Why Nick Perry Says Most Entrepreneurs FAIL (And How HE DIDN'T)

All I wanted, like, I just wanted to be rich so bad. Like, I wanted it and I didn't know how to get it. Seemed like this esoteric thing that was just like, you know, for them and not me. And I had to figure out how I could break onto the other side of this. And I didn't understand how to make it happen, but it was really just one of those things that I, I had to do in order to, you know, prove to myself that I wasn't gonna. I wasn't gonna stay down the rest of my life.

All right, man, out here in Greece. Beautiful view here at the villa. Let's give a real combo, man. Be as as raw open as possible. You know, you, you started and scaled multiple businesses now to multiple 7, 8 figures share the, the good, the bad, the ugly, man. You ready to dive into this?

Let's do it.

Dope, man. Dope, man. So let's kind of start from the top, man. How'd you even get into the. This whole space, the, the real estate space? And you got the coaching offer, you got the wholesaling business, like kind of unpack that journey.

Yeah, it's been a journey in evolution. I started off humble beginnings. You know, Both my parents, 9 to 5, didn't come from, you know, entrepreneurial background. Didn't have a silver spoon in my mouth. Quite the opposite. Grew up in, you know, middle, lower class America. And we really struggled with finances growing up. My parents divorced and my mom remarried. You know, she remarried to guy that was in the CIA, did well. But I went off to move with my dad around the time I was about 13. And my dad, he could barely make ends meet. He was a landscaper. So he had, you know, enough money to pay rent and then could barely squeak by. So every two weeks when he get paid, we go grocery shopping. When the food ran out, that was it. So I slept in a one bedroom apartment with him, you know, old cockroach infested apartment. Slept on the couch, he slept in the bedroom. And there was never enough. And I remember, you know, just that feeling of walking into the refrigerator, opening up the refrigerator door, and there being nothing but like a bottle of mustard and like, you know, some, some syrup. And you'd have to get creative, right? You hear, hear him talk about, you know, syrup sandwiches in the rap songs. Like that was a real thing. You know, I would go and put syrup on it, stick it in the oven, and that would be my dinner. And so I realized at that point that nobody was coming to safe. So in order to have anything in life, you needed money. Money is like oxygen. And I see all my friends around me, you know, that lived in the nice gated communities and had all the, you know, fancy, you know, cars are getting cars when they're 16. None of that was in the cards for me. And so I, I took just personal accountability. I was like, you know, everything that the school system's telling me is fucking false. My teachers, my parents, nobody has led me in a direction to where I could see a path forward. So I got to figure this out on my own. So I did a couple things. One, stop going to school. Because I felt like nothing that they were teaching me there was really getting me forward in a positive direction. And I went to work full time, started bagging groceries, started working my way up. I worked in retail for a little while, got my first job in a cell phone store selling cell phones. Like I was at an authorized retailer selling cell phones. And that was my first taste of sales. And then from there, you know, the second major thing that was a catalyst turning point in my life was I got off all of the prescription medication. So, you know, at a young age, they diagnosed me with adhd, so they put me on ADHD medication. The ADHD medication gave me side effects, so they gave me other psychotropic drugs to fix those side effects and more to fix the side effects that came along with that. Before you know it, I was taking a cocktail of stuff, I didn't even know what it was. And I was zombied out for a good part of my childhood. So got rid of all that, went against the advice of all the counselors, psychiatrists, teachers, just completely aborted that went and, you know, worked. And then the third thing I did outside of, you know, working getting off the psychotropic drugs was working out, taking personal accountability of my. My physical fitness. And that was kind of where I really started to get that personal development bug. Because I saw if you work hard at something, you know, for a long period of time, you actually start getting gains. And I. That was the first time I really felt like, man, I can take accountability for my own self and improve. Yeah, so that was a big turning point. Then the last and final thing I did in my early years to dig myself out of that hole of poverty and just fucking depression and misery that I was in was started feeding my mind the right shit. Because this is 20 years ago. They didn't have YouTube, they didn't have any forms of personal development on Instagram, nothing. I mean, cell phones were just, know, coming out smartphones were just coming around. So I would go to the public library, and I would walk in there where I had the CDs, and I would go into the personal development section. I grabbed, you know, Tony Robbins, Jim Rohn, Zig Ziglar, and I'd rent them all from the public library. And I put them in my. My portable CD player. And I didn't have a car or a license or nothing, nothing like that at the time. So I'd ride around town on my bike, on my bicycle and just listen to that stuff, you know, on repeat. And those became my first mentors because nobody around me in my hometown was any form of a positive influence. And so that really started the. The journey and the conquest. And from that point, you know, I got into personal training. At 18, I got a personal training certification. And when I started personal training, I realized that, man, all these guys that are rolling up, they're making my annual salary in one week, and I'm working 80 hours a week. What the hell are they doing any different than me? Because I would sit there and have a conversation with them. Just like, we're having a conversation. I'm like, these guys aren't any different than me. They talk like me, they walk like me. I'm stronger than them. Like, how are they so much better off? I'm working twice as hard as them. And that's when it really started to click that you cannot trade time for money in this world. You'll never get ahead doing that. And I realized they all owned businesses and had real estate, and so I need to. I need to learn how to do that. And that's kind of how it started.

That's quite the journey. So humble beginnings, not really having a whole lot of exposure to wealth inside of your community, but somewhere along the way, you listen to, like, Tony Robbins and things that started to help you to kind of, like, reprogram your mind. And as opposed to victim mentality, you started being able to see what's. And ask the right questions, essentially, like, what's possible for you. So was your first point of, like, exposure to wealth, was it your clients when you were personal training, or is it, you know, like, how do you, you know, because, like, usually people have to see it in order to believe it, right? And if you come from a, you know, impoverished area, that usually doesn't, you know, happen. So, like, was it that. That did that? And then were you, like, were you actually really ready to accept it in order to take more time?

You know, all I wanted, like, I Just wanted to be rich so bad. Like, I wanted it and I didn't know how to get it. Seemed like this esoteric thing that was just like, you know, for them and not me. And I had to figure out how I could break onto the other side of this. And I didn't understand how to make it happen, but it was really just one of those things that I had to do in order to, you know, prove to myself that I wasn't going to, I wasn't going to stay down the rest of my life. Like, nothing pissed me off more growing up than when. And still to this day, when I had to look at the price tag or I couldn't afford something, you know, I remember when I was, you know, an early teenager, I was shoplifting all the time because that was. I didn't have any money and I felt so bad about it. I felt terrible. And I was like, man, this is. So I went and said, I'm gonna, I'm gonna work as much as I have to, I'm gonna learn as much as I have to, and I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna stop. I just went on this relentless pursuit to find the answers to how to, to, you know, start to create something for myself.

That's interesting. I think it's a learning moment too. So if you had to, you know, taking a 10,000 square foot view now and if you ever give advice to someone in your. Who was in your similar situation, which you were in, what advice would you give them to not only help them get to where you're at, but exceed there and then on top of that, get there faster. Like, what would be your advice now?

My advice now would be the same that I just gave is that you have to cut off all the circumstances around you when you're, when you're in those kind of environments is really difficult because everybody around you is giving you terrible information. Your neighbors, your friends, your family. And none of it is helpful. And so you're just surrounded by this blanket of negativity and poverty and depression and you have to overcome insane odds in order to break out of that. So you have to, for the life of you, start auditing everything that goes into you. And you have to almost become very selfish at a certain point and only listen and do things that are going to serve you to that higher direction. So, you know, now it's much easier. You have computer in your pocket that you can pull out and find anything like that will, your phone can get you out of poverty for sure. So there's no excuse at this point, right? I'm, I'm a firm believer that success is just your five senses. So our body is a sensory organ, right? Whatever you put into, it's what's going to come out to out of it. You put in a bunch of terrible messaging, a bunch of, you know, drugs, like, you know, psychiatric drugs or, you know, alcohol or whatever it's going to. You're going to get bad results on the other end. On the contrary, you take care of it, you work out, you eat right, you listen to the right things, good things are going to come out, right? You have five senses. Watch what you see, watch what you smell, watch what you taste, watch what you hear, and watch what you say. If you audit all that and all that is, is, is good, you're going to have good results.

So the massive life audit. Be very mindful of what you're putting inside of you. What would be like the next step after that? We kind of put this.

You got it. You got to kind of woo yourself into success because you're going to feel like an imposter. In the beginning, I remember like, you know, I was, I grew up in not a good part of town. I was kind of like the, the street kid, kind of the thug. And I remember trying to fit into like these like, you know, more affluent circle. Especially when I started personal training, I would kind of change the way that I dressed and changed the way that I spoke. And I remember in the beginning I would go and, you know, I'd just sit down in a nice hotel. I didn't have any money to buy anything. I would just go sit in the lobby and watch all the, you know, affluent people and pretend like I'm working, you know, maybe get a free coffee and sit there and just try to blend in and feel the vibes. And you kind of just woo yourself into it. So it's one of those things that you just have to paint the vision for what you want and then start going out. And even if you can't afford it, start getting yourself in those environments. Put yourself in the lobby of the fancy hotel, go walk the dealership of the dream car that you want. You know, all this stuff that they say in that stereotypical law of attraction you have to do, and then eventually your mind will, will concede and it will stop fighting you. I remember for me, I felt like I was, I had imposter syndrome for freaking probably years.

Wow.

But it got less and less and less. And as you start interacting with people more and more Then eventually you start feeling like, okay, I fit in more. And then you don't have imposter syndrome anymore.

Yeah.

So you got to fight that on the along the way. As you're breaking out of that initial, you know, seed that you were planting, that place you came from, what was.

The first one that gave you validation that you're no longer an imposter?

I remember it was when I was personal training and this is a cool story. So I went and I had a beat up Pontiac Grand Prix. I just got out of a relationship and I was living by my mom's house for like three weeks because I was looking for another place and I was in the gym parking lot. I pulled out of the gym parking lot in my Pontiac Grand Prix and my Pontiac had a blown transmission. I could only take it to the gym and back. I couldn't even take it on the highway anymore. And I remember I was down. I was like, no way I could afford a new car. My mom was sick of me living there and I was like, I don't know how I'm going to afford a new place. I was bad off. And I remember sitting in the gym and I was in the sauna at the end of my workout and I said, God, you just get me out of this situation. I promise I'll always give you the glory. Please just see me through. And I left the gym that day literally five minutes after I said that prayer. I'm going through the thoroughfare of the parking lot. Chinese delivery driver floors it in reverse. I smash into him, total my car, and his car insurance adjuster comes out, gives me $7,000 total, my car. They didn't know the transmission was blown, so they gave me seven grand. I took two grand of that money and I went and bought an old beat up Honda Civic off the side of the road. And then I went and took an additional 5,000 and I was able to find a really nice place. It was a friend of mine. I wasn't even a friend. It was a guy found on Craigslist, let me rent a room from him and he ended up becoming a really good friend. Anyways, his dad was the vice president of Kimberly Clark and he ended up really mentoring me along the way. So I got to hang out with him and his family, go to the lake house with them, and they took me in like family. And that was one of the first moments that I didn't have that imposter syndrome anymore because they accepted me kind of for who I was.

So it seemed like some divine Intervention. Once you surrendered your purpose and life missions to God and it wasn't about you, that's the.

That if you had to sum up all of the success that I've had in my entire life, it's really been that anytime I have my own selfish ambitions, life starts to become very chaotic. Once I surrender to God and his will, things start to work themselves out in a way that I don't. I couldn't orchestrate myself. You know, crazy stuff like that will happen. Yeah.

So audited all the. The all five senses, started to brainwash yourself, so to speak, or being able to. Then you had that. That first kind of acceptance of not feeling like a. An imposter anymore. So when did you start to transition over to the real estate game? And then what exposed you to that? Was it like the personal training or was it, you know, something else?

Yeah, the personal, personal training planted the seeds for me because again, all my wealthy clients own companies, owned real estate, and a lot of them were real estate entrepreneurs. And so, you know, again, success leaves clues. So I was like, well, I need to get into real estate. But I had no idea how. I had no money, no credit, no nothing. And I remember the personal training was good, but it was capped. And I said, I need to make a change in my life. I was so tired of the hometown that I grew up in in Northern Virginia. I had to get out of there. I wanted out of there so bad just from all the, you know, shit that I went through, you know, with getting in trouble, getting locked up, dealing with, you know, all the crazy, you know, people around me. I said, I have to get far away from all this. And so I remember I was at the end of my lease and I decided, all right, I'm gonna go ahead and take a massive bet on myself. I had $5,000 saved up at the time, and I said, I'm gonna move from Northern Virginia to Austin, Texas. I had no job, no connection, no business being down there.

Why? Awesome. Why did you decide there?

I went there on a trip one time to visit a friend and just felt really grounded in that city. I felt the energy of the, you know, the vibrancy and growth, and it was complete opposite. People were friendly, open minded. I grew up in the Northeast where people are kind of short, you know, rude, and it's cold. And Austin was the complete opposite of that. And so I was like, I have to get to this city. I wanted to move to California. I'm glad I didn't. And Austin was a more economical option at the time. And so I called an apartment locator in Austin, Texas, and I said, give me as close to downtown as you can for a thousand bucks a month. So I was like, if I can, but it's going to cost me two grand to move down there. But if I can, you know, $3,000, I can. I can figure something out. So they put me in this hood apartment complex close to downtown. I was, like, one of the only English speakers in there. And I moved down there with a Walmart air mattress, trash bags full of clothes, my laptop, and my. My Mazda 3 that I had at the time.

Straight luxury living right there, bro.

That was it. I went in there and I. I had a crock pot, and I would eat crock pot chicken, and I would sit there and jump on my laptop and apply for jobs, because I was like, man, I have to get a job right now to keep myself afloat. But at the same time, I knew that this is a fresh start for me, and I do not want to work for somebody the rest of my life. I can't do it. Yeah. So I said, I got to figure out how to do this real estate thing. So I'd apply for jobs, and then I would also be listening to YouTube videos about real estate, and I came across real estate wholesaling. Real estate wholesaling, especially. You're the middleman on deals. And I was like, well, you don't need a lot of money. You just got a hustle. You don't need credit. I was like, well, shit, I'm qualified for that. You don't need a license. I was like, all right, I'm qualified. So. And. And it made sense to me. You negotiate a deep discount with a homeowner, and then you turn around and you sell that contract to an investor and you collect the difference in between. So I understood it conceptually, and I started taking action. What they teach you to do is you got to send out marketing to homeowners, wait for them to call you, then you make an offer. And the only form of marketing that I could afford back then was to handwrite yellow letters. So I would go down to the. The Travis county courthouse in Austin, Texas, and I'll go and I'll pull stack of files like, this high, and I would look for people who were deceased, that they passed away, and I'll look for the heirs, and I'll write down the heirs address, and I'd write down their information, and then I would go home, and I'll go. I'd go to Dollar General And I'll grab legal pads, like yellow legal pads and envelopes. I'll go to the post office and grab stamps. Then I'll go home and I'll hand write y' all letters on my, on my island until my hands like couldn't take anymore. Until like 2 o' clock in the morning. And I'd stuff all the envelopes, seal them all up, lick the envelopes, and I would send them out in the mail and pray some calls came in. And I started getting some calls, but I was striking out on every single call back then you would have an introductory call with them, you'd go out and visit the property, you'd sit down with the homeowner at their house, get them to sign a contract. And I was driving all over Texas trying to get people to someone to say yes. And I struck out 104 times during this period. And I remember that was a really, really challenging period of my life because not only was I down on money, but I was trying to get this dream started and I wasn't making it happen. I was down to about $800 in my checking account and I was gonna miss rent that month. And I was about to have to get evicted from my fucking apartment. And I was stressed out to the max. And I remember the real estate thing wasn't working out. Nobody was accepting me for a job. I'd been going on interviews non stop and nobody was saying yes. And it was because back then they wanted college degree and I didn't have no college degree. And so I got lucky. This girl that I was dating at the time, she passed on an interview and she referred me to a recruiter at Indeed, even though you had to have college to work there, they overlooked it and they took a flyer on me to come work there. And I remember I said, all right, here's the fucking deal is I'm gonna go in and I'm gonna crush this job. Because the faster I'm going and crush it, the faster I can come out and become my own boss. I wasn't about 10, taking orders from somebody my entire life. So I went in and I went from 800 in my checking account to rookie of the year, top gun, making a quarter million dollars a year. And I took all that money from my 9 to 5 job and I rolled it into my real estate business for marketing, for courses, for mentorship, for education. And I remember when I was walking down the street on my lunch break one day, I got my first call back on an appointment. I went to like six Months prior. And they're like, hey, we're ready to move forward with your offer. And so I got my first deal shortly after I got my job. I said, had this great job now. I just got my first real estate deal. Made 12 racks on that. That was proof of concept. Throw all that back into marketing. You know, things started picking up pretty quick at this point and that was just the power of just, you know, persistence for sure. You know. And then it started picking up from there.

104 appointments.

Yeah. And this was driving around Texas in a beat up Mazda 3 with no AC. Yeah, I had a huge cyst I had to have removed on my back, like massive. So I had this big open gash in my back with bandages. It was all infected and stuff. It was a rough, it was a rough summer for sure.

And that just kind of shows too, like volume negates luck. I mean that was just nothing but brute force that got you to that goal, you know. So I think a lot of people can probably take away from that is like, you didn't get lucky. No, you, you know, got your ass handed to you and you just kept on going. At any point along the way did you want to quit? Like on appointment 67, appointment 99, like.

I think probably about. There's one time appointment 75, I think somewhere around that point I got back home after, you know, long day driving around and getting told no. And I get back home and I started having those thoughts coming on mine like, you know, maybe this is all a scam. Maybe, you know, other people can do this but you know, I just don't have the polish or the, you know, wherewithal to do this. And I kind of had sunken cost fallacy, which is when you get too far down the road, then you're like, yo, I got to see it through. And so I was like, dude, I didn't come this far to only come this far. So I'm either going to make this work and like become the fucking best at it or I'm going to go homeless and I'm going to be behind the grocery store handwriting, you know, on cardboard boxes until I get a deal or I die. That was the only option. I wasn't going to, I wasn't going to fail. So I burned the ships of, you know, any quitting in my blood at that time.

Now did you have fun along the way or is it this, that during that time period it was just like nothing but work, grind, rinse, repeat every single day or did you?

Man, I always have Fun. Like, even I was homeless for a while, living in the back of my car, still going to parties, picking up girls, you know. You know, even when I was, you know, in that period, like, you know, I still, you know, I still had fun. So, like, you know, I don't want people to think, like, even if you got it rough right now, that, you know, life is what you make of it. It's about how you perceive it. So, like, I'm the same person right now, sitting here at a luxury villa in Greece.

Yeah.

As I was when I was in that one bedroom apartment. As I was when I was in the back of my car.

They say that, you know, well, it depends on who you ask. But some people say, you know, money can't buy happiness. Some people say, well, you just haven't made enough. Right. So where's kind of like your take on that then? Because you haven't really changed. Like, it seems like that core values that, the happiness, that intrinsic, you know, joy has always been there. So it's kind of like your take on that. As you went from broke, homeless now.

To multimillionaire, it's a lot less stressful because when you have money, money can solve 95% of life's problems, but it's not going to make you happy. If you're miserable without money, you're going to be miserable with money. It's an amplifier of who you are naturally. So I've seen a lot of, you know, extremely wealthy, miserable people out there. And on the contrary, I've been to third world countries and the cab drivers who are barely scraping by are the happiest people you'd ever meet.

Yeah, you start the wholesaling business, you guys do something that's pretty difficult to do. I mean, you guys take a wholesaling business and go national. From my understanding, people usually just do that locally.

That was a suicide mission at the time. The way wholesaling has always traditionally been done is you just market in your city and then you go and you get the deals and you do it. You drive the house to house. And I got to the point, I was like, man, wait, this is about 2016. At the time, I was like, yo, I'm starting to get leads from all over the country and I'm just throwing them out because I was taught to stick in my home market. And I was like, I think that I can call these people and do this over the phone and get these people under contract and then I can like try to puzzle piece this together somehow, you know, completely across the country. And my mentors at the time, they're like, don't do that. That's not wise. You're gonna waste. You're gonna spin your wheels, blah, blah. And I was like, nah, I make the contrarian bet on myself. I think I can do this.

There we go.

And long story short, very quickly, I think it was, like, in the second lead that I got, I got a deal under contract in middle of nowhere, Pennsylvania, and then I had to figure out how to sell it and make money. And so I just got resourceful. I started, you know, going on Facebook and finding out who all the players were in that market, started contacting all the realtors, getting them to kind of spread the word, and before you knew it, I had some people that were interested, and then, boom. You know, made like, $15,000 on that deal. I was like, okay, that's proof of concept. Then I got the next one, Ohio, and then, boom, boom. And then now I've done over, you know, almost 2,000 of them and done deals in all 50 states.

Wow, that's incredible. And then you. You took that IP and then put it into a coaching office.

Yeah. I was able to, like, streamline that entire process and pioneer that, get it to not only make me, you know, a multi millionaire, but then I had everybody coming out of the woodwork. Man, what are you doing? How are you doing? I was getting worn out with people hitting me up all the time. So I was like, all right, listen, I'm gonna put everything I know into a course, and then I'll go ahead. If you guys want it, you can have it. So people started buying it like crazy. Then they wanted more. They wanted, you know, deeper time and education. So then we worked on, you know, zoom, and we've been able to grow it to where, at this point, we've coached over 950 other wholesaling companies. We've been able to create over 100 millionaires, and, you know, really push us out to. This is the industry standard now.

So you went from homeless kind of directionless at one point now to being responsible for creating over a hundred other millionaires.

Correct. Which is crazy, because all I wanted to do was make myself a millionaire.

But you took a lot of people along the way with you.

Yeah. And that's. Are they more rewarding than probably any other achievement I've done in business?

Hands down, yeah, man. To, like, wrap all this up, the last question I would ask you is, is what motivates you now? You know, you've created the success business Family fitness, which we didn't even, you know, had the opportunity to get into today. What's, what's now like?

What motivates you now to maximize the full potential of myself. God puts you on this planet in order to. To live in his image. And he lives in a perfect image and will never be perfect, but he wants you to be abundant and to grow and to. To be the head and not the tail and to lend and not borrow and to continue to grow. And so for anybody that is complacent, you need to understand that God has way more out there for you. So you don't stop when you're comfortable. You stop when it's your last breath. God will tell you when it's time to quit. And that's the bottom line. So for me, as long as I'm still breathing, I know God's got more out there for me. And I need to continue to strive, grow, be a better husband, father. I need to be better in my finances, my faith, my, you know, fun, everything, every area should be growing in your life. And when you do that, you end up inspiring a lot of people. You, you know, get on the COVID of Men's fitness magazine. You end up creating 100 millionaires. And I'm only. I'm still young. So now that I have all this, what can I do next? So that's, that's, that's up to God. I'm just going to keep trusting God and keep pushing every single day.

You're an inspiration to many men. Keep going, brother. Super proud of you and looking forward to all the success to come.

Hey, we got a helicopter to Mykonos to catch, so we're out.