way to making your final decision. It's like the last home stretch. And so you just need to talk to me and make sure that everything that you've seen online aligns with the person that you're talking to. And so that's the way that I like to sell. I'm not trying to chase people or convince them of anything. You know, at the end of the day, either we align or we don't. But there's a good chance that if we're talking on the phone, you already know what the answer is. You know, I didn't call you. I didn't cold call you. We don't do cold calls. We don't do any of that. Right. It's all referral based.

This is surreal because for anyone listening, we just got connected like now. And I feel like I've known you for like 10 or 20 years because it's like, it's verbatim what I'm thinking and what I've been telling my own clients. And there are some people who take aspects of it, but it's like, wow, this is. Is this what I sound like? Because this is impressive. I hope that's how it comes off because you don't need to be chasing people down and doing all this stuff. You brought up a good point though. There's people, the mindset of, I don't want to give the information away when I'm helping people publish their business book. Imagine putting it into a book. Well, here's the thing that always gets me. The proprietary process.

Oh, my God, stop it.

Now.

If you're Dupont.

Perhaps I'm trying. I'm hard pressed to even. What is another company that legit might have a proprietary process.

Like engineering company, Coca Cola, Google.

Okay.

But like, even then, it's like the majority of people that are selling a business book, most of the time they're offering the service.

Correct.

So, you know, you're not the, you didn't invent the service. You know, you're real estate, financial planner.

Lawyer, attorney, chiropractor, roofer, painter.

Yeah, like at the end of the day, you're a dime a dozen. The real. That's the reality of it. You're just trying to separate yourself amongst all the other people by saying, hey, I'm the actual expert. Because like I said, 90% of the research process is done before the customer Ever picks up the phone. So that means they've already done a ton of research and pretty much made their decision by the time they called you. You get no chance to speak to them when they're looking at Google or doing research or reading on your website or reading your content. So you only have one chance to really get that information across through the content that you're putting out. So just put it all out, give it away for free. And if your competitor steals it, which.

Oh, I didn't even get to do the air quotes, but what if the competition takes it?

Yeah, we're thinking the same thing. Yeah, it's like they're not gonna do that because you're. If you're putting out so much content, they're not going to be able to keep up. Most people aren't willing to put the effort.

Well, not even that, but one of the differentiators I've always used is, you know, can anyone, Anyone can say what you're saying, but can anyone do it? The fulfillment piece we talked about, okay, you got those 10,000 leads. Can you fulfill on it? Because anyone can do a marketing campaign and go, wow, this looks impressive. This sounds impressive. You know, you can rent watches, you can rent models, you can rent houses, but you can't rent credibility.

Correct.

How? How? I can't even wrap my head around this. How if you have helped hundreds and thousands of people.

And you are the best, you think and you really believe at your core no one can duplicate what I do.

What would you have to be afraid of?

I never understood that. I feel like it's just an excuse for not wanting to actually put forth the effort to do the work that it's going to take. Because writing a business book is not easy. That's why people hire a professional like you to help them structure it and put it together. It takes. Everything takes work. It takes real work. But I feel like sometimes people use that as a deflection for, you know.

Actually having to show up bigger.

Show up bigger, put themselves on the platform, be judged more, be subject to people jumping in the comments and saying something about you. You know what I mean?

Actually be put on trial. I mean, when. When you made that comment about the 90% being done before they even call, that's like being in a court case where you can't even defend yourself.

Correct.

That would suck.

Would suck. So all you can do is play. Play defense. Right. It's like you constantly are putting out the best defense is a great offense. Right. So you're putting out a ton of content as much as you possibly can to control the narrative in addition to the sheer volume.

Tell us what you're doing to combat all this and stay on the cutting edge as the expert.

You know, again, it goes back to just building a great team and putting the right people around you. And so we have, I have a content creator on my team who is responsible for managing brand social content, creating content, curating content.

Demanding content from me. You know, sometimes I get so busy and they're like, hey, you need to stop right now, we're going to cut a video.

I have a marketer on my team and the marketer is responsible for, you know, organizing the content in a, in a way that funnels people into our ecosystem.

I have enough domain knowledge to have a very.

High level conversation about how to execute, but then I need somebody to actually go execute because again, you can't be the person doing that and simultaneously be the visionary up here. You know, I have to jump into the sales and marketing vein and then I have to jump at the operation vein and sometimes I have to jump into the HR and finance thing. And so you can't just be an expert in everything. You just hire great people, pay them well, and everything else will kind of take care of itself, you know?

Love it. I mean, I'm not disagreeing with the word you're saying.

I have so many things I could ask you, but I do want to ask you about transformations. With everything you've done, what would you, who's been your biggest transformational story?

You could share business or life or.

You know what, you're cool. You pick one or the other. Hopefully both.

You know, I think that the one that just comes top of mind. When I, when I first joined the marketing and technology company, we were primarily a website design company.

Sure.

And we could see that the industry was becoming commoditized. Wix was coming online, Web.com was coming online, Squarespace was coming online. And the age of charging 125 bucks, 150 bucks an hour and building out a $80,000 website were slowly but surely fading into the distance. And so we had to take a company that was 65 employees or so and completely shift them over to selling a marketing product. So you go from selling 10,000, 20,000, $50,000 websites to selling, you know, $1,200 a month marketing packages. That's a big shift in mindset. So we effectively had to build a new department which I ran, which was the Marketing360 product. And we, we proved the concept we built the sales team of about 12 people around me until we felt like the business model was strong. And then we literally waxed the custom website design department, rolled all those sales and marketing or salespeople over to selling marketing, and then put in new leadership, and they kind of ran with it. And then we went and sat down in the trenches, and we had to scale the operational piece of the business, right? Sales and marketing was cranking, right? We could generate leads and we could close them, but we were losing accounts as fast as we were bringing them in. So then we were in the trenches for about another year trying to optimize that system until we effectively crack the code. We effectively built smaller little marketing teams that had, like, a book of business that they managed. And then instead of trying to scale this way, which is what we were doing, putting more and more and more on people, we started scaling horizontally, building out marketing teams this way. And then that created this competitive environment within the ecosystem because, you know, you get one team against the other and you start monitoring retention, one against the other. All of a sudden you get a little friendly competition, and that drives performance across the board. And then once we kind of figured that out, then it's like, okay, we're ready to scale, right? And a lot of people jump to the, hey, we want to go higher before. They really have all the systems and processes ironed out in the back. But I'll never forget, we were sitting in a meeting and they said, hey, we're going to hire 60 more marketers this year. I was like, wow, that would literally triple the number of marketers that we have right now. How are we going to train these people? And they were, we'll figure it out. And so I walked out of there and started writing the first iteration of a training program. Had no idea what I was actually doing, but it was something. And then that evolved into.

Writing the training, hiring for both sales and marketing, and then building our recruiting platform on the back of that. And so I would say that that's the. That's probably the most wild transformation that I have ever been through. It was like going 90 with your hair on fire. Sometimes it feels like a blur. You know, those hours that you put into it, you don't really remember it, but to see how far it came and what it is today is pretty incredible.

Yeah, it's always fun to see the end result, but I can relate to all of that, because when you're going through it, it's like you want to just keep moving, but at the same time, you don't want to miss. At least for me, I've had to ride this line because I really love helping people with the business books, trainings, like taking the expertise and putting it in a systemized fashion. Here's the steps, here's the process, here's this. The only way you get to it is by going through all that. And sometimes it's so quick you don't want to slow down to figure it out. But if you don't, now you're just constantly like, I know people that have done 10 training programs and they don't really know how they ever do it. They just like, okay, I'm going to do another one. They blitz through it, but they never even figure out, like, how they think, if that makes sense. And I think that's also lost opportunity, if you will. But I totally relate to the websites because that's what my company started with. When I decided I'm going to go full time in business, I go, what can I offer and how can I add value to all these small businesses? And I'm like, oh my gosh, they all need websites and I can look them up. They either will have one and it will be trash, and I can say, I can help you. They'll either have one and it'll be good and I can probably still find something to help them or they won't have one at all. All of which are win, win, win for both of us. However. Yeah, doing them all custom.

I developed a Software to build WordPress websites automatically. I wanted that custom look and feel, but heck, yeah, I wanted to make it more efficient. It's what I do. I make everything, you know, even with my trainings, I took them from 16 to 12 to eight weeks. I was like, where else can we trim some more fat off of this process? You know, because with business, do you really want to take 12, 18, 24 months to do what we can do in eight or 12? You know what I mean? How many people.

Like with your apartment buildings, if you can acquire the property in 60 to 90 days, how many more people can you help than having to wait three years?

Got it. Documenting and processing and systematizing your business is probably the biggest challenge for most small business owners is they just don't do it.

We don't have time.

Yeah, we don't, we don't have the team. Sometimes they, and sometimes they don't even realize what they're doing. You know, a lot of the consulting that I'm doing now is we're, we're approaching the largest wealth transfer in history. And a lot of these baby boomers have built incredible businesses, air quotes, glorified jobs. And so when you're going to sell a business and a lot is still hinging around you as the business owner.

You take the number of total buyers and you reduce the pool so small as you got to find somebody who also has expert domain knowledge in that business itself. That's challenging. Right. So if you can build a business that doesn't require you to be in the day to day, now you have a good investment opportunity and I can buy the business and put an option operator in that business. Now all of a sudden I'm buying business, I'm not buying a job. And so I think that, you know, in the next 10 years, for any of the consultants that are listening to this, that's going to be your biggest opportunities to help businesses get ready to be sold. And so I'm spending a lot of my time there just in my, my personal consulting experience right now. And I'm excited about it. You know, in the state of Colorado, you don't have to have a special license in order to broker businesses. Unless of course, there's, you know, real estate associated with it.

Okay.

So, you know, I've heard a lot.

Of people talk about that. And have you read Built to Sell?

I have not, but I know the book.

Okay. Yeah. It's reminded me of exactly what you're talking about. How I believe the example in the beginning, if memory serves me. It's like a creative agency and it's like you can have hundreds of clients and everything. But again, is the business systematized in a way where if we take you out of the equation, and I thought about that early on, it's why I've always had a team and grown it and trusted. Some of them have been working with me over a decade now, nearly two. And it's like if I'm not feeling good, if I want to go on vacation, if I just don't want to do anything today, you know, it doesn't really matter the reason. If you put an X through you in the business, to your point of passive income, what happens? Is the money really tied to Are you the business or do you have a business?

Exactly. I call it the getting hit by a bus theory. If I get hit by a bus tomorrow, can this thing still go on without me? And if the answer is no, then you don't have a business. You just have a glorified job.

I love hosting.

I love speaking, I love helping people. Whether it's one on one or groups or with my team or whatever the case. But one of the main reasons I built my software is, well, my team built it, I developed it, and I'm very thankful for them because I had no clue. I just had the idea, the vision. But there's days I very often wake up, I'm like, stuff was done.

It's not me doing the sites or anyone on my team. It's the software that I license. There's stuff there, you know, book royalties that's passive. Also. It's like some days I just, I don't want to do anything. And I'm like, I'm glad I did this a decade ago. I'm glad I did this 14 years ago. I'm glad I did this 20 years ago because it's still, you know, rolling forward.

You went into business for yourself, right? So that you can make those decisions and have that time freedom and ultimately control your time. And I think that's what every entrepreneur needs to get their head wrapped around. For those who are listening to this, who maybe aren't entrepreneurs, maybe they're professionals or executives, you know, you need to be thinking about some ways to create some income and brand and passive income outside of your current W2 income. A lot of people think about their income vertically and you really should be thinking about it Horizontally. You know, 200amonth there, a thousand a month there, 400 there, 500 there. You know, how many, how many horizontal streams of income do you have? A book, a website, multiple properties, passive investments, a business, you know, equity in different businesses. There's so many ways that you can do it.

So, yeah, and the expertise, you know, I love that you're talking about the passive income and the different streams, but the expertise good for you if you've done 20, 30 years somewhere. Because this other stuff we can create. I can't go back in time and learn.

Let'S say Olympic snowboarding. That'd be killer. I can't get 30 years of experience.

Unless I have 30 years of experience. You can read a book, you can do a training course, you can go listen to the speaker. But there's just something about being able to say, yes. I've helped tens of thousands of people and have hundreds of success stories.

You're just not. How long would it take you to pull if you were to have all this wiped out? How long would it take you to pull, bring all this back again to the point you have it now? It took you.

Sounds like 15 to 20 years.

How fast Would it take you to recreate everything to a T again? Could you even do it in a year?

I think I could. It would. I mean, obviously, wouldn't it?

It would be a busy year.

You wouldn't be where you're at. But your momentum to get there would. Would be much. Your trajectory would be much quicker. But, you know, you don't want to build your house on, you know, one individual pillar.

Yeah.

You want to build it on. On multiple pillars. And so those are the things that allowed me to step away from a high income job to, you know, have enough income to survive and go. Because, you know, you do apartment deals. It's not like you're doing a deal every week or every month. Could be three months, it could be six months before you find the right opportunity to execute on. You know what I mean? So you gotta have.

Yeah, like you said, if you're doing a hundred opportunities a month, deep dive with 10 of them. And you, you might bid on one or two.

And of those, how many are you closing? Are you closing the one or two or are you just bidding on the one or two?

Not always. Yeah, I mean, right now the market's crazy. So sometimes people are, you know, paying. Somebody's always willing to pay a higher premium than you are, it feels like. And so, you know, there's an old saying in this, in the stock trading world that the market always needs another sucker. We just want to make sure that that's not us. So.

Yeah, yeah, mitigate that risk.

Yeah. It could be months, you know, so you got to have other sources of income other than your W2. And things change, life changes, families change, health changes, you know, so it's great that you're making $300,000 a year in your W2 or from your One business.

What happens if something bad happens? You know, how do you tackle that?

Yeah. Well, I'm so glad you've been talking about it this whole time. Appreciate all the insights and everything. I got one and a half more questions before we thank our sponsor and come back for the imperfect action round. And I start. I just caught myself the last couple of episodes because I would always say I only got one more question, but it's not the truth because the first one is yellow or black.

Black.

There we go. Always bet on black. So I mean, legit. That's a question, but that's not the main one I was gonna ask you.

There we go. Black.

I almost asked it earlier on, but I go, you know what, I'll save it. Who's your Favorite punk rock band that you were skating to.

I was a Die Hard Pennywise fan. Big, big in the LA culture of skateboarding. But I also love the band Rancid.

Okay.

I was curious. I was half wondering if you were gonna say no Doubt.

I liked no Doubt. I had a big crush on Gwen Stefani, that's for sure.

Okay.

My cousin actually did the album cover for that Fallen Kingdom. Yeah, the one with the oranges on it.

Yeah. Yeah. No kidding.

Yeah, he was in the music industry. He was a lot older than me, so I was a kid. But yeah, pretty cool.

Oh, small world. Yeah, I like them. And I remember when that came out, I was gonna say, was it the first CD I bought? It may have been Smash Mouth, but I. It may. It was definitely one of the first I had. Fantastic.

Yeah.

And when you said that, I was like, I'm going to let them go. I'll ask it later. But I appreciate you for sharing that. That's cool. We're going to thank our sponsor and come back for the imperfect action run. You've heard me say every business needs a book, including yours. And it's true. And that's why I'm launching my new book@eapublishingmethodbook.com so you can learn the seven steps to publish and promote your nonfiction lead and profit generating business book in eight weeks. But you know what, don't take my word for it. Take it from a few of my authors like Lori, I went from having an idea and a possibility to actually.

Getting my book published.

Or Catherine, thank you for making my.

Mom number one best selling author.

Or Mary Alice, what he got done for me in three days regarding my book launch.

Unmanageable John Cody.

I've worked with Mario over the phone and online and he's been very helpful in getting me where I needed to go with promoting my books. Rocio, there's no way in the world I would have been able to do this with somebody else again. I've attempted it in the past. It didn't serve me. As a matter of fact, I ended up more frustrated than anything. So this has been a very seamless process. Adele, if you're looking for an amazing business coach, I highly recommend Mario Ficcini or Bill Benner. I can't make a higher recommendation.

To work with Mario Ficini. He has been great for me and right now I won't work with anybody else except for Mario.

Hey, their words, not mine. Visit eapublishingmethodbook.com to get your copy and I look forward to hearing your transformation as our next video success story. Once again, that's eapublishingmethodbook.com and we are back with the imperfect action Run. Samson, are you ready to take imperfect action?

I don't think so. Let's go.

All right, the first question I have for you 60 second or less answers is what is the fastest path to the profits?

Fastest path to profits is to.

Build.

A plan and work the plan and be ready to pivot as quickly as possible, document systematize and.

Hire quickly.

All right, I'll let it go. Great. Answer number two.

What is the biggest problem your prospects make and the fastest way for them to fix it?

The biggest problem that my prospects have is they make too much money, more money than they can effectively deploy in a given year. And so they need to find other experts to to deploy that capital with so that they can not only build long term wealth but also offset their tax burden. And real estate's one of the best ways to do that.

Excellent. Number three, what is the best way to maximize customer lifetime value?

I read a great book called Blue Fishing. If you haven't read that book.

Yes, Steve says.

Yep, it's all about going analog. I mean, I think personally we've automated everything.

But when it comes to personal touch, you can't beat the handwritten note or the special gift, the personal gift that means something to that person. So go, go old school.

Love that. Great recommendation and Steve's a great guy. What? Where would you like people to learn more?

The best place to learn more about how you can passively invest in our multifamily deals is the Growth V U e dot com. That's the growth view. And there's a ton of great information about the types of assets that we're investing in as well as an inquiry form where you can get linked up with our investment team and see if you're a good fit for our group.

Excellent. Well, thank you so much. This has been a blast. I really appreciate your time and sharing with Expert Authority World.

Yeah, thanks Mario.

All right, Expert Authority World. We have another great episode here today. I'll see you tomorrow. Have a great day and God bless.

You're already the expert, but have you transformed your expertise into a tangible asset that will generate qualified leads while increasing profit for you 24. 7 and if so, how well are you promoting it? With my new book, the Expert Authority Effect Publishing Method, I take you through my process step by step. Visit eapublishingmethodbook.com today to learn the seven steps to publish and promote your nonfiction, lead and profit generating business book in eight weeks. Visit eapublishingmethodbook.com to get started. Now. Once again, that's eapublishingmethodbook.Com thanks for listening to today's episode. I would love to know what you enjoyed most from it if you haven't done so already. I invite you to connect with me on my new LinkedIn. You can go to it directly at eainterviews.com LinkedIn Once again, that's eainterviews.com LinkedIn. Lastly, check out the full eainterviews.com site for complete show notes, the full interview video experience, links to the resources we mentioned, and more. Have a blessed day and I'll see you on the next one.