Lucas Pinto: The Ultimate Broker And The Future Of Real Estate - The Owner Meeting Podcast

I had time to think and I went, I've been trying to be a real estate investor. Guess what I've done? I bought 2 duplexes. What am I doing?

This is the time to do it. This is the time to do it.

Hello and welcome back to another episode of Multifamily Strategy. I'm Christian, your channel host, joined today by Lucas. Now, Lucas has done a lot of stuff in real estate. I was trying to come up with the perfect intro, and it's hard to do for a man that does a little bit of everything. He flips, he's also— he owns in and out of state or in multiple states. At least he looks multiple places around the country. He runs the number one midsize real estate team in Seattle. They've completed over 700 transactions, over $500 million in real estate sales. Uh, that's by itself is just absolutely ridiculous. He has some really interesting takes on where the market's headed and technology we're gonna talk about on this. I, I think this is gonna be one of the most interesting episodes we've seen. So, uh, stay tuned all the way through cuz we're gonna take this a few different places. Lucas, welcome to the channel.

Thank you. I'm excited to be here.

All right. Let's start out with— I think that the headline here, $500 million in transactions. Yeah, that's a lot of real estate. You have a team. Yeah. And you have built a business where you guys can move some real estate.

Yeah.

What type of real estate do you specialize in? Is this mostly residential? Is this multifamily, commercial? What makes up that $500 million of transactions?

Yeah. So about 95% of our transactions are residential real estate sales. We service King, Snohomish, Pierce County. So the greater Puget Sound, Seattle area. And I have an amazing team and I have an awesome team. And, and our business is, is built out of, number one, data, a very data-driven approach, right, where we, we were able to provide— see, the market here in Seattle, we're dealing with mainly tech clients. These are very analytical people, right? So we need to be able to provide good data and good insight for them to feel confident in getting into an asset class that they might not be as familiar with. So, yeah.

And by the way, for those who don't know, King, Pierce, Snohomish, that's like Seattle core markets. That's a lot of agents you're competing with. Majority of Washington's— I think we have 23,000 agents in the state of Washington.

That's right.

To be doing that many transactions, it is a competitive, competitive market. There is a lot of agents who are going to do between 0 and 1 deals this year.

Oh, absolutely. A lot of them got out of the industry altogether.

Yes. Which, by the way, side note, love down markets like this. Cleans up a lot of the extra. We had, we had a lot of fluff in that industry. We've done a nice— we've had a nice rinsing here over the last few years with the trades. Nice purge. I love a shock to the system.

Oh, for sure, man. We call it getting getting rid of the messy middle. Like, you're not really sure what you're doing, get out, you know, leave it to the pros. We're all for it.

Yeah, I love it. And we hadn't had that in a long time. We had about an 11-year unmitigated streak in real estate where it just got better and better and better. Everyone got a license. People who had no business making money were making enough money to stay in.

Yeah.

Now we're in a much better place. I think, I think it's corrected. We've seen a lot of people drop out. Now we're left with the, with the more elite teams such as yours.

I agree.

Building a team that big. So you're a mid-sized team. What constitutes a mid-sized real estate firm?

Mid-sized real estate team is anywhere from 8 to 12 brokers according to Real Trends, which is the highest ranking of teams nationwide. And we're a mid-sized team and we're considering getting bigger, shooting to go bigger by next year.

And yeah, that's a lot of transaction volume then for a— I mean, that's a mid-size, but that's a relatively small team for that much transaction volume. That's a really dedicated team, right?

We have probably the highest per agent production team out of any team within our market. Our productivity per realtor is probably, I would argue, number one for any team in our market.

That is absolutely incredible. What, what led to that success? I know we're going to get into a ton of other stuff in investing and the future of the market, but I'm really curious just on the front end, to have a team that performs at that level, what things did you do to build a team that can execute consistently at that level?

I think it's a few things. I think number one, systems and processes. I think somebody comes into the industry and an issue that I see today with most industries is people's energies are dispersed a million different directions. When a realtor comes onto my team, instead of getting a website, instead of doing this, instead of doing business cards, instead of doing all this bullshit that's not going to get you paid, I tell them, here's exactly what you need to execute on your first 30, 60, 90 days. It's a checklist. If you complete it, you get to continue on the team. If you don't, we're going to ask you to leave. And the beauty of that is that it's a proven system and process. So when a person comes on the team, and if you look at my team, I have a young team. Like the newest addition to my team is 19 years old and she did her first transaction within 30 days, right? Like a 19-year-old did their first $750,000 real estate transaction within 30 days.

That's awesome.

Yeah. And it's all systems and processes and then keeping people focused, right? So they don't get distracted by shiny objects.

So How often under that program do you end up letting people go? Do you find that you get really good retention where people actually make it through the checklist, or does that actually weed out quite a few people for you?

No. So I do now because I have a few— before I bring somebody on, I have a few hoops that they have to jump through prior to them even onboarding on the team. So by the time they onboard now, we have a really good success rate. Right. But it didn't always— I mean, I've been doing this for 9 years, right? So it's been trial and error for, for 9 years and figuring out a system and a model that is, that is efficient for us. But in real estate in general, I mean, you have 80% of realtors that quit within the first 2 years. We probably flip that. We're probably 80% of realtors are continuing for longer than 2 years successfully.

Now, one thing that I talk about all the time, and we're going to go the opposite direction on this because this is a perfect example. I talk a lot about why I am not an agent anymore. It was an unnecessary step in where I was trying to go. My goal was to be a real estate investor. And I tell people this all the time. I don't say don't be a real estate agent. I say do not be an agent unless that is very specifically the business that you want to be in. You have made it a business. Not only that, you've, you've competed at a very high level in a business. If you want to be a real estate agent and that is what you want to do, you need to build your business a lot like Lucas has done this. It's dedication. It's over 9 years. It's just SOPs are everything. This is a sales company. You need KPIs, systems and processes, and you need to make a repeatable system where you can get the right people in the right place. That is the, that is the correct way to play this game., and you can have a lot of fun doing it. If you're listening and your goal is to be a real estate investor, you don't need to be the best real estate agent of all time to become an investor. Know what you want to do. This, to me, is a great example of someone who 1,000% should be in this business, and you've proven that consistently over a long period of time. So for those who hear me bash on being an agent, That was not a fit for what I was trying to do. Lucas mapped out where he wanted to go and then you did the darn thing.

Yeah. Yeah. And I think, I think I agree. I agree with you 100%. And I think I got into the investment side of the business a little late in my career. I wish I would have entered the investment side a lot sooner because to be honest, the margins are just a lot better. Plain and simple. You know, real estate margins are not the greatest. However, it's still— it's still a great career, man. I mean, like, you could be in your early 20s, and if you're willing to work, you could get into this and make six figures your first year, and you could learn the business that way, and you could learn investing and a little bit about developing, and you could learn, you know, who the players in a marketplace are. It's, it's still a great career. I just think that for, you know, eventually you want to grow out of it, right? You're— I would highly— I see all the big real estate teams nationwide, like the really massive teams, they're all slowly getting into the investment side in terms of doing some wholesaling, some flipping, So I think, I think to get into where the future of real estate is going, what I've noticed is a lot of, a lot of bigger teams nationwide are actually getting bigger. In the last few years, we've had this, you know, the industry really, it really shrunk in a lot of ways. So for example, like one of my top producers used to have his own team. And now he's on my team, right? So, you see teams getting bigger. And I think with that comes a huge opportunity for ancillary businesses, you know, for off-market, for insurance, for title, for escrow, for mortgage. So, yeah, it's exciting times.

Now, this is actually a really good transition point. The future of real estate, and you're on the residential side, you know, mostly single-family. You invest in multifamily. But you're seeing— I mean, front lines, you're seeing a lot of the changes that are in place. And you just said it is not the same game it was. We're seeing a lot of teams merge. You're seeing a lot of— I call it kind of corporatizing, where you get systems where, like my company, I have in-house property management, we have the investment, I have the education branch, I have the media branch. Like, I have multiple companies within one. We're seeing a lot of people go this route where you have efficiencies in building teams and combining businesses and creating a bigger engine. I don't think real estate, even 3 years from now, is going to look like it does right now. We've already seen massive changes nationally to how commissions are treated. Yeah, technology is taking off. Yeah. As someone, you know, doing 700+ transactions, I mean, you're in this every single day. What do you see happening over the next 5 or so years in residential real estate?

Yeah, I think, I think it's going to be completely different than what it is today. And of course, a lot of this is speculation, but it's educated speculation. Right. But no one knows for sure. But what I think where we're going to be is I think the role of a realtor, I know for me and our team, we're a lot more involved and way more of an advisor than we were 10 years ago. Like, my realtors have to understand taxes, at least the basics. They have to understand, hey, what's the stock market performing and how does— how is real estate a better performing asset class? So I think the role of a realtor has already changed so much in the last 9 years in terms of how competent they have to be. I think in the next 5 to 6 years, I think our role is going to be a lot more of consultants. I think individuals are going to be able to have their phone and go tour a house if they want to. And once they have questions or once they have interest, I think boom, they'll get connected with the top realtor and have a Zoom call with that realtor. So if you think about that, I think I think the future of residential real estate sales, I think I'll be sitting in an office like this having 15 to 20 Zoom calls in a day and not having to show houses and really being more of an hourly advisor to someone who's looking to purchase real estate. I also think there's going to be a big growth in, in services, and they already exist in services where you could go and just essentially toss your keys because you don't want to deal with the traditional hassle of selling a home. I sit down with clients, with sellers now, and they essentially have 3 options every time. Option number 1 is I'll give you a cash offer today. You toss me the keys. You don't have to do anything, but you're going to sell that home at about a 30% discount. You don't pay any realtor fees. You don't have to do anything. You don't have to move. You close whenever you want. You're done. Option number 2 is same scenario, except it's a company buying your house at about a 12% discount, right? And what this company's going to do is they're going to come in, renovate it, relist it. And then there's the traditional method of selling real estate, which is we come in, we figure out, okay, what renovations need to be done, what repairs need to be made. In order to maximize your home's value. By the way, we'll lend you the money to go and make these repairs, and we'll manage the project for you in order for you to list and get top dollar. The downside of that is it takes time, it takes energy, it's going to take a few months before you get your money out. I think in the future of real estate, I think it's going to, it's going to be a lot more efficient as to how people trade real estate. Mm-hmm. You know, it's going to become— it's going to become a lot more like a car, right? You go in a dealership, you toss your keys, you're like, here's the car, I want that one. Great. You drive out with it. Real estate is not quite there, but I think it will be. I think it will be.

With your 3 options. Mm-hmm. What does the average person do? Are most people still on the more traditional, like, hey, let's get this thing fixed up and get it listed? Or do people actually take option A or B more often than I think.

You know, it's crazy. Probably about 15 to 20% of consumers are opting in for option A or B, which is more than what it used to be in the past.

That's right. And is that just that kind of Netflix mentality of like, hey, we can just— we can have it right now?

And it's interesting because I'll give you an example. I have a deal that I'm going to be purchasing with a partner It's a great deal. We're buying it at a discount. The seller is a doctor. He owns it outright. He just doesn't want it. He has two tenants. It's a single-family home in a dadu. He has tenants. He doesn't want to deal with it. He's like, I just want to cash out, take my money, go buy stocks, buy a new house for me and my family. I want to deal with it. So, you know, I— and now I would say, I think this also has something to do with it. The fact that the market is not as hot as it once was, because when I think back to when it was really hot, 2019, 2020, every seller wanted top dollar. They did not want the convenience of a cash offer. They wanted to go on market and see how many offers they could get. I think because the market kind of slowed down a little bit, I think we're seeing more sellers opt in for the convenience instead of top dollar.

And I, I, this is actually a really interesting thought because I haven't, I haven't thought about this as much in residential, but the convenience, we have become accustomed to that, right? In the past several years, we have DoorDash to get your food to your house for a nominal fee. You can go to Carvana and have your— you don't even have to go to the dealership to toss your key, right? They can bring the car to you, right? Do we just culturally shift to a thing where we actually do see a lot of people who do have money, like your doctor friend, And it's like, hey, you know what? Convenience is great. I have enough money. A 25%, 30% discount's acceptable. I can turn this into cash right now. It's over. It's off my hands. Do you think culturally we're moving that direction, or is that just primarily a result of a slower market?

I think we are moving that direction. I think, I think people are willing to pay a premium for convenience. And I think that premium that folks are paying are going to become less and less as more companies get in that space. For example, Zillow, a few years ago, they tried the whole home buying program where they essentially just buy the house off of you. They lost a lot of money. They were not successful in that, right? But I think, I think some company, Opendoor, maybe one of these companies are going to crack the code and they're going to be able to make it pretty damn convenient to where a person is taking just a small discount for the convenience. And for a lot of consumers, that's attractive. If you got kids, if you got a chaotic life, you don't want people through your house. You don't want— it's just a lot of hassle, right? It's a lot of hassle. So I think, I think the successful realtors and the successful teams will be able to provide all the options to a consumer. Right. Which I think is one of the things that have made us pretty successful is we don't have just one option. Sell your house. We have several options. What fits you, your lifestyle and your goals better? Our job is to find the solution for you regardless of what it is.

And I like this trend because what this results in is you have consolidated teams. You have— you don't have 23,000 agents in Washington State competing for the same deals. You end up with less people with a higher pedigree, you have more options, you're a more specialized unit, right? And what it does is that actually has a really good clean-up effect on the industry by bringing more options and more specialists.

And our industry is so fragmented. And you know how frustrating it is if you're— if you're somebody who truly put the hours in and you're a master of your craft and some schmuck just gets licensed and— right, it just makes us look bad. But I know plenty of, of really high-caliber, competent realtors, and there's no shortage of business for those guys. And it's only fair. I just think the entry barrier is so low here compared to other places. Right. And I think that kind of becomes part, part of the, part of the issue. So I'm all for these changes. You know, the NAR settlement, I was— we're celebrating all these things. You know, for us, it's, it's only helped us. It's only helped our growth. And I think it's kind of raising the bar on a very fragmented, confusing industry.

I absolutely agree. And one of the big things— and this is, this is one of the signs I just— you see this with successful people everywhere. The people who can change and adapt the fastest make the most money. I've worked for the CoStar Group for years.

Oh, is that right?

Okay. Most money I ever made was when they would do a major change, a major acquisition. They would screw with the comp plan. And what happens is out of 300 reps, 290 of them would complain about the new comp plan and the changes and how they're not going to make any money. And the other 10 of us made all the money for about 3 months while everyone was complaining about how they weren't going to make money. We would go, okay, well, under this new plan, what is incentivized and how do we sell it all before everyone else does? Yeah. And it's like that in every single industry. I have never seen an industry where it's not like that. Yeah, those who can adapt to change, positive or negative change. If you adapt first, you usually make a whole lot of money and you move forward and you take market share. Yeah. I mean, you said exactly what I would expect someone who's doing really well in business to say is like, we're celebrating the NAR thing. A lot of people complained about it. You came in and said, hey, guess what? Less competition. People are confused. We're just going to go ahead and just play by— you play the game where the goalposts are. Exactly. If they move the goalpost, you'll go play over there.

Yeah, and they will, they will move the goalposts and they will move the goalposts.

The only thing I can promise you, they will get regulations in and it will happen in business and taxes will change regardless of who is in the presidency. Whoever has the office, it doesn't matter. Yeah, there will be changes and you can complain about them or you can go ahead and just continue playing the game under the new rules. Yeah, I absolutely love that. That's actually one of my favorite little takeaways from this. I hear that and I'm just like, one of the best life lessons I've had is watching that as a sales rep, just being like, wow, it really is like 290 out of 300 people. Yeah. Will just get crushed by the smallest changes.

Yeah. Yeah. And the crazy thing is, I feel like COVID and I feel like COVID really messed people up, man. COVID made people not be able to take on adversity and want to challenge themselves, right? Like it's, it's, I feel like as a culture, we used to be a culture that would welcome a challenge. Now at the first sign of adversity or change or struggle, people just completely throw in the towel and look for someone to blame. And I think that's, I think that's a problem, you know, I think it, I think it hurts the individual more than anyone, anything else. You know, if you carry through life with that mentality, you're going to struggle, you're going to have a difficult life.

You know, this is interesting. I think this still falls into the same rule of like, yeah, most of the people, like most people absolutely froze. They stopped trying at their job. You know, I had so many friends who I grew up with, who was like, during the workday, they just wouldn't do anything. They're working from home. They're like, hey, well, what are we going to do? Everything shut down. But then you see those, those same, those same 10 people in my example from, from my prior company.

Mm-hmm.

You see so many entrepreneurs who launched these amazing businesses out of that time. I mean, even my real estate investing, I want to be a real estate investor for years. I had the time to sit at home for 5 minutes and go, Wait a second. Now that I'm not, you know, just wake up, go to the office, come home, go to bed. I had time to think and I went, I've been trying to be a real estate investor. Guess what I've done? I bought 2 duplexes. What am I doing?

This is the time to do it. This is the time to do it.

We scaled in that time. We scaled to over 150 rental properties from 4. No, my income went from $250,000 to $50,000.

Like, I love it, man. And you know what I love about that is that winners find a way to win regardless of the circumstances. You know, if you look like what you just described is like, okay, COVID, for a lot of people, that was the reason to not do anything. For you, that was the reason to take action. You were finding reasons to do the thing. While I think there's a lot of people finding reasons to justify not doing anything. And I think, you know, I think really, man, that is a mindset thing, right? That is the 6 inches in between your ears that I think a lot of entrepreneurs and I think a lot of business people haven't really fully sorted that, you know? And I think it's so critical in whatever you go try to do. Information is everywhere, but implement it. Like how many people actually implement you could go and start a business today just off what they probably find off of your YouTube channel. They, they, you could probably start a very successful business just from free stuff you find online.

Yeah.

Very few people will do it.

And that's the funny thing. You can give people the path, but it's so, it's so often that they won't choose to take the steps. I, I think the simplest thing that one could do is if you have a goal, go out and meet the people who have already done the thing you want to do. Like, just get in the same room with them, paid or unpaid, doesn't matter. You can do it for free. I did it for free when I didn't have any money. But you get in front of the people who've done the thing you want to do. You want to buy 100 rentals? Go find your market and interview the few people who have 100 rentals there. You move from an outsider to an insider. But most people presented with that will not make that phone call, will not get out there, and won't meet those people, even knowing that, okay, well, that is the most efficient path. Yeah, 99% of listeners to this podcast are listening right now. You're not going to do anything. You just won't. Regardless what you hear, this podcast is for the 10, 20, 30 of you who are going to hear this and go, wait a second. Yeah, maybe there's something we can do now. I think that mindset— different people are geared different ways. So I think there is some people who are natural sales reps or some people who have some inclinations, but I don't think that that prosper from it through adversity. I don't think anyone inherently has that. I think that is a learned thing that you learn from pushing through adversity. Yeah. I'm curious if anything comes to mind for you where you learned that skill. Was there— were there a few points or a specific example where it's like, man, I learned that when I push through adversity, I pull ahead of everyone else and I move forward personally? How did you learn that skill?

Because that's, that's You know, that's rare. Yeah. And I think it's funny because if you saw how I grew up and how I was as a kid and growing up is so different than who I am today. And it's, there is something really rewarding about building the person that you really admire and you want to be. You know, I was, I was very shy, very timid as a kid. I'm pretty outgoing. I have no problem sparking up a conversation, looking someone in the eye. But these were all challenges that I had, like at different stages of life. I had to, I had to kind of, you know, I think I believe in this and it might sound woo-woo, but there's— if you, if you're listening to a real estate podcast, you don't have anything to do with real estate, but you're kind of intrigued by real estate. You're like, there's something interesting here, like something. Something is calling your name within that real estate thing. It is a calling, it is an interest. And I think a lot of the times what people fail to do is actually listen a little bit to that calling and say, I don't know why I like this real estate stuff, but let me take the next step. Let me go meet somebody. I really like this workout stuff. I don't know, but I'm really, let me try going to the, I think being bold enough to just listen to your intuition or that voice or that calling of something that interests you, I think that will show you the next step, right? The next challenge to overcome, the next lesson. And man, I mean, like through that, there's always challenges, there's always adversity, there's always points where you might think, oh, am I strong enough to handle this? Is this too much? Is this— if you just don't quit and you just keep showing up and you keep listening to the thing that you're still interested in, yeah, this real estate shit's pretty hard right now, but I'm still kind of interested. It's still— then just keep going. And before you know it, you look back and you're like, oh my God, I've been doing this for 9 years. I've done all this. Like, dude, I like, I look back, I'm 32 now. I look back and I'm like, dude, 11 years I was driving a '92 Ford Escort, dead broke. You know what I mean? It's kind of crazy when I like, I'm like, I'm not where I want to be, but I'm like, shit. I've like, it's kind of crazy when you just follow the path without, without overthinking it. And without trying to have it perfect, you know. Um, and it's also enjoyable, you know, that, that journey should be enjoyable.

Well, that's, that's something I, I, I mentioned this actually, uh, we just filmed a podcast right in front of this, right before this, where we talked about the same thing. But I, I absolutely love this. There are so many ways to make money in business. Real estate, there's there's 100 ways to make money in real estate and all of them work. Yeah, some, some better than others. But there's unbelievable amounts of ways to make money in real estate that you can make money in any business. Enjoying the adventure, choosing something that you're called to and passionate about. It could be anything. But it's hard to be— being a real estate agent to the level that you are building a team, you're an entrepreneur, you're a CEO, you're not, you're not a real estate agent, you're not a broker, you're an entrepreneur, you're CEO. When you're running a company, and you're organizing people, there's stress, there's turnover, it's hard. And if it's not fun, there's other, there's other ways to make a lot of money there. There really is. Choose something that you're going to enjoy enough, and you're passionate enough about, where when it gets hard, it's worth pushing through. Right? I happen to be someone who loves buying real estate. I love Even when you get a whole bunch of hate online as a landlord, actually, especially, I think that's my favorite part. Personally, I have a lot of fun with those.

You get a lot of hate online.

Oh, unbelievable. Especially so I'm— I, we do about 20% of my portfolio is Section 8 and subsidized housing. And we are super good at renovating. So like our thing and what I feel good about, like I'm passionate about this. We go into cities that have a significant amount of unplaced vouchers the prior year. So like you have a low-income housing need that you are failing to meet. Yeah. I love renovating properties. We'll actually buy slummy properties, we'll make them very nice. My camera decided it's done, apparently. So we're back to the issue I had last time. Everyone, welcome to the lame camera. We're not gonna let that stop us. Have fun looking at my nose for those watching on YouTube. But I'm so passionate about solving the housing problem. We have below market rent, above market places. We can compete and fix up things. We can help communities and homelessness, and we make a bunch of money doing it. And when it gets hard and when there's adversity, I fall back on, I love what I do. And what I do has a meaningful impact on my employees. It has a meaningful impact on my life. It has a meaningful impact on the communities that we serve. And so when people harass us online for whatever, 'cause people love doing that. It feels so good. It is fun. I'm like, I'm like, this is— you're someone who's missing out. And here's the point.

Here's the— here's the crazy thing. I could see people hating. And you found a way— you found a way to do something difficult, which is to pull several parties' best interests and align it all to one place to where everyone involved wins. The tenant wins, the city wins, you win, your contractors win, everybody fucking wins. And some fucking loser sitting on his couch eating Cheetos is seeing that and just hating. Just because, like, from a logical standpoint, it's like what you're doing is a massive service. It's a hard thing to do, to align incentives for several people and make sure that everyone gets out of that better off. That is not an easy thing to do, but someone is unable to do that. So what they, they'll type on the keyboard and just dish out some hate. That, it's a crazy world we live in, man. It's a crazy— like, it's, you know, things, things have flipped a little bit.

And you know what's great about that? When you are getting hate for something you do, I think that is a good indicator you're probably doing something interesting. Because what, what we saw, we've already said COVID, so whatever flags you're gonna get for saying that, it's already happened. So like during COVID we use that as a perfect example. Those, you had so many people just shut down, and those are the people who are sitting on their keyboards who have time to dislike what you're doing. And if you weren't doing anything interesting, they wouldn't have a comment about it. And so I think one of the first things, or I'm just, I get so excited about this, I'm like, boy, when you know you're having positive impact and you're making win-wins and you have a successful business and then people don't like it, that is the first sign where you're like, you know what, I think we've done it. I think we're on the side of success where that— yeah, using the CoStar example, I'm not one of the 290 people who are complaining about what's not working. We're one of the 10 people who are making a boatload of money doing the right thing and moving the company forward, which is what we're here to do. Take that mindset into being an entrepreneur, I mean, you really become fairly unstoppable. I think we have such a squishy society, especially if you're a younger entrepreneur. If you're someone coming up through Gen Z or whatever the next one is. Yeah, you're coming through these. Yeah, really soft competition. You will steamroll everyone if you have a little bit of drive and dedication.

100%. 100%, dude. And I know a few, I know a few of these younger cats, like these kids, some of these fucking kids are smart nowadays, man. I've seen, I've been to some events where these kids are like 20, 21 years old, a 20-year-old at an event that's like $5,000. And they took their money instead of going to college and they're like, I'm gonna pay for mentorship for all these areas that I'm actually interested in. And some of these kids are like, if they get serious and they put down the fucking TikTok and they actually go and roll up their sleeves to go put some work, man, some of these kids are so getting so far ahead. But the recipe is the same. You know, the recipe is the same. Like the recipe is like at the end of the day, someone's got to do some fucking work. There's some sort of value that needs to be provided. I think social media And the news and the narrative has made people think that, well, yeah, rah, rah. No, at the end of the day, like there's value. You need to be better. You need to do more. Work needs to be done. Problems need to be solved. And sorry, you don't feel good today, but world goes on, you know? And it's like that there's, we have to adjust a little bit. You know, I think we've skated too far in one direction. We got to bring it back to reality a little bit.

I agree. But man, if you are, if you are by any chance a young entrepreneur or a beginning entrepreneur, even if you're just trying to compete, it is a great time to get in with a mindset of like, let's just get out here and win.

Oh, you— I tell, dude, I tell newer realtors, I had a conversation yesterday with a guy who's like, hey, I'm considering— he has 2 kids, sharp guy, reached out to me. He said, hey, you know, I've been in real estate for 4 months part-time. I have a corporate job. I got a job offer for Amazon to make $180,000 a year with stock options. The stock options are included in that $180,000. And he was like, should I do real estate? It's always been a dream of mine. I'm I'm like, dude, like, to be honest, if you get into real estate and you take it really seriously, you make a lot more than $180,000.

A lot more.

It's just like you have to take it seriously and you have to have a— like, you could show up in some jobs and be a little bit kind of like, you know, for a whole week, right? Like, you could kind of show up, fly under the radar, do a little bit of work and not get fired. Being a business owner, being an entrepreneur, there is no hiding. You have to provide the value. You have to do the thing. You have to build, right? And it's so honest. And I love that, you know? And I love that because it's like, it's a real exchange of value, you know? So yeah.

I love that. Final thoughts. I really think it's valuable. To spend some time talking about the things that we've done as an entrepreneur that have been costly. A big part of me for the owner meeting, it's like, yes, learning from other people's success. It's been basically what our whole episode ended up being about, which is great. The mindset, the things that worked. There are some things in my career where it's just like, man, had I done things a little differently. I bought a resort at one point and I was like, that, that was total distraction for the rest of my business. It made, it made money, but I, I haven't enjoyed it at all. It distracted from everything else because I got shiny object syndrome. In you building your business to where it is today, what was your highest— we call it the stupid tax. When you, when you're, when you're starting a business, there's things you don't know you don't know. What was the most expensive lesson that you learned, monetary or emotional? Sometimes it's like we burned a friendship, sometimes it cost me a million dollars. It What is it for you?

Oh, there was, I've took so many licks in my 9 years. You know what I mean? Like, it's like, you know, I could think of 2. One was, one I actually learned this year. And by the way, I look back on these things and I'm like, what a blessing. You know what I mean? Like, what a lesson I got to learn. Because like, you take a big haymaker like that. You learn, you get punched in the mouth, you're going to learn to protect yourself a little better. The first one that really hurt emotionally is a few years back, my team, I was really building out the team. My team was, was the biggest it had been at the time, about 15 or 16 realtors. And I, you know, I've always harnessed or tried to harness a culture and we were all friends. You know, like these, my COO was at my house having dinner with me a week and a half before I left out of the country, right? And I left out of the country and I thought everything was fine. And I was, you know, on my flight, I was chatting with some of the people on the team and I had gone to Mexico for a vacation for 10 days. And during those 10 days, my COO took everyone out to lunch and took everyone out individually. And try to get everyone to start a new company with her. And realtors are an individual. Yeah, they're, they're ICAs, independent contractors. Right. And about 5 or 6 of them chose to do. I found out once I got back in the country and it was a fire drill because she had access to my whole database, everything. Right. And that was, that was a big, that was a big heartbreak and also a big, I had this illusion that, you know, a lot of the people, I had this illusion that people that I do business with, we were going to be in business forever. And I've learned that some people that might be the case, some people might travel down the road for a few years and some people are just flat out pieces of shit. And you need to be able to tell who's who. So that was a big lesson for me. Luckily, we recovered and everything worked itself out. The second big lesson that was a big financial one this year, and this is a common theme that I'm realizing for me, I tend to, some people need to verify first before they trust. I tend to trust first and then verify later. I have a more, I tend to see the best in people and at times that bites me in the ass. I hired a contractor for a flip this year. He came recommended by a group of friends. We were in somewhat a similar circle. And I was so busy with other deals and everything else. And I let this guy handle the project thinking, and this was my fault for not micromanaging and not setting crystal clear expectations. Long story short, I paid this guy something like $270,000 and we had to redo most of the work that he did on this flip. I mean, it was just, it was flat out theft to a certain extent. You know, the, the, the, The scope of work was just so poor. And I didn't manage how I should. I didn't get the agreements in place as tightly as I should. I didn't disperse payments, verifying the work like I should have done. I just blindly trusted them. And that was a $270,000 loss.

And those happen. And I've had a similar one with handling legal where they just didn't really get anything done. But boy, try, try disputing a legal bill against a lawyer. Unless you are a lot richer than I was at the time, there's not much you can do. They're pretty good at collecting regardless of work done or contract signed. So I've felt that pain and contractors can be very expensive and also very bad. That's the big thing. And that's a lesson worth learning. If you guys are newer in business, you want to learn from people who've had some mistakes.

It—

you have to trust other people at some point to grow your business. Otherwise you're stuck as a solopreneur and it's just you and you can't build a team. You have to trust people. That being said, to some extent, everyone will lie. Now, is it to save a child's life or is it to make $2? I want to— you need to figure out where that level of trust needs to be. Because some people will try to screw you over over $2, and some people are worth having in your— on your team. So your ability to identify that, I think, is huge. That's a great lesson, and, uh, one that I know everyone, uh, regardless of how many times you hear this in a podcast, to some extent you're gonna have to learn it on your own.

Everyone gets burned by someone at some point in business, by someone at some capacity, and you get better at it. You, you get better at setting up guardrails. You get better at trusting but verifying, at putting agreements and micromanaging. And it's just part of growth, man. It's part of business, you know? So that was a good lesson.

Great lesson. Speaking of success and growth in business, one on this. Winner's Circle. You actually have a group that I find this very interesting. This is a community model. And I have the privilege to interview a lot of people who have a lot of different programs.. And there's some, you know, some people have courses, some people have mentorships. We really do screen to not have terrible gurus on here. So if I'm going to have someone on here talk about their program, it's because they're actually doing something that is interesting and legitimate. And we talked about this before hopping on the podcast, and I love the concept of the Winner's Circle because it just feels— it feels authentic. It's real. It's simple. But tell us a little bit about what the Winner's Circle is because I think it actually fits into totally what we talked about on this podcast with mindset and authenticity and what is the winner's circle?

Yeah. So I don't think any of us need more information. I think we're drowning in more information and more content and more news and more things and more. I think we need better implementation and we need to be better. I think that's the thing that is missing. All the Winner's Circle is, and this is the same program that completely changed my life. And all the Winner's Circle is, is a program that will hold you accountable to things that will actually make you a better person and will get your subconscious mind to trust yourself. Most of us don't trust ourselves. The reason why you're not going to go start that business, because you don't trust yourself. The reason why you're not going to buy that property is because you don't trust and believe in yourself. That is a fact, dude. So the program is centered around mindset, fitness, and real estate. Real estate comes last because there's no real estate if the person is not— if they're not able to take action on the small things Good luck running a business. So the program is pretty simple. We have, you know, we create certain habits that we want each person to execute on. And then we track, it's an app, it's very easy to use. And we just track your adherence to the program. And the program is simple, but there's something really special that starts to happen over time. If you get yourself to go to the gym, every single day for a month when you said you would, if you get yourself to eat the right foods every day for a month when you said you would, if you get yourself to check off these little boxes, you're going to be a different person. You're going to have a different energy about you, a different level of confidence about you. Once that builds, now you're ready to go start a business. Now you're ready to go do real estate. Why? Because you could count on yourself to do the things even when you don't want to do the things. So that's essentially the Winner's Circle. It's a small group. It's a, it's, um, we do a group coaching call every Saturday and it's just a cool little community, man. And I feel like, I feel like it brings me, I'm just humbled to be part of it, to be honest. You know, I'm humbled to be part of it. I'm humbled to, to have some sort of impact in the people that are in there. And I've watched a lot of those guys completely change their lives. I've watched people drop bad vices. I've watched people make money. I've watched a guy be 200 pounds of like just fat and disgusting to jacked, right? Like not the same fucking person, dude. You go from being 220 pounds to having a six-pack. Like his energy is different, his, you know, so it's knowing I've had some little small part in that, that is pretty rewarding. That's, I think that's part of my obligation to pass it on to some extent.

That's absolutely amazing. And Lucas, if you share a link to that and anyone listening to this wants to connect, I will put that in the show notes here. So people look below below for wherever you're listening or watching to this podcast. And if you're watching on YouTube, it'll be super easy for you, it'll be right down in the, uh, in the section below. Lucas, thank you so much for joining us today. Everyone listening, by the way, you made it all the way through. This has been like 50 minutes and you're still here. So I think it's probably worth subscribing because we do a whole lot more of this. You want to get connected with business owners, people who are winning the real estate game. I mean, this is where we're going to do the owner meeting for you. It's the easiest thing in the world. So get your takeaways, get your mindset right. Lucas has this on lockdown, dude. Privileged to have you on. Appreciate your time. Thank you, everyone. We'll see you on the next episode.