Reasons Why You Need To Focus On Your Strengths | AOPI Passive Income Land Investing Podcast

Hey, it's Mark Podolski, the land geek with your favorite niche real estate website, www.thelandgeek.com and today's guest. This is actually the second time I've been fortunate enough to talk to our guests. But before I introduce our guests, I'd be remiss if I didn't properly introduce my co host, the brain, the professor, your flight school sherpa, Scott Todd from Scott todd.net landmodo.com if you're automating your Craigslist and your Facebook postings, posting domination.com TheLandgeek Learn anything about anything. Investorninjas.com Scott Todd, how are you, Mark?

I'm great. How are you?

I'm great. I'm great. And I'm really excited to talk to our guest again because I think, you know, we talk to experts and we talk to, you know, lots of people from all walks of life that have, you know, been super successful and in their own journey. But what I love about our guest today is that he's kind of making it all about you. Like, he's like, look, I know I've been successful in real estate, but now let's talk about you. So our guest today is Mike Simmons from mikesimmons.com He's a professional real estate investor since 2008. He's got a new book coming out called Level Jumping. I'm very excited to talk about level Jumping. But his podcast, Just Start Real estate Podcast, is amazing. It's for all those newbies that need to get over that fear to take action and just start. Mike Simmons, good to see you again, my friend.

Guys, thanks for having me on. I'm excited to be back again for a second time. It's been quite a while, so a lot's happened. So there's a lot to talk about, for sure. And I couldn't be more thrilled to be back on the show.

Yeah. So what's been going on? Mike, fill us in.

Wow, there's a lot. We spoke. I didn't go back and look before we hopped on here. It's been several years. There's no doubt about it. And back when I was on your show last year, I believe I was mostly house flipping. I was a house flipper. That was really the way that I was planning on scaling my business. But like, everyone knows and I think we're all becoming intimately aware, life throws things at us sometimes that we're not expecting. Things change, plans change. You have to make some decisions and whether or not you want to continue forward, the way you're going. And I switched up my model a little bit. So we turned. Turned my business into more of a wholesaling machine. Still doing some flips. It's a skill set that I have, and I like to do that. But we started doing a lot more wholesaling, started buying some properties and holding them. So we diversified our activities a little bit and kind of moved toward more of a velocity. And by velocity, I mean by wholesaling, where things are kind of coming in and out of our business a little faster. And that's what happened. And there's a whole story behind that. There's a whole lessons to be learned of why I did that and exactly why it made sense for me. And then sometimes when you change your course a little bit, you realize it suits you better, too. And the business that I have today, while it looks totally different than the business I had last time we talked, it suits my personality better. And I've become much more aware of how I'm wired than I was last time. I mean, as we get older, we all kind of learn about ourselves. But there was certain parts of my personality that I just kept trying to, you know, when people say a lot of times, like, work on your strengths, not your weaknesses, like, accentuate your strengths and kind of work on your weaknesses when you can, but, like, focus on becoming better at what you're great at. And I really embraced that over the last several years and learned what it is that I'm really good at, and more importantly, probably learned what I'm not great at. And a lot of that is the impetus for me writing a book. And just my podcast has changed a little bit. I know what I'm good at and I know what I'm not. And I think it's important that everyone take stock of that. And I've done it through various means. I mean, there's personality tests and things like that. But I started. One thing I started doing that really made me. It opened my eyes is I've hired more in the last. Since we've talked, I've hired people. I've heard a lot of people had to fire people and had people leave. And through that process, when you're trying to figure out how other people are wired, you learn how you're wired, too. So there's definitely some stock that I took in myself and realized, you better get on board with what you're not good at because you're holding yourself back in certain areas. And that was key for me to accelerate my business over the last five or six years.

Scott. Todd, what are your thoughts?

You know, it's funny because one of the things I think that people often do that's a mistake is that they double down on the stuff that they're not good at.

Right.

You know, it's nice to hear what Mike's saying about, you know, taking the stuff that you're good at and leaning into that stuff. I mean, Mark, how many times do you know somebody that they go out and they're like, hey, so what are you doing with your business? And they're like, oh, man, I've been creating a logo and setting up my webpage. It's like, oh, are you a graphic designer? No. Do you do websites? No, but it's taken me, like, hundreds of hours to do this. And you go. You're like, but why? Because we like to double down on the stuff that we're no good at. Really? As opposed to, like, here, let me just write a check to the stuff I'm no good at. Let me write the check. It's gonna be a much better finished product. It's gonna look better. It's gonna save me a lot of frustration, pain, and I can go focus on the stuff that's gonna really count or that I'm really, really good at. So, you know, it's nice to hear what Mike's saying about doubling down on the stuff that makes sense.

Well, Mike, let me just ask you, you know, why. Why wholesaling? Like, what do you like about it? Like, walk us through the model. What. First of all, what is wholesaling? And then how do you do it? Like what? Talk to us a little bit about your benefits of velocity.

Yeah, I will. And I'll actually take one step further backward and I'll explain why I made a switch in my model. And it kind of helps articulate why I like it. So there was a period of time about 6 years ago I was flipping. That's what I did. I didn't even really know what wholesaling was that much. I had an idea, but I had no clue logistically how that all worked. And I was flipping a house. A couple houses, actually, but one particular. And back then, I relied a lot on a realtor that I worked with to give me after repair values and to help me understand what it could sell for and that kind of thing. And I worked primarily with one crew of contractors. And during this project, my contractor, as contractors tend to do from time to time sort of flake out and they start overcharging, they stop showing up for the jobs. And this, this is, was a guy that I had worked with on probably 10 jobs, paid him on time, treated him well, like there was no reason for him to kind of do what he was doing. But he was flaking for some reason, something in his life, maybe, maybe got into money troubles, I don't know. But there was some issues there. And I realized by the end of the project I was going to have to find new contractors. This guy just obviously had broken my trust. He had been dishonest about some charges and things like that that I had found, so I knew I had to do that. And then the project was completed and we put it on the market. And it turns out the realtor that I had relied on heavily, exclusively to let me know what I could sell this thing for had missed it by a mile. Like just really missed it. And this was kind of a disaster situation. The renovation took too long, I got overcharged and now I wasn't even going to make what I thought I was going to make. It was worth way less than what the realtor had anticipated. So I was thinking, alright, at the end of this project, I'm gonna have to probably find a new realtor, new contractor. Like, I was at the fork in the road. And along that time I was still getting opportunities, I was still, you know, I was still pursuing opportunities. So deals were coming to me that I felt like I couldn't really take on because I didn't have a crew established and my realtor kind of flaked and I don't have a realtor's license. So I couldn't get on the MLS myself at the time. So I thought, okay, I have this opportunity. I went out and saw this homeowner got their house under contract, just part of the. I just kept conducting business that way. But when I got the house under contract, I thought, I don't really feel like I can move on this fast enough. But at the time six years ago, there was, there were house flippers that were just dying on the vine. They couldn't find deals. And I, and I knew all the house flippers from my local market. I was friendly with a lot of them. And I called this particular flipper up, who I knew had a really good business, very strong, he had funding, he was really good at what he did. And I said, listen, I've got this, this deal. I just, I just arbitrarily marked it up $15,000 from what I had signed it for the purchase agreement and said I bought it for 95. That was the purchase agreement 95,000. And I called him and said, would you be interested in this at 110,000? And he said, give me 10 minutes, let me do some due diligence. I'll get back to you. And he called me back shortly, and he's like, yeah, I'll do that. I love it. So I flipped the contract to him. Made a quick 15,000, by the way, in Michigan. 20,000 on a flip is pretty, pretty standard. Like, that's pretty much what you expect to make somewhere in that range, you know, 15 to 25, maybe 30 or 35 on a really good one. But that's kind of the range. So I thought, my goodness, I just made what I would normally almost make on a kind of a run of the mill flip. And I did it in like 10 minutes. Like, I made that money fast. You know, within a week or two.

It was with no headaches.

No. No headaches. No contractors, no realtors, no appraisers, no mortgage companies, none of that. And then another deal came. Same situation, almost an identical house in a very similar neighborhood. Called the same guy and said, I got another one. I marked that one at 15,000 and said, would you be interested? He said, give me a minute, Call me back. I'll take that one, too. I was like, whoa, this is fast. And I've cut out a lot of the things that kind of really frustrate me that are out of my control. And I said, I don't know that I want to do any more flips if I can do this. And then you realize as you kind of go down that path, you can't just rely on one guy. And there's, you know, so I had to expand that part of my business. But honestly, from that point forward, I never looked back. I finished out the flips that I had going, kind of struggled through those, got them, got them sold and done. And I didn't flip another house for a couple of years. I just. I went to a wholesaling model which wholesaling, for those of you listening who maybe are still like, I don't really get it. It's basically getting a house under contract, taking that contract to a house flipper or landlord, selling it at an increased price, you know, and you kind of make that money in the middle. They close on it. You don't have to buy the house. You don't need the funding for that, and you just make that finder's fee, for lack of a better term, in the middle. And that's kind of how I built my Business. And once I made that change, and I'm super impatient, and that's something I know about myself. And I used to try to go, oh, I'm not impatient. No, I'm not. I'm not patient. I'm very impatient. So getting these deals under contract, getting them sold right away and flushing them out and going to the next one just suits my personality. I did the flipping thing for a long time. Taking the ugly duckling and making it the beautiful swan. It is satisfying, but I did it and I was okay not, not having that part of my business anymore and just kind of turning and burning contracts. And that's how I. That's how I really hockey stick. Because at the end of the day, things are going to go wrong. Things are going to happen in your business. And if you don't love your business model, if you don't really enjoy the way your business is running, it's going to be a struggle. So you better get on board with liking what you're doing, because you'll give up otherwise. I think a lot of times that's why people, you know, they. They pursue the money, but they don't love what they're doing at all. So when it gets difficult, it's easy to just go to something else. So that's what I did. And I love it. I love. I mean, in my company, if you walk in and talk to anybody that works for me and say, what's something that just gets continuously repeated and pounded in your head? And what's the mantra around here? And it's speed. Speed. So it's all about speed.

Scott. Todd, what do you think?

No, Mark, you. You used to say a lot like, money loves speed, right? Like that, that was a, that was like a motto that you, you would say, like. And I think that what happens is I think people forget. I think that people forget that. Okay, so think about, like, our own businesses. We, we know people that mean that there is an excitement level to go full cycle on a deal, meaning that I go out and I mail an offer letter and I buy it. That's exciting right there. And then I turn around and I sell it. That's like a double dose. That's a double dose of excitement right there. Right? Because you went full cycle on this thing. And I'm not saying it's hard to do, because it's not. But what happens is there's a double dose of adrenaline that happens with that piece. But sometimes what happens is people, they struggle. Sometimes they struggle with one piece of the business. When they get going, right? It could be that they struggle with acquisition, with sales. Okay. And there's nothing wrong with struggles because again, think about what Mike was saying. Take your weaknesses and get rid of them. So if your weakness is land acquisition, go buy it wholesale. Do what Mike's like, Mike's selling land or selling houses wholesale, but go buy the land wholesale. Mike is really, really good at getting properties under contract at a good price. Great. And then there's somebody else that's really good at finishing the other piece of it. That's their dose of adrenaline, right? Like that's their hit. So think about what Mike's saying. Mike's saying that, you know, one, focus on what, what you like. Focus on your strengths. Two, he's saying it's okay if you take a piece of the piece. You don't need the whole pie. Okay? Like you can, you can share it with somebody else. So I think there's a lot of lessons here in this podcast for, for our audience of people that are looking for land investing. If you're not good at sales for land yet. Notice I use the word yet, because that can always change. Well, then buy it cheap and then sell it to people wholesale. Mark, you and I buy a lot of land wholesale.

So no, yeah, absolutely. I mean, I mean, simplify the model. You can land arb, you can wholetail. We have all these different models that make it so simple. Like eliminate one of the pieces of the business. If you don't like the marketing, sell it wholesale. If you're a deal junkie like Mike, then eliminate the marketing piece. But if you're not a deal junkie, buy it wholesale. And then maybe you love to the marketing of the sales, then do the wholetailing model. So there's a lot of lessons to be learned just from, from Mike's experience and I think that's great. So when you get this experience, you get this knowledge, you want to share it with the world. What's one of the best ways to share with the world? You write a freaking book. Mike Simmons, tell us about level jumping.

Would love to. Thank you. So when I. Right about the time that I switched my model up, at that time, a friend of mine was starting a mastermind of high level investors coming together to share their tips and secrets and strategies and everything they're doing. And in my local market, one of the worst things. This is a quote from an older movie, but people I think know it. Rocky III. So Rocky 3, his trainer tells him, the worst thing that can happen to you happen to you the worst thing can happen to a fighter is they get comfortable, they have success, and they lose their edge in my local market at that time when I was, I was flipping and kind of switching my model, I had a lot of local success and locally I was looked to as kind of a successful real estate investor. So I stopped looking farther down the road and I joined this mastermind of folks from all over the country who had a lot of success and learned that there's so much more that I could and should be doing in my business to actually really scale it up in a real way. So I met some folks in this mastermind who really opened my eyes to the possibilities of what I could actually turn my company into. And I did that. And in a short period of time, less than 12 months, I went from doing two or three deals a month, kind of on this quarter of a million dollar pace, and I scaled up to over a million dollars in gross profits within 12 months just by exposing myself to people who were just farther down the road than me. And they could show me the path they took, they can tell me what they did that wasn't great, the mistakes they made so that I could avoid them. And they kind of shortcut my learning by years by just kind of laying out what it is they did that worked and just following that model. I am the least creative person in the world. I would much rather talk to someone who's been where I, who is where I want to be or has been there and they can tell me what they did. So I did that. And I really. Hockey stick, I mean literally like hockey stick growth. And so since that time, I've talked about this on stage and on different other mediums. And people always say, well, what did you do? What did you do to do that? Right, that's the natural question. I would ask the exact same thing. And I've explained and kind of gone through it in great detail with people on an individual basis how I took my business from doing two or three deals a month to doing 10 to 12 or 15 deals a month. And so I thought, I repeat this all the time to people individually. People email me or whatever, catch me at events and talk to me. I should just put it in a book. I could just point to the book and go, here you go, I'll lay it out. You can get a lot more detailed and thorough in a book format. And I did that and just really laid out everything that I did in my business to accelerate it to the point that I was doing over a million Dollars in gross profits. And the beauty of it is it's not necessarily only applicable to real estate. It's. It's really just about scaling up a business. What. What does it take to scale a business? And most of the anecdotes and the stories in. In the book are real estate related because that's my experience. But honestly, the things that I did really could be applied to any business.

No, absolutely. I'm actually writing a book, or trying to write a book about how to scale your land business. The writing piece is a little tough now.

Yeah.

But that being said, so, you know, so often scaling is a mental game because at some point you gotta spend money to make money. And you know, the cheapest person you could hire is yourself. So at what point do you recommend people go to that level jump?

Yeah.

Okay, here's now the time to start investing and take that leap of faith.

Yeah, totally. So the level jumping part of the name. Because I really felt like I was. I could have called it level skipping because I felt like I was jumping levels exponentially with what I had learned. But when? When. That's a great question. The short answer is usually if you're asking yourself like, should I hire someone? I'm not sure if I should hire someone. You probably should have already hired them. You're probably behind a little bit. To be honest, I waited too long. But the best time to hire someone, who you hire and when you hire them is important. I think hiring a little sooner than you feel like you're ready is probably one thing, but the second thing is figure out what in your business you're either a bad at or. Or you are a bottleneck for. Because you're just not fast at it. You're not efficient at it. So the first person I knew that I learned that I was not a detail person. I'm just bad with details. You can give me any personality assessment and whatever portion of it measures your attention to detail. I will be off the charts bad. I know this. And I've taken a bunch of different tests and they all come out the same way. I'm not detailed. So the first person I brought into my company, we called them a transaction coordinator. Essentially what their job was is to take our contracts, submit them to the title company and get all of the title work done. Make sure the numbers are right, make sure that the charges are correct and everyone has the right paperwork being submitted, and LLC documents and, you know, divorce decrees and all these things that you have to have for the title process. They came in and Just made sure all of the details of the deal as it flowed through our company were being checked off. You know, the boxes were all being checked. I'm not good at that. I really gloss over detail. So I brought someone in who could do that for me. That was huge. One of the first things people I brought into was a salesperson. You talked about taking that, spending money to make money. And it's totally true. There are ways that you can be creative though when you bring people in my case, just to give you a for example, I am competent at sales. I'm not great at sales. And as competent as I may be, I don't enjoy it, right. So it's something I don't love. I'm not great at. I'm the business owner so I can mold myself into that salesperson I need to be. But I would literally go to someone's house, I would be in the driveway, I would park my car and I had to go, okay, here we go, here we go. Get your head right. Like I had to talk myself, I had to psych myself up into going in and doing what I had to do because I just don't love that process. So one of of the first people I hired was a sales guy and acquisitions. You talked about it. It's one of the hardest, but absolutely one of the most critical parts of the company. Right. It's very important. And a really good acquisitions person is not easy to find. It's a skill set and you can't dismiss that. So the first person I brought in was a sales guy. Now he came from the pharmaceutical sales sector. That's the kind of salesman he was. For the record, I've. I've met other people in my industry who've hired ex pharmaceutical sales reps who have crushed it. So it appears to be a little bit of a gold mine. But I brought him in. He was still working full time for the pharmaceutical sales company. He was an on the road sales guy. He told he was an absolute killer salesperson. And he was so good at his job. He had a lot of free time during the day day like he could go make his rounds and by the way, they were sending him to Hawaii because he was the regional, top regional salesperson. Like he was an absolute rock star in the company. And he had hours of his day that were completely. He was bored. So he came aboard on a part time basis. He was running appointments during the day, here and there for me, doing his job, getting awards at his day job, crushing it for me. He didn't need to make a lot of money from me because he had a day job, right? He wanted to get involved in the industry, but I could pay him on a commission basis. So I didn't pay him unless I made money. He was happy, he was learning, he was getting into an industry that he loved. And then once it made sense, he made the full transition into my company. And by the way, they sent him to Hawaii, they gave him a big award, had a big ceremony. He came back from Hawaii and gave him his two week notice and said I'm quitting. And they were like, they were blown away because he was making tons of money and getting tons of accolades, but he just wanted to be in real estate. And I was able to bring him on that part time commission. So it really didn't cost me anything if I wasn't, if he wasn't producing for me. So there's ways to do it. There are folks out there that work that could do something part time on the side because they work from home or whatever and they can, they can, you can insert them into your company and make that leap when it makes sense. And that's what I did. But hiring for what you're bad at, where you're creating bottlenecks is absolutely critical. And like I said, if you're ask, if you've been asking yourself for a while, like, I think I might need to hire someone. I'm not sure. I think so, but I'm not like you probably should that you probably have reached the point where you need to do it.

Scott Todd?

Well, I mean, I think that is one of the myths that people tell themselves when it comes to hiring people. One is that, you know, like, oh, it's going to cost me a lot of money. The reality is you not hiring cost you way more money. I mean, as an example, you know, like people that do work for me, they don't work. I mean some of them work on an hourly basis, but they're not sitting in an office working 40 hours a week. Right? You know, like I've got, I've got somebody that does a job for me. It takes them about three hours a week. I pay them $4 an hour, $12 a week. And it's my list scrubber. I pay $12 a week for my list scrubber, okay. So they give me the names that we need and you know, they keep the list in tune. So we're always mailing $12 a week. Now let's put that into perspective. What is my time worth? Let's say that you used your corporate gig and looked at how much you're paid per hour, which I think is a mistake, but let's just go with that. Most people listening to this, they might be making 25, 30, 50, $100 an hour. So to pay someone $12 a week, it's a snap of your time, right? Like, it's minutes of your time, but you're getting three hours. It's called arbit. It's leveraging someone else's time for your time and what your time is worth. And the reality is that, Mark, we've talked about this. I may not be good at list scrubbing. It's stupid simple. But is that where I make my money? No, man. I make my money doing something else. So take your time and put it to where you're making money and get rid of the stuff that's not making you money, and you'll make more money. That's it? Yeah.

I mean, it's such a common theme, and, you know, it's such a different mindset. I'm like, look, if you want to be wealthy in this lifetime, which everyone's, you know, whenever I ask that question, like, do you really want to be wealthy? Like, it's really simple. You get three lever points. You got to use other people's time, other people's money, right? And really software. And that's it. It's really that simple. Leverage those three key leverage points, and you can scale. But so often you got to get out of your comfort zone. It's hard to ask somebody for money or you think it is, it's not, but you think it is. And then it's hard to hire and train. But once that. That hour or two is off your plate, it's off your plate forever. And then to start, you know, investing in software, it's. It's amazing. So, Mike, we're at that point now in the podcast where we're going to ask you for your tip of the week, a website resource, another book, something else actionable for the art of passive income listeners to go improve their businesses, improve their lives. What do you got?

All right, so here's what I got, and I talk about this in my book. It's another book, but I think it's an important one because if you ask me, like, boil down what you did to scale into, like, just a couple of, like, key things. Number one was hiring, and number two was creating systems and processes and running my business in a systematic way. So the book Traction by Gino Wickman, if you've not Heard of this book? It's a short read. It's an easy read. What it essentially is, they call it eos. It's an entrepreneurial operating system. It's really just a method, a simple method of running your business like a business. And too many of us, especially when we're starting out, we're a one man band, we're running around, we're doing everything. Everything we do is reinventing the wheel. We're not creating any sort of processes and systems and just applying processes and systems and creating a framework for my company and then bringing people in to support framework. I mean that, that's the secret sauce. That's, that's the majority of what it was.

Awesome. Before we go to Scott Todd's tip of the Week, we have talked about our sponsor. Today's podcast is sponsored by flight school. Learn how 16 weeks up the mountain of land investing can literally transform your life. It's a one time sale. You get passive income, no renters, no rehabs, no renovations, no rodents. Who else better than have Scott Todd be your Sherpa up that mountain, get you there quickly, safely, efficiently transform your life. Learn more. Just go to landgeek.com training schedule. Call with the zen master, Mike Zaino or dude buddy nightcap OG Scott Bossman. Okay, Scott Todd, what is your tip of the week?

You know, Mark, I see this happen all the time in flight school. I tell people, okay, it's time to start mailing. We go into LG Pass. We go, we do our mailings in week number three and they, they get stuck and then they have to share their screen with me. And when they go to share their screen me, guess what I see? I see a bajillion tabs open at the top. Like, we're all guilty of it. I know we are. I know you are. Right now I probably have like 10 tabs open. Why? I don't know. But check this out. My tip of the week, this Chrome plugin, I put it into the chat as well, but it's tab save. You can look at that in the Chrome store. And what happens is when you add it, it will just easily save all of your open tabs right to a file. So you can go in there and go, oh yeah, I want to go back to that one. And it's all there. You won't lose them, you won't lose your mind. I don't know, man. It just might help bring you clarity.

I like it. I love it. Well, you know, my tip of the week is going to help make you wealthy and so learn more, just go to mikesimmons.com, check out the book level jumping, check out the podcast. We even talked about the podcast. Just start real estate and listen to Mike talk to other people and inspire you to just even get started. So learn more, go to mikesimmons.com we'll have a link to it and go from there. So, Mike Simmons, are we good?

We're good, man. I appreciate you mentioning the podcast. You know, the real thing is when I was starting off, I was really, I'm an introvert by nature, believe it or not. And I would go to meetups, I would go places and I was afraid to ask questions because I felt stupid. So I wanted to create a resource, my podcast, for people who really had questions they needed to answer, they didn't know where to go. And you guys do the same thing like the service you provide here on this podcast. It's awesome because a lot of people just don't know where to go. They feel funny about asking questions. They don't want to be a bother and get somewhere to go to answer questions about the investing that they want to do. It's invaluable. So thank you for mentioning that. I appreciate it.

Yeah, no worries, Scott. Todd, are we good?

We're good, Mark.

Well, I want to thank the listeners because the only way, the only way we're going to get quality of guests like a Mike Simmons from MikeSimmons.com is if you do us three little favors. You got to subscribe, you got a rate, you have to review the podcast. Send us a screenshot of that review to support@thelandgeek.com we're going to send you for free the $97 wholetailing course, how to double your money 30 days or less. Mike just talked about the velocity and we're going to teach you how to do that same velocity in land investing, which you know is another good way that's like the, the gateway drug into these bigger deals with, with household sailing. So you can start there. Alright, well, Scott, you ready to do this?

I am, Yep.

One, two, three. Let freedom ring. Thanks, everybody.

Thank you.