The Wise Way From Hard-Knocks To Accomplished Success

Three. Hey, it's Mark Podolski, the land geek with your favorite niche real estate website, www.thelandgeek.com. and I'm really excited for today's guest for a bunch of different reasons. But before we talk to today's guest, I'd be remiss if I didn't properly introduce my co host, Scott Todd from scotttodd.net landmodo.com and most importantly, automating your Craigslist and your Facebook postings. Posting domination.com thelandgeekscott how are you, Mark?

I'm great. How are you?

Pulse is still normal, respiration is fine. Our guest is looking at me like, is this guy gonna walk on the treadmill desk the entire time? It's a little distracting, but you do.

You whatever you gotta do.

All right.

I think it's cool. I'm jealous, but go ahead.

Alright, well, let's talk to Grant Wise. Grant Wise is a serial entrepreneur and founder of Real Estate Marketing University, an online media training company. Grant is known to be a maverick leader and an innovative marketing strategist. Unafraid to lead companies in new directions. Grant's story is one of education, truth and perseverance. He's helped more than a thousand companies, entrepreneurs and business owners actualize their dreams through hands on learning. Grant has been described as irreverent, artful and dramatic, with a strong entrepreneurial spirit, constantly striving for results in his clients, businesses. Grant Wise, welcome to our Passive income podcast. How are you?

I'm good, Mark, man, thanks for having me. I appreciate it.

Yeah, no worries. So let's just rewind the tape and kind of tell us your origin story. How did you get into real estate?

100%. So again, thanks for having me. I appreciate it so much. Love the opportunity to come share value with your group. Yeah, I got my start back the ripe old age of 19. I was a college dropout. I went to college, played a little baseball and ended up with elbow surgeries 2 and 3. That was coming off of my first facial reconstruction from taking a fastball to the chin. So I kind of decided that baseball had taken a little bit more for me than I was ever going to get back. And so I grew up in real estate development. My step grandfather, he developed one of the only high rises, actually one of now three high rises that we've got in town, was working on a condo project out at the lake that was very Lake of the Ozarks esque that he had to fight to get approved. Everybody in my family I think held A real estate license in some capacity. My grandfather helped develop what's now known as Bella Vista, Arkansas, which is a huge community that's blossomed in the area. So I come from a long line of people in that space. And basically what happened IS I was 18, going on 19, and come back home from my first semester at college. And obviously I had a little bit of an issue with the school part of it. I was all game for the baseball part of it, but the school part of it just. It wasn't really suiting. And so I come home, I say, hey, look, I have zero interest in this whole school thing. You know, I'm trying to figure something else out. And my parents said, you know, hey, if you don't go to school and get your education, you're basically going to be a loser and nobody's going anything to do with you, and you're never going to get anything figured out in life. This is all coming from a few parents that had never gone to college and didn't have any degrees. But, you know, that's neither here nor there. So I agreed. I said, okay, I'll do another year of school. I did another half a semester. And I failed history for the second condition consecutive semester in a row. And I was like, look, I have zero business being in this place. I am not the book guy. So, you know, I'm done. And around that time, my father, he had fallen off of a ladder on a little construction project, hurt himself really bad. And so I stepped in and said, hey, man, look, I'll do all the work. You just get paid. You know, you do, you. Let's do the 50, 50 thing. I'll do all the work, you get paid. And he was like, all right, fine, let's do that. And I sent him like my second check. And I was like, I don't think I'm gonna do that anymore. I'm giving you way too much of this money. I'm doing all the work. And, you know, that is what it is. And so made him an offer, bought his business, and it was, man, it was a pretty interesting ride from there forward. I went on that next year and I did like $56,000 in sales, right? I played golf five days a week and I did a construction project on the weekend. And it was a pretty simple life. But around the time golf season ended, I started to get that taste for something more. And I developed some great relationships in the roofing space. And I said, you know what? I'm start a roofing company alongside of this Gutter business. And about three months later, we got this massive hailstorm. It was awesome for me. It wasn't awesome for everybody else, but we basically spent a ton of concentrated time doing insurance work in our area, in other storm areas, and did really well. You know, I went from $56,000 in sales to $826,000 in sales within about 10 or 11 months. Profited. I think I had like 180 GS in my pocket. The only problem with that is I didn't grow up with any education on how to use that money. So my dad, somewhat of an alcoholic, love the guy to death, but it is what it is. My mom had her addictions. She slept most of my life. Love her for who she is, but it is what it is. And all I really saw was my dad drink, buy toys, saw my mom sleep. You know, it was. It just wasn't the best situation. And when I got a ton of money in my pocket after growing up my entire life in a garage, sleeping on a couch, I did what I saw my parents do. I drank a ton and made a ton of financial errors. The way I managed my money from over buying equipment to buying too many trucks, to doing this and to doing that, had outrageous bar tab after outrageous bar tab and just was headed down a path of pure destruction. And so the next year, I start to enter into it, and I kind of realized that I'm not making enough money to support my bad habits. So I got to figure out ways to make more money. And I started like four or five more businesses, which obviously is very silly, but I thought, hey, with that, I'm really good at starting these companies. Let's just do this as many times as we can. And I had like six businesses. Own a lawn care company, this, that, and the other. And, you know, basically, long story short, we did like 1.2 million that next year. And I lost money because I had too much payroll, I had too many bar tabs, I had too much equipment, I had too much everything. And somebody came to me. My step grandfather actually came to me and he said, hey, we're going to start a real estate company, and we're going to pay our real estate agents 100% commission. And I'm like, all right, sweet. I'm really good at certain companies. Let's do this. This whole construction thing's not working out. And so I somewhat left my attention on my construction companies and focused almost exclusively on this real estate business for a couple of years. And the only problem was that, you know, the real estate company was growing. My construction businesses were going down.

What niche you were you in real estate? Were you in housing? Multifamily?

Yeah, we were in residential. So we were. We were basically working with residential estate agents, paying them 100% commission on the deals that they did. And, you know, long story short, real estate companies started, you know, growing and scaling up. Construction companies kept going down and taking me with it. And it was August 13, 2014. I'll never forget the day the guys that we had brought in to help fund the real estate business basically came to me and they said, hey, we think you're the reason this company's not growing, and we want you to leave. And it's just total shock. I guess, if you look back at the stuff, it wasn't shock looking at it from their side of the table. But here I am, I'm 23ish, I'm bankrupt, and I just got kicked out of a company that I dedicated two years of my blood, sweat and tears to. And so I had a choice, like, I could fight it or I could figure out something different, like, on my own. And so I said, you know what? I'm gonna. I'm the youngest person in this company by three times my age. Nobody knows that, you know, what I'm saying is real. Nobody's implementing it. Nobody's taken any action on anything that I'm trying to teach these real estate agents to do. Everybody thinks I'm a loser. Everybody thinks I'm this, Everybody thinks I'm that. I'm just. I'm done. Like, I'm going to back out of it. And so I took the week, freaked the hell out, and then, you know, kind of came back and said, you know what? I'm going to teach these real estate agents what I've been trying to teach them all along.

When you say freak the hell out, like, what does that mean? Like, did you go on, like, a silent meditation or.

I went, like, go into, like, the.

Jungle or take peyote.

I was broke. I didn't have any money to go anywhere. I just had to sit in a room and, like, think about what the hell I had done to get myself into the situation. And my. My now wife, you know, she was very, very helpful through this, like, period of my life. And, you know, she worked a ton at the time because I was working a ton, but not making any money, you know, whatever. So sat back, said, hey, I'm gonna teach real estate agents what I've been trying to teach them. I'm gonna Teach them how to use social media to grow their businesses. And so I just started learning like a ton. I had a couple people grab me at key points, shook me up one side and down the other, and really helped me realize some of the error in my ways. And I launched this new company with my social media bootcamp program that was only. It was a four week course that only had one week done. But you know, I took everything I had. I had $25 to my name and I put it in Facebook ads, which I knew would produce fruit if I had a good offer. And within a week I made a thousand bucks. And I learned so much, just almost instantly. And you know, obviously one of which one lesson was that I could acquire customers for 25 bucks. That was pretty huge. Wish I could still do that. And the other was that, you know, through all of that bs, through all that turmoil, through all that stuff, I still had value and people would still pay for it. Like I people, I just had to. I think Eric Thomas said it best. You gotta go where you're appreciated, not where you're tolerated. And I went where I was appreciated. That $25 I had turned into now $10 million company. And I just spent all of my time teaching real estate agents how to use Facebook ads. And that was it. I was never interested in the transactional process as a real estate agent. I was always interested in the business and marketing side, which is some of the benefits that I added when I owned that agency. And I just stuck to it, man. My first client did 18 deals in 90 days. That first person that paid me $1,000 did 18 real estate transactions in 90 days, all from. And she went on to pocket like $150,000 her first year in business and her first year with me. And just agent after agent after agent that I began to work with, started to get those results. So I, you know, built back up to a six figure company really fast. And in 2015, December 2015, I launched what's now known as Modern Agent Mastery, which was a full scale course that taught real estate agents how to use Facebook ads. So I took all of what I had learned, packaged it up into a really, really impactful course and launched and you know, we went from a six figure business to a seven figure business to a multiple seven figure business really, really quick. And you know, now we're on pace to do, you know, multiple tens of millions, which is awesome. But how I got in the investing space is, you know, about eight months ago I just kept getting pestered like I Became such a huge proponent of focus, which I think everybody should, right? Starting multiple companies is not a good idea. I just, I got so zeroed in and so dialed in on what it was that I wanted to do and what it was I wanted to be known for. But I had investor after investor. You know, watch these agents that we're doing business with start. You know, every $21 they spend, they're doing a deal. Just came to me like, nobody can figure out this Facebook thing in the investing space. And, you know, we're getting killed with the junk mail, the yellow letters. We're getting killed with everything that we're doing because we're having to spend crazy high numbers. Obviously it makes sense because we're still doing it, but it's just getting so high. And I eventually got to a place where I had the freedom to start allocating some of my attention in other places. And I said, you know what, I think this is like the best next vertical for me to enter into is real estate investing. And so we started running Facebook ads. We started testing, and after about three to four months, spending a ton of our own money and testing and tweaking, we started turning out seller leads for eight to twelve dollars a lead. And now after launching that program and helping, we've got investors that are doing deals. And the numbers are just stupid. It just is. We just had an investor do a deal. $124 in Facebook ads, got him a deal, ended up with just a little over $23,000 in profit. I've never invested in a deal my entire life. I've always just kind of stayed in my lane. I'm really starting to get into an investing space now because I'm looking for places to put money. And I wholesale the deal for less than $100 in Facebook ads just to prove our theories. And we had another client did a deal. It was really funny. He did a deal for 20 bucks that is gonna produce around 4 or $500 in monthly cash flow for however long he wants to hold onto this property. We've got just person after person is just listening and taking action. We got a guy like Bob in St. Louis. We were able to add over $3 million in revenue to his business. And 2, 2000, I think, 17, 16, 17. I'm just enjoying the heck out of it, man. So that's, that's kind of my backstory. It's not all sunshine and rainbows. It's a lot of hard, like, hard knocks lessons that, you know, just kept getting cracked in the Teeth and decided not to give up. And resulted in an opportunity to be able to teach and educate real estate agents, real estate investors all over the world, how to really bring their business social in a way that is super scalable and is super profitable and is really fun.

Scott Todd, I can see the wheels spinning. You got a lot of questions for Grant?

Well, I'm just thinking, you know, like, okay, so Grant, you know, like, you know, like, what. What is the cost to acquire a customer today? Like, a fair amount, you know, like on Facebook. And I know, I know it's going to range by, you know, by the person you're trying to attract. But, okay, like, you know, I'm a real estate investor. I want to attract a customer. How much do I need to be prepared to pay for that one customer? Because I don't think a lot of people think that way. I think a lot of people look at it.

They think all day long, how much do I got to pay for a lead? How much I got to pay for a lead? And they're not looking at metrics like they should be. So to answer your question, in short, we've seen people acquire deals for 20 bucks, and the highest I've seen so far is around 1200 in Facebook ads. So I think that to truly answer your question, if you. If you're a real estate investor out there and you're saying, like, I want to do a deal, you've got to reverse engineer how many deals you're trying to do. Like, if you're. If you're trying to do a deal and you're gonna. You're gonna. You're gonna net $20,000 in the project, like, well, hell, you should be willing to pay at least 4,000 bucks to acquire a customer. I mean, at the end of the day, so you've gotta kind of reverse engineer some of those things and the way that they look for your business. What we've seen, and we're starting to see a very consistent pattern is that we can get deals under 2 to 300 bucks a deal. And that's huge. Huge. But on that token, we have seen deals go as high as a thousand to twelve hundred bucks a deal. And I think that it is solely predicated on your ability to create relationships with online leads. That's the biggest significant difference that I've seen between the investors that do no deals, investors that do some deals, and investors do a ton of deals is your ability to curate relationships out of thin air. And that's something that we've become incredibly obsessed with over the last, like, three to four months, especially watching our real estate agents and our investors is like, how do you win a friend in 20 minutes that results in a commission check, results in a deal? And, you know, we've kind of become obsessed with some of those trainings.

All right, so how do I win a customer in 20 minutes?

I think it's like, stop looking at the numbers so much. Like, obviously it's a numbers game. We all know it's a numbers game. You got to look at the math and it has to make sense or you're not going to win. But if you look like at a motivated seller, what do these people have to go through to need a real estate investor? They divorce, job loss, bankruptcy, parent loss, real life shit. Sorry for cussing. But like, real life stuff. And you have all these investors that I'm talking to. I got on the phone with an investor out of Boston about six weeks ago. I got on the phone with ISA because they're not closing any deals. And I'm like, what is going on? How much time are you actually trying to spend on the phone with this person to get an appointment? Five minutes, max. Well, I think I found your problem there, Tom. I don't think that your people are actually trying to create a relationship. It's just a volume game. And salespeople, you know, acquisition managers, get accustomed to new opportunity every day. So they don't work as hard for it. Cause they think, I'll just get the next one. And if most people, like all people, realize that if you just stopped and tried to create a relationship with this person, cared about their problems, cared about what they've got going on, spent 20 or 30 minutes not trying to get an appointment, but trying to get to know them, your deal flow would increase through the roof, and your need to generate as many leads would decrease like crazy. So think back to that party you were at that you connected with this person over what? What was that? You know, that you looked up and two to three hours later you're like, holy crap, I can't believe I've been here two hours talking to you. What was it when you met your wife that entranced you into sitting there for two to three hours and making sure that that relationship went somewhere? What types of conversation, what types of interactions? If you want to win a friend in 20 minutes, 30 minutes, do that. Be interested, be caring, be compassionate, be engaged, and attempt to create a relationship before you ever try to attempt to get a deal. And you'll see your conversion rates just blow. Up, and you'll see your marketing overhead shrink like crazy because you don't need to generate as many leads to do as many deals as you want to.

You know, Mark, at a boot camp that we recently had, you know, people were where. I think people struggle with sales. Right. And I think that.

Right.

What Grant said is so important. Right.

It's not.

It's not about, like, hammering them, like, give me your credit card.

Give me your credit card.

Give it to me now. It's more about that relationship.

Right.

Like.

We'Ve heard the Wes Schaefer, the sales whisper, talk about, you know, the doctor. The doctor walks in, he solved a problem, you know, and it's the same thing. How can you just attack someone for their credit card and expect to get it unless you have that relationship first before they know, like, and trust you?

Yeah.

I mean, going back to that doctor analogy, the doctor doesn't just sit down and just start saying, you know, hey, you know, I went to this medical school, and, you know, we're just going to go ahead and fix you. Like, they really get to know you first so that you feel a bond with that doctor, and then they start asking you those questions, and then they diagnose it and try to help you. And, you know, I think, you know, Grant's got that sort of magic formula that, you know, on the surface, everyone sort of intuitively knows, like, oh, so simple. Right? But no one wants to do it because it is hard work. Active listening is hard work. Stepping out of your own thoughts and really sort of stepping into someone else's shoes in pain, being in a divorce or, you know, maybe, you know, going into bankruptcy or some type of, you know, hardship. To be able to sit with someone and be uncomfortable with that pain is hard. And yet when. If you can do it, you almost differentiate yourself from 99% of people out there. It's just like what Grant said. Your deal flow is going to go way up because that person is going to only want to work with you.

Yeah, Grant, you said something back a second ago. You said, I've kind of got a magic formula, and I just want to make it clear. Like, my magic formula is work. Like, that's. That's the. That's the. That's the silver bullet. That's the overnight success key. Like, that's. That's 100% what will get you to where you want to go. It's just work. Like, don't be romantic about it and stop trying to find the next bitcoin so you can, you know, Triple your revs day in and day out. Like just freaking work. Work on one thing to one audience and you will be unbelievably amazed at what happens to your business.

What is some of the worst advice you see given in your area of expertise of let's say, lead generation or Facebook marketing?

I think that there is a ton of good advice that's given. I just don't think that the timelines are accurate, like in the reality of situation. Like in residential real estate, it's a three month business. It's cyclical. The deal that you do today, the lead that you generate today, if they are ready, which 1 to 3% are 1 to 3% of your total lead flow will do business with you today. And 20 to 40% of those people are going to do business with somebody else tomorrow. Right. But if you look at it, you've got these brokers, you got these investor coaches, you got everybody out there screaming about this perceptive lifestyle they can live with the Ferraris and the Lamborghinis and this and that and the other. But then nobody talks about the time that it takes, like, oh, just do this, do this, do this and it'll work. Yes, it will work in six to eight months. Yes, it will work in one to three months. But I think this whole nuance that you can just take a course and become rich is absolute bullshit. And I think that if you would take a step back and have a real conversation with somebody and just say, look, the this is gonna work like frickin crazy, like the best thing that you've ever done in your entire life, but you're not gonna see a single result for at least three months. I just think it's such a better conversation. So I think by telling people like we were talking about these magic bullets, that you can do this, do this, do this, and you're just gonna win. You're doing somebody such a disservice by stealing their time from them. Cause they're gonna do it and they're gonna stop in two weeks. They're gonna do it and they're gonna stop in a month, they're gonna move on to the next thing. And you basically, you've got these gurus that are robbing people of their time just simply by not setting the right expectation because they need to drive sales. And I think it's bullshit.

So Grant, before we get to tips of the week, I got one more question for you because I saw this on your podcast. Yes, it says how the real estate industry is destroying itself. What's all that about?

I think that 94% of the real estate industry, and I, you know, take offense, if you will, are shit bags. And I think that everybody's so interested in the money, the car, the house, the this, the that. They're so interested in living based on what other people think, that it's driving a lot of their decisions, which is not with the end user in mind. So you're thinking, I need a commission check, I need a commission check. I need a commission check. I need a commission check. I need to live deal to deal to deal with. I need to do a deal so I can go rent a Benz that I can't make the third payment on so that somebody will like me. And if you look at it, you've got no care, you've got no compassion, you've got no authenticity. You just got a bunch of assholes walking around treating each other like literal crap. Like, you see no communication. You just see. You see error after error after error after error, which reinforces these software companies, these tech companies, these Zillow giants, these Amazon people, these Facebooks, right? It reinforces their desire to go build a product that replaces the real estate industry. Now, a lot of that conversation is directed towards residential retail agents, because I think they're in huge trouble. I really think they're in big trouble because of just how much they don't care. And it's so evident, you know, you got people saying, oh, software companies will never replace real estate agents. Bullshit. Software companies will never replace relationships. Fact. Right? Because when Walmart came out, there were mom and Pops that didn't go out of business. Amazon came out, there were mom and Pops that didn't go out of business. Right? When Airbnb came out, there were massive hotel chains that were fine. When Uber came out, there were car service companies that were fine. Right? Why? Because of the relationships they developed, because of the media that they had aggregated, because of the tribe that they had built under their businesses. And that's like the core concept of everything that we teach. If Instagram helped you build media and grow your real estate empire, I would teach you Instagram. But right now, Facebook is the best platform I've seen to help you build media. Media, media media, which will help you build any business that you could ever want to build.

I love it. I love it. You're preaching to the choir here. So we're at that point now in the podcast where we're going to ask you for your tip of the week, a website, a resource, a book, something Actionable where the art of passive income listeners can go right now, improve their businesses, improve their lives grant wise. What do you have?

I think the best thing that you could possibly do if you're trying to figure out this Facebook thing which I think is so important right now because the investment community does not even close to have this figured out is go to investing.thebestads.com and I'm literally give you all, all of our best secrets for free. I'm going to teach you strategically how to generate leads through Facebook ads 100% free. Just go to investing the best ads calm. I'm going to teach you the strategies. I'm going to show you how to get names, email addresses, phone numbers, build media so you can do more deals.

Investing.thebestads.com alright, very cool. Learn how to generate motivated sellers through Facebook ads for your real estate investment business. I'm signing up right now.

Wait, what is it, Mark?

Investing.thebestads all right.

I missed the. All right. The best ads dot com.

All right. Scott, Todd, do you have tip of the week?

Yeah.

You didn't sign up, did you?

I did.

You beat me to it. Okay. Dang. Of course I missed that. The. Come on. Hey, Mark.

All right.

Yeah, I know. Hey, listen, here's, here's my tip. You know sometimes we create these videos for properties, whatever and you know, finding music can kind of be pain and sometimes you just got to pay for the music. But check out this, check out this website and I'll put it in the chat but also tell everybody so they can go see it too. It's, it's audionautics.com. so it's a U D I O N A U t I x audionautics.com Again, I'm throwing it in the chat.

That's got to be the worst URL ever. Like no one's going to be able to spell this thing.

But I didn't name it.

I'm just audio. Don't, don't kill the messenger. Right, right. It's free music for your videos, YouTube, whatever.

It's free.

Very cool.

I'm not the name terrible. I agree the name is terrible. But it's free.

I love it. You know someone come.

I hope whoever like runs this website like that they're actually listing and then like oh, sorry, let me change it.

Yeah, exactly. All right, well my tip of the week is if you want to learn how to become Internet famous, the value of video. Are you sabotaging your conversion rates? How to generate sellers in no inventory markets. The science behind targeting your ideal client. It's a relationship business. Are you tracking yours? Motivation means nothing without. Go to like GrantWise.com like GrantWise.com and get the answers to all those burning questions. And I have a feeling that Grant's onto something here, especially with the depth of just work hard and, you know, focus on the relationship and the results are going to happen on their own. You know, just avoid that timeline. So, Grant, are we good?

If you say we are, my man, I think. I think we're great. I appreciate you guys having me out here and give me the opportunity to talk a little bit.

Alright, Scott, are we good?

We're good, Mark.

All right. I want to remind the listeners, today's podcast is sponsored by GeekPay IO. The only set it and forget it process of getting paid. Get your down payment. Then we automate the monthly payments via ach. If the ACH fails, they'll charge the credit card on file. You are assured of getting paid. It has journal entries. It does all the fun calculations to make your bookkeeper smile. Get your first note free@thelandgeek.com GeekPay but learn more at GeekPay IO. I also want to remind everybody the only way we're going to get the quality of guests like alike Grant wise.com, grant wise is if you do us three little favors. You got to subscribe, you got to rate, you got to read the podcast. Send us a screenshot of your review. To support the landgeek.com we're going to send you for free the $97 passive income launch kit. All right, Scott, are we going to do this?

Let's do it, Mark. One, two, three.

Let freedom, freedom. Ring. Ring. Thanks, everybody.