Lessons - A Mastermind Strategy for Market Success | Paul Hutchinson ,  Co-Founder Of Bridge Investment Group

Welcome to Lessons episodes of Success Story, part of the HubSpot podcast network. These lessons episodes will be shorter conversations with past guests, valued members of the success story community, and myself. They'll be focused on teaching you actionable, insightful takeaways that you can use to upskill your personal and professional life. How does that actually translate when you were building up your firm? How does that translate into the strategy that you deployed? When I want to know the secret sauce, you said you were giving exceptional returns while living in integrity, living in alignment, understanding that's win-win-win across the board for a lot of people that's ideal circumstance that they can only hope to achieve. So how does that actually translate into business strategy for you as an example? So I'll take it on each piece. So first of all, John and I, in the beginning owning 50% of the company each, realizing we don't have the background, the education, et cetera, to really run a company like this. So finding people who have really done something amazing in their life who are super qualified in the right areas that we needed, bringing them on board, perfect example, as a guy of the name of Kelly. Kelly came into our office, we were pretty small, we had three or four employees, and he said, hey guys, I really want to be a part of what you guys are creating, what you're doing. And we said, hey, we're not hiring right now. He goes, no, no. I don't even need to get a pay me anything. I will take a place in that corner. He says over there in that corner right there, I'll bring my own desk and I'll eat what I kill, right? I'll come, I'll bring you guys deals and stuff, and if you fund them, then you can make me. Well, Kelly is now building a 14, 15,000 square foot home, right? Kelly is a multi-millionaire today because we weren't so selfish with, okay, this is only it. The game is locked, nobody else can have any equity. No, we made a lot of people, millionaires, as in the process of building the fund and bringing on lots of new partners, right? So that's number one, and seeing the value that he was bringing and not being in a position where we're like, okay, we're going to take his stuff and try to keep it. No, we see his value and give him value and return for his value in a beautiful way, right? So there's number one. Number two, we already touched on this a little bit with the tenants. We would say, okay, we're going to put ourselves in their shoes. We're not going to be a scum lord and come in and try to rape the money that, no, we're going to say, how can we create value? Yes, we're going to make sure that pricing is ratcheted up to the point where it's really competitive, but more important than that, before we ratchet up the pricing on everything, we're going to make sure that people really see the value in living there. And then from the bank standpoint, we become one of the before the 2008 crisis. We saw that crisis coming because of one of the partners that I had that saw that come on early. And we were able to get into a position where we were one of the first 20 funds in the country to be qualified on the top level purchasing platform with all the GSEs with Freddie, Fanny, HUD, FGIC. So when a bank had 30 days to live, we would get a phone call. We would go in, the bank president by then is willing to negotiate. He's like, okay, 30 days from now, he's out of a job and his shareholders have a big bad zero if he doesn't get some massive liquidity. So we go in, look at their portfolios, okay? We're going to take that 1000 unit apartment complex off your hands. I know you're into it $100 million. We're going to pay you $35 million cash today, give you the liquidity you need to stay in business. It's a win for the bank. The bank stays in business. They have that liquidity. It's a win for us because now we have the team to be able to create the value and manage it the way that it could. It's a win for my investors because we have smart leverage on it and we can recreate that return. And I can go through that with a lot of other companies as well. The attacking anxiety and depression company, a perfect one that I did in my early 20s. We had a program, an audio and a workbook program that helped people change their negative habit patterns of thought that we're creating anxiety and depression in the first place. And it was a $250 program, it cost us $30 to make, but it cost us like $200 and advertising just to get a client with our infomercials, it's kind of breaking even there, but we had a valuable product for them and then we created a personal coaching program. Now here's the thing. On the outside, this looks like this isn't going to work. These are people who can't even work a job because of their anxiety or depression disorders. They can't even leave their house. And I'm getting them to max out their credit card for $2,000 personal coaching program. I can do that sleeping well at night. Why? Because I had a 100% money back guarantee. We have 97% success rate. If 12 weeks later, after lining them up with a personal coach and having them get the help that they needed, if they weren't living a normal life, if they weren't working a normal job, I would give them their $2,000 back. And that was less than 3%. The other 97% now they're earning $2,000 or $3,000 a month. Now they can pay back that credit card. It's a true win for them and it's a win for my employees. They're making good income. And the people who went through our program, we gave them a job as personal coaches in helping others. So I could create a true win, win, win. In that company, I sold for $20 million when I was 29 years old, right? And now it was a public company with restricted stock. That's a whole different story. But it was something where we created a true win, win, win for everybody across the board without anybody having to lose because the customers were paying $2,000 for something that was worth $20,000 in terms of their actual value in their life. I love this. And one thing that I've noticed that you heavily focus on this, allows you to adopt this mindset is the trust in the product. The absolute trust in the product. If it's an investment opportunity, if it's self-help course or teaching session, as a founder, what is your framework for okaying the product that you can take to market? It depends on your customer and what they're looking for them. And a true win, win, win has to come from that standpoint. I'll give you this example. You're up in Northern Alaska and you meet a guy who has a whole bunch of firms and you want to buy a bunch of firms, right? And you don't have cash. He only wants to trade. And you give him a Picasso painting, right? He's got a bunch of firms. There may be retail, there worth $5,000, right? You give him a $20,000 Picasso painting. You've actually done him a disservice. Why? He can't do crap with that. It's going to end up in his woodshed, right? But you give him a $200 gun that he can go and shoot some more or some traps or whatever else. Now you've created a true win, win, win. You've got $5,000 worth of firms that you can go fur or you can go sell whatever else. He's got a gun that he can actually use. And so you don't have to necessarily say, okay, I'm doing a good deal because I'm giving him a $20,000 painting. No, you're not, right? So find out, and this goes back to really putting yourself in your customer shoes, right? With the apartment complexes, who are our tenants? Are they people that play tennis? You know, do they need gold tile rods? No, they don't, right? They want the English as a second language. They want the bookmobile. They want Taco Tuesday. They want a safe place that can have their kids. That's a true win for them. And I can do that and spend a lot less money than putting gold tile rods in. See what I mean? And it's a true win for them. And so that's really the litmus test.