Nick Perry - From $5K to Multi-Millionaire | Why 90% of Entrepreneurs Never Achieve Financial Freedom

Being able to do what you want, when you want, with whoever you want, for as long as you want, is really what money buys you. When I was young, I didn't come from any money. We had one grocery store trip every two weeks when the food ran out. So I had to work growing up very early. Today's guest is a strategist for wealth, not in theory, but in practice. Nick Perry is an investor coach who guides entrepreneurs and professionals to build scalable portfolios and untether themselves from trading time for money. When I moved to Austin, Texas, I started YouTubeing how to do real estate, started taking some action, but I failed miserably. In my first year of real estate, it took me like 104 appointments before I got my first deal. Sales and marketing are the two highest skill sets that you can have that will get you paid more than anybody. You can get good at marketing and sales, then you can start your own business. The reason 90% of wholesalers fail is they can't get consistent, reliable, high quality marketing going. They're bouncing from one marketing channel to another and nothing is really working for them. He teaches the rules of capital, mindset, and multiplicative income, not just passive, but purposeful wealth. Nick doesn't just talk about investing. He builds pathways for financial freedom. The biggest reason that I see most people fail is shiny objects syndrome. They'll do something for three months, six months, maybe a year or two, and then they jump into the next thing. You have to stay laser focused and I would rather be a master at one thing than a jack of all trades. Nick, tell me what this means to you. Food wealth isn't measured in dollars, but in freedom to live anywhere, work on anything and answer to no one. Yeah, you know, being able to do what you want when you want with whoever you want for as long as you want is really what money buys you. Nothing in a store is going to give you any sort of fulfillment, right? This is a $20 or a sure, but I just got back from you know, $200,000 vacation in Europe and that $200,000 vacation was worth more to me than anything. Because I was able to stay out there as long as I want to give my family experiences that most people can't give them. And that's what true wealth is is freedom. That's what money really buys you. How did you come to this realization that this is what you wanted to build? Because I think that a lot of people when they start entrepreneurship, they're looking for more money. They're looking for freedom, but they end up not getting it. They end up working more than they ever did in a corporate job. So what allowed you to sort of escape the golden handcuffs that a lot of entrepreneurs find themselves in? Yeah, it was a cycle when I was young. I didn't come from any money like my parents were my dad. He barely can make ends meet. I mean, we had, you know, one grocery store trip every two weeks when the food ran out, it ran out. And so I had to work growing up very early and I would see all my friends, you know, getting new cars when they're 16, being able to go out and take, you know, these fun trips and that wasn't in the cards for me. And it used to really piss me off that money was a limiting factor in my life. So from a young age, I always said, I do not want money to ever be a limiting factor in my life. And I realized, you know, from then that money bought freedom, it bought resources in order to do what you want with, with whoever you want for as long as you want. And when I got into business and I started making money, that's when, you know, I went through the phase of buying all the designer clothes, you know, bought a Ferrari, you know, did all the stuff that, you know, you do when you first get it. And none of it brought me any fulfillment, you know, nothing that you can buy in a store will give you any sort of lasting happiness. You get a short term dopamine hit when you look back on your year and you say, what was the best things that happened this year? You're thinking about the vacations you took with your family, the amazing experiences you have. It's not, man, I went and I bought this new pair of, you know, designer shoes or, you know, I bought this thing. It's never about the thing. It's always about the experiences and the impact that you make. Right. So giving back to people and creating experiences where you're going to have the most lasting fulfillment. So I just learned it through this school hard not. It's funny how again, like super ambitious people, they all, they all start something for the material, like they're like, I want to have a nicer car, I want to, you know, I want to live in a bigger house, I want to buy a nicer watch, I'm doing all this vanity shit basically. I think wrong with it if you make money, go for it. But then they do that and they work so hard and they don't have vacations and they don't spend time with their family and they don't do all the things that actually give joy in life. And I feel like a lot of entrepreneurs, they just have it backwards. It's like they feel like entrepreneurship is like you have to be working 24 seven if you aren't working. You almost feel guilty. You feel like you're like not being whatever like productive, you feel like you're like, well, if I'm taking time off, like I'm not getting as much done as I could get done. So like, I'm not being the best possible entrepreneur. This isn't what I signed up for. And you almost like self, I don't know what the word is self sabotage, self sabotage, let me do it. Right. You like ruin all the other parts of your life and pursuit of just chasing money. Yeah. And a lot of times when you are doing that, you're actually delaying the process. So being an entrepreneur is a lot like being a farmer. You're going out and you're planting seeds in the ground. You're watering those seeds. You're being patient waiting for their seeds to grow. But what most entrepreneurs, aka farmers will do is they'll plant the seed, they'll water it. They'll sit there, they'll look at it. It's not growing. They'll start kicking it. Right. And so you're kicking up your own seeds. So when a lot of entrepreneurship is actually just patience and you got to let the seeds grow and just sit back and let let the gestation period happen. And so I've realized that as long as you have the right people, the right processes and things are in place, you have to be patient and trust the process for things to grow. And that doesn't mean working harder. One of my good friends, I've told this story a few times, but I think it's so relevant. So he runs a publicly traded company. He was very busy guys had exists in the past. And he said that having kids was the best thing that ever happened to him because it forced him to only work on certain things. So I think a lot of people just focus on everything they could possibly do. And they don't focus on the one the few things that actually moved the needle. Whereas for him, like having kids forced him to only work on certain things because he needed time for the kids as well. So it almost hyper prioritize and hyper focused him. But I don't think a lot of people have that wisdom when they're just starting out like you said. But I had to go through it. I mean, I was the guy that was rising ground 4.30 a.m. We're putting in 80 hour weeks and it's go, go, go, go. And I did that for 15 years. And I created an amazing company and I actually kind of got forced out of my office. So explain what happened. I built a pretty successful real estate investment company and I had, you know, great team and it came time to promote one of my my COO to the CEO. And so I promoted him to the CEO of my company. And when I did that, it basically I fired myself. And so when I did that, I kept going to the office every day and he's like, dude, you got to let me run. So I said, okay, you know what? It was like, let me do my job. Yeah. So I had to, I had to get out of actually Austin, Texas, which is one of my officers from because I couldn't sit at home and not go to the office. That's so funny. So I moved actually here to Miami, Florida. And I went through an identity crisis. I felt useless every single day. I was going to the gym twice a day, going out to dinner and I, you know, I was just kind of sitting around lost like because that was my identity. And that's where I ended up learning a lot of those lessons that I think most people don't get to. I think we do sabotage our own success more often than not. But I made more money that year when I left than when I was in my office grinding it out every day. So doing very well in like corporate America nine to five. So you started with indeed and you were making over 200 grand a year with indeed. So that to me is what a lot of people get stuck. They make a ton of money in a corporate job. They have a great nine to five. They have like these golden handcuffs where they're making good money. And I think that a lot of people just get stuck in this position for a lot of their career and they don't actually take the jump and they don't actually build something themselves. Why did why did you take that job and why did you why did you leave it? Well, I took that job because I moved to Austin, Texas and I wanted to start my own company. I was a personal trainer and I saw that all my wealthy clients all own businesses. And so in order to have financial freedom, you couldn't work for the man your entire life that was very clear to me. And when I moved to Austin, Texas, I started YouTubeing how to do real estate started taking some action, but I failed miserably in my first year of real estate. I think most do though. Yeah, it was brutal. It took me like 104 appointments before I got my first deal. It was rough. And so during that time, I was like, I got to take a job in order to keep this, you know, dream alive. So I got a job at indeed. I was down to $800 in my bank account about to get evicted for my apartment indeed took a flyer on me and hired me on. And I said before I showed up on my first date to myself, I said, I'm going to go in here do whatever they tell me to do absolutely crush this job. So I can get out of this job as quick as possible. So I went from $800 in the bank account to rookie of the year top gun making quarter million dollars a year very quickly at indeed. But I took all that money and I put it into my business. So I had my nine to five. Then I had my five to two. Yeah. Right. Yeah. And I worked every evening and every weekend till I was able to build myself out of that job. But that was always the goal before I even started that role. I think that's like the way people should sort of set themselves up because I see a lot of people that just jump into entrepreneurship or they quit the job and have like a few months savings. And then that's when they start building a company. But I like the way you did it. So you were making money. Good money relatively good money 20 grand is a good salary. And then you just took all that money and just started like funding basically your own business. Do you think that's how people should start? Absolutely. I think that sales is the number one job for anybody that wants to start their own business sales and marketing are the two highest skill sets that you can have that will get you paid more than a doctor more than a lawyer more than anybody. And that if you can get good at marketing and sales, then you can start your own business. But you need to have income coming in. It's not unheard of that you can just start from cold, but life is a lot easier when you have your money. Was there anything else because you were an inside sales and indeed, was there anything else that you learned from corporate America that was actually stuff that you learned from corporate America that is very useful for entrepreneurs that are starting sales or otherwise, but also what did you learn in corporate America that is not helpful if you're trying to start a business. Yes. So what I learned that was helpful is a ton. I mean, indeed, one of the top sales organizations in the entire country. So just corporate structure, you know, that accountability that you have in corporate America is the same culture that I have in my company now. All of the metrics and what it takes to actually be successful in sales, you know, 60 calls a day, 120 minutes on the phone, you know, quote us, all that stuff is now adopted into my own company. Now, in terms of things that I don't think make a that that were a hindrance to entrepreneurship is I think in corporate America, there's a lot of bureaucracy where, you know, there's channels of communication and your ideas are don't matter. My company is an idea meritocracy, where I want to know exactly what all of my guys, even from, you know, the lowest paying role up to the highest. Pay and roll what best ideas that they have that's something that I brought in because I felt like in corporate America, my ideas didn't matter. You know, you had the corporate direction and they had their quarterly initiatives and what you say doesn't matter, but the best ideas that I've got in my company have come from my team. When you I think that it's smart that I think that it's very smart that you work, you make money, you let that fund your business. But if you know there's an exit, how do you commit yourself to doing this thing if you if you eventually want to get out of it because it's like there's like mental gymnastics there. Great question. This was a tough one for me, but I figured out a formula. So for anybody that's looking to get out of their nine to five job, all you need is these numbers right here. You've got, you need at least three to six month of liquidity for your business and your personal, so you spend $10,000 a month on your personal expenses and $10,000 a month on your business. You need at least $60,000, at least three month runway, ideally six month. So ideally, you would have 120,000 if you were spending 10k and 10k. And then that's just to it's just to set you up for success and it gives you that safety net. Yeah. And then put a date on the calendar and honor that date. Yeah. When was the moment because you were going, you were working out indeed, you're making over 200. Obviously, you know, you want to do something bigger. This is not where you're going to end up. But what was the moment when you knew that you wanted to quit indeed and move on? Like what was the thing that was outside of the money in the bank? You just said we need so much money in the bank. But what's the thing that you were that you experienced? They were like, I can't do this anymore. I need to move on. I knew before I even took the job that I was going to leave that job. So you were just you were just waiting. Did you wait for traction in the wholesale business first? Yeah. Okay. And that's I took the job knowing that I was going in there with that plan and I executed that plan and I got out as soon as possible. Correct. I understand. But where did that start? It started being told when I could go to the bathroom in school. Yeah. Like there's no way that I can take orders from somebody my entire life. Like I listened to God. That's my only boss. And that's you're the natural entrepreneur right there. 100%. Well, I think so do you think that entrepreneurship can be learned or do you think some people are just born entrepreneurs? I think that I was developed into entrepreneur. I think that through life circumstances happening to me. Yeah. It it pushed me there. I felt like you're through getting in trouble getting all the all the stuff you go through growing up. That's what ends up you have a decision. Are you going to stay beaten down and just take orders your whole life or you're going to take personal accountability and responsibility. Now one path is going to be much harder. The entrepreneurship path is not for the final heart is not for the week. You're going to have to overcome extreme adversity a ton of odds and you're going to have to bet on yourself over and over and over and over fall seven times get up eight. But it is the most rewarding path for those that got the heart to do it. It's not easy. I wonder if entrepreneurship is right for everyone. It's not. I don't think like I love my family. But there are like my sisters a PhD. She's happy. She's a college professor making 80 grand a year and she's got her life and that's it. She has no desire to want to be an entrepreneur and I'm perfectly fine with that. I think that happiness and fulfillment is the true measure of success. When you are doing personal training because you were exposed to so many very high net worth an ultra high net worth successful people. Do you find that more people have it right or wrong like those people did they have those five ass or did you see that most people just chased money. I would say more often than not the people that I would see there was a lot of imbalances in their life. Now I met some extremely amazing people though that had it all figured out. And those were my mentors, you know, my early mentors in the day were the guys that I was personal training and my first mentors to see you have quiz new subs. Yeah, so he's like he's pulling in several million dollars a year like he's very successful. But he's working on stop. No, not really. He was, you know, he had to figure it out. He was silver fox like 50 years old, super charismatic, happy, amazing relationships, you know, just had had it all. And I was like, I want to be like that. And so I emulated, you know, those guys in those early days because I came from nothing. And so I almost had imposter syndrome when I was around them. And that was how I ended up learning, you know, the ways was from just that exposure. When you first started, so you were working at Indeed, you know that you're going to build a wholesale business. You're sort of funding your business with your salary. But you know, that's where you're going to end up. You finally started to have some traction in the wholesale business. I know it didn't come easy. Like you mentioned just briefly, but it's an important point to touch on. You went through 104, I think face to face rejections when you were building out this wholesale business over 11 months. That to me is just, it just shows you what it takes, right? That's what it takes to get anything off the ground is never going to be easy. It's going to be a lot of just, you know, hand to hand combat. What starts to work and also just for people that are into real estate, why wholesale in particular, as opposed to all the other kinds of real estate, you can get involved. Why are you sitting at home thinking personal trainer killing it out indeed now real estate wholesale. Like it's such like a wide variety of like interest. So what was about wholesale that made you want to go into it that was so compelling. Well, the majority of my clients that were doing really well were also big and real estate. Even if they owned a company that had some form of real estate going on their life and I read enough books that 80% of millionaires come from real estate. So I wanted to get into real estate, but I didn't know how I didn't have money. I didn't have credit. I didn't have a real estate license and none of that. And so with wholesaling, you don't need money. You don't need credit. You don't need a real estate license. I was like, well, I'm qualified. HubSpot is a success story partner. Now think about listening to this podcast right now. You're probably multitasking. You're probably catching 70 to 80% of what we're talking about. 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Indeed.com slash Clary terms and conditions apply if you're hiring indeed is all you need. How did you keep going after failing failing? I put that in air quotes, but like getting 104 face-to-face rejections. Like how do you push through that? Because that is what it takes to be successful. So how do you push through that? It was a lot. I mean, that summer when I was doing all those appointments, I remember I had back surgery too. So I had a big thing like going on with my back and I'm driving in a, you know, beat up Mazda 3 with no AC all over the state of Texas getting told no. And about appointment 75. That was like when I started to break. And I get back to my apartment and I remember sitting there and I'm like, you know, maybe this whole thing's a scam and all these people on YouTube are just lying to me to try to sell me a course. Maybe it is real, but I'm not cut out for this and they can do it. But you know, I don't have the soft skills in order to be able to be successful in this. You know, I started having all these limiting beliefs coming to my mind. And I had sunken calls fallacy where I had already come so far. So I was like, I didn't come this far to only come this far. I'm either going to get richer, trying it was like, I'll go homeless and you have still be going on these appointments. At this point, had you quit indeed? No, this is when right, right when I was starting indeed. Oh, okay. So, so indeed was like an insurance to be so to let you keep going because you have no money. Yeah, I had to take a job smart. I mean, some people would have too big an ego to take a job. Yeah, you got to let your ego go and you have to say, what do I got to do to make this actually work? So I had to swallow my pride and say, I got to take a job. And I'm going to not let this dream die. And I'm going to persist no matter whatever it takes until I figure it out. And I will become the best at it. And so that's that's what I did. So 75, 75 appointments are starting to break. I started to break. And then I pulled it back together real quick. I was like, burn the ships. It's either this is going to kill me or I'm going to figure it out. What worked after 144 rejections? What did you learn or was it just literally just putting in? You know, we were talking before. You're like, oh, the podcast is going well. What's the secret? It's like, well, thousand episodes, 40, 50 pieces of content a day. You figure it out eventually. Like it's not, it's not that hard. It's not easy. But you just figure it out. You just fail forward and keep getting a little better every single time. And you do that until it's almost, it's unreasonable for you not to be successful. The statistical probability it goes down so low that you end up becoming successful. So one thing that really actually helped me was indeed because in that sales job, I learned so much about sales. And so the sales job was actually like the catalyst that ended up moving everything forward. Like I wasn't following up with these appointments and I learned that fortunes in the follow up when I was in corporate America. And so I went home and I was like, I got to follow up with all these people and guess what ended up happening? People started coming back around and next thing you know, I got a deal and then it started to snowball from there. And eventually you quit indeed. You're all in on wholesaling at that point and things are going. You're making money off wholesaling at this point when you actually quit indeed, correct? Was there a amount, was there an amount of money that you would have liked to have hit before you left indeed? Like that was like the number like if I double my salary or something like I don't know what the number is, but is there a number that people should shoot for that you shot for before you quit the nine to five W2 and go all in? Yeah, I had six months of liquidity and so I knew that I was having a quarterly bonus hit on April 15th. And when that quarterly bonus hit, it would put me over that liquidity amount and that was the day that I quit. So I waited until I refreshed my bank app and the, because you know, in sales, they kick you out the same day. I know they do. I know I spend a lot of my career in sales. I know in corporate, well not corporate Canada, corporate America, same difference. But yeah, they don't, they don't keep you around if you're done. And also sometimes the pain in the ass to collect all those commission checks that are like due in like six months if you leave. So just take whatever money you can get. So as you're scaling the wholesaling business, I think that a lot of entrepreneurs when they first achieve success, they may not think about how like that can impact other parts of their life. So at what point did this whole sort of, I don't even know how to describe it. Shit show with a woman that you were dating and you were common law Mary to in the state of Texas. What point did this happen in your sort of entrepreneur journey? Because I don't think if somebody's making a lot of money and they're dating and they're not not married yet. I think people are pretty aware of what happens if you get married. But from what I understand, you can tell me a little bit more. You were common law and you lost a lot of your savings because you broke up. But even though you weren't technically married in the state of Texas, you still owe her a lot of money if you're common law married. I don't think many entrepreneurs would think about this when they're building. They probably don't think about it at all. No, it was a complete blind side. Give me a time frame for it too. Yep, I'm working at indeed. I'm doing really well there. I'm also working in real estate in the evenings. I'm making probably $40,000, $50,000 a month in real estate. I meet this girl. We started dating. She works at Oracle. She's in sales as well. Oracle did a massive round of layoffs. She's actually good on the phone. So while she was laid off, I said, hey, just take some phone calls from me while I'm at indeed. That'll actually be helpful. I'll give you some commission on it until you find something else. And relationship was okay. We dated for 11 months and around the eight month mark. I was like, just come stay over at my house. It's fine. You can work out. You're eight months in. You think five months in? Yeah. So long story short, we go to Cancun and she's just a shit show down there. I mean, she's drinking, taking Xanax, smoking weed. And I was like, I got to cut this girl off. So we get back to the United States. And I was like, all right, well, here's what I'm going to do. I got a work trip coming up. I'm going to go ahead and break up with their teller. Just move out and be out by the time I'm gone. I knew she would need some money in order to do it. So I went and got $12,000 from Wells Fargo cash. Went back home. I said, hey, listen, I got to roll out for work. I'm coming back on Friday. Here's $12,000. Just go get another apartment. Stay with your mom. Whatever you want to do. I had a badass high rise apartment downtown Austin, you know, overlooking the water, you know, making 50 grand a month. You can afford some nice stuff. Yeah. It was nice. And she'd only been staying with me for maybe, you know, a month and a half, two months. And I get back on Friday. I go straight to my office at indeed. And about 10.30 in the morning, the receptionist office manager is like, hey, you've got to visit her up front. It's some kind of on a bike. I was like, I didn't order anything. He's like, you Nick Perry. I'm like, yeah, he's like, you've been served. I'm like, served for what? Yeah. And I go and I pull out these papers and I look at it. And it's, you know, it's not even common law. It's like divorce papers. I'm like, divorce papers. Like, this is bullshit. Like, I don't know. I ain't worried about it. Whatever. Long story short, it was divorce papers. And they had a restraining order which meant I couldn't go into my house. I couldn't get my vehicles. Couldn't get a phone charger. Couldn't get a toothbrush. Couldn't get anything. Your own house. Yes. She was very smart in the way that she did as a professional. So she went and as soon as I broke up with her, she retained an attorney who was her uncle. I didn't know at the time. That was working pro bono. And this is what they did. They were like, okay, well, we can get this guy for pretty much everything. Here's exactly what we're going to do. We're going to go ahead and file for a common law. We're going to go ahead and put a restraining order. The house is going to be yours. All his shit is going to be yours. And we'll get half of this money. So, I didn't think this was even a thing. I'm like, what do you mean? I even try to go back there breaking and get all my shit. They call the cops. I couldn't get my stuff. And so I ended up having to stay in my buddy's house. And how is this a thing? In Texas, there's no statute of limitations for the amount of time that they stay there. It's three consecutive nights. They say they're three consecutive nights. If they get a mail there, your history. They can say that your common law married. Are you serious? Yes. That was my welcome to Texas president. This is nuts. Yes. I've never heard of this in my life. It's an old outdated law that just hasn't been changed. And a judge doesn't call bullshit on this? No. So, the evidence that they used was, she lived in my house. She got mail there because I had her working on the business. She had access to the checking account. Yeah. And so they're like, well, then what do you mean? You guys are pretty much married. You have a joint finances. She's on the business. You know, judges didn't want to hear it. And I didn't know that I was basically playing a losing game because she had a pro boner attorney. I didn't notice her. So you can fight forever. Yeah. I'm just going to fight this and, you know, I'm an outspender and I'll be out of this and you know, probably 20, there's going to be a 20 grand hangout. No. It was not a 20 grand hangout, but ended up costing me everything. I lost the apartment, all the brandy furniture, the family apartment. No, it was just a lease. But they, they, I was on the hook for it. I had to pay the entire lease. Even though you weren't living there. Yeah, it was terrible. So long story short, I ended up torching my checking account all the way down because I tried to fight it to the end. Yeah. And, um, but what would she have gotten if you didn't fight it? Well, she got to, she would end up getting half of, half of everything, but she wanted everything. She wanted, um, the business as well. So I said, that was the big contention. She wanted to take my business that I started and I said, no. Because that was the, that was the value. Because I already had a bunch of contracts that were set up to close. And so that's what they're coming after. And I said, no, absolutely not. So I fought for that. I got that and she gave her all the possessions. And I started over and then I just kept grinding them in and bounced back like six months later and got that out of the job. That's the craziest story I've ever heard. That's the craziest story I've never heard of that happening ever. Do you think this was, do you think this was targeted? Do you think she was planning this ahead? I think it was premeditated. I don't think that, I think she always had in her back pocket that if I broke up with her, that's what she was going to do. She already had that plan. So she thought, you're super successful. I'm going to come out of this one way or another. Correct. After this. So now you're sort of starting from scratch. Did you have to give the business to her or no? No, I kept the business. I was like, you can have all the cars, all the lease, have it all. But you're prying the business out of my cold dead hands. And the judge let you keep the business? Yes. So that was the compromise. And so even though it sucked going through it, I was still hustling. I'm still doing great at indeed. I still got real estate deals that are coming through. So I wasn't tripping too much. I ended up getting another apartment and ended up bouncing back right away and just ended up doing better than ever. It's just a lesson, that's all. It was a lesson. How did you create a virtual, completely virtual workforce? How did you sort of architect freedom into your business as you scaled it so that you weren't just working non-stop 24-7? Yes. So my business, when I started it, it was all in office. I replicated indeed, essentially. It was just like a wolf of Wall Street boiler pit, right? I had a bunch of sales reps in there, slaying the phones. And then I ended up building that up. I put a CEO in charge. I left and I traveled the world up into all seven continents. And then when I moved to Arizona, I moved from Mexico back to the States to take my real estate business further than anybody's ever taking a real estate business before. I was complacent in Cancun and I said, I'm going to take this to the next level on the way 36. So I came back, I opened an office. I had an office in Scottsdale. Yeah. And my executive served in my office in Scottsdale. But the rest of my team is all remote. So we have around 40 people. Yeah. And they all work in different parts of order, the majority of them are actually in South Africa. Because South Africans are phenomenal at sales. They have a British accent. And it also, like, you get really great talent and reduces your costs as well. You have all virtual, yeah. So talk to me about sort of like the nuance or like the specifics of wholesale. Like somebody successful at wholesaling. Like what makes you successful at wholesaling? Because I know that a lot of people try and go into it and they're not successful and they burn out or even if they put a couple of years into it. Like they're just, they're not making a ton of money with it. So what makes you different? The reason 90% of wholesalers fail is they can't get consistent, reliable, high quality marketing going. They're bouncing from one marketing channel to another and nothing is really working for them. The marketing is the biggest hang-up. So I've got 99 problems, but I'll lead anyone. My business has always been blessed with good marketing. I've mastered Google Pay for Click pretty early. And that was one of the best things I ever did. Do you see that marketing has changed a lot since? Like now with ChatGPT, like do you have to change your strategy significantly to still get leads? No, I mean, Google still crushes. Even right now in 2025, we're recording this. But Alphabet has completely cannibalized their entire strategy. So Google, for the history of the internet, they have monetized through clicks, right? You Google something and you click on a sponsor ad. Well, they've gone completely away from that. They're going to a model where if you Google something now, you see the AI summary. I know, yeah. That's cannibalizing their business model. So how are they going to capture revenue? For the first time in 22 years, Google declined on searches. Because everything going to ChatGPT and Perplexity and things like that. So now they are putting the majority of their stock into other campaign types. So Google owns YouTube. We advertise heavily on YouTube. Also owns like a million other sites as well. So you can monetize across a ton of their other sites. So Performance Max, Demand Gen campaigns. Those are where we get the majority of our leads. We still do phenomenal in search. But search is dying. I don't think search will last another five years. So that's like your website and like SEO on your website. You don't think that's going to stick around? No, I don't see that being a long term thing. And so that is going to shift into, you know, AI, you know. And with all like AI snippets has it changed your PPC strategy at all or no? No, our PPC strategy is remain the same. We still do search campaigns. We advertise heavily on YouTube. We take advantage of Google Performance Max and Demand Gen campaigns. And that's still the majority of our leads. That's the majority of your leads. And then it's not like those are keywords that are too expensive to bid on even in 2025. No, because the way that I market is different than everybody else. So the majority of wholesalers will pick a market like Miami, Florida, Atlanta, Georgia, filling the blank. And they will go and bid on those expensive keywords. We buy houses, sell house, fast, etc. And they're paying $50, $100 a click. Which is insane. You know, they're paying $3, $4, $500 a lead. And it's not sustainable. So I made a contrarian bet about nine or 10 years ago. Because I did something that I found completely changed everything. Was if you market and metropolitan areas in small cities and things like that, your cost per click is through the roof. If you just expand the geographical targeting to national, it drops your cost per click by like 95, you know, 98%. But then where are you getting your customers outside of major metropolitan areas? Correct. The majority of all the money that I make are in towns that you'll never hear of. And no one else does this strategy. Well, they do now. I've been able to capture some market with it. I've captured a lot of market. I made my career in that. So at this point, you know, everybody's, you know, followed what I've done. I kind of pioneered that in our industry. I've coached over 950 other real estate business. I've created over 100 millionaires through, you know, what we do. You know, worried about coaching your own competition. I have an abundance mindset. And so I feel that, you know, that is, I'm always out a little bit further ahead. The HubSpot podcast network is a success story partner. Now a quick podcast recommendation. I've been listening to truth, lies and work. They're in the HubSpot podcast network, just like success story. It's this husband and wife team, Al and Leanne Elliott. They break down why people actually do what they do at work. So if you have a business, if you manage people, if you have to hire people at any point, you have to listen to the show. I just listened to an episode on my good employee suddenly quit. That's an issue that we all have. And it totally clicked for me. One of the reasons I explained is why it's not usually about the money. 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Don't just watch the future unfold, be part of creating it. Visit inbound.com slash register to get your ticket today. What's like the next thing that's working well? Because you obviously take contrarian bets. You obviously sort of mark it a little bit different than everyone else. So what are you trying now that seems to be working? Yeah, right now, I mean, mixing up the geographical target. So I used to just do what I would do, plank in a nation, then I did states. Now I do, I go based on the data for real estate. So I think a lot of people, they get married to a certain state or a certain market. That's the wrong way of looking at it. If you were in real estate, you market based on the data. So I actually market to the counties that have the highest pending percentage. That means there's 100 houses sitting on the market. I want to see what counties have the highest amount going pending quick. That's your demand. What does that mean going pending? You put a house on the, say you go to sell your house or the realtor. When a buyer signs, you sign a contract with a buyer and it's getting ready to close, it goes pending. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's a signal that there's demand for that house, right? So if there are 100 houses on the market and only 10 of them are pending, that's not a good sign. That means there's no demand on that market. If there's 60 of them that have gone pending, you know that that, you know, anything you put up is going to fly. So you can see that. That's all public information too. You can find that data. Yes. And so most people are getting stuck in these areas. I'm changing my marketing out every single month to what is the hottest. Essentially, I'm just day trading houses. I don't care where they are. I just care about the statistics. Do you have a similar strategy for the other side because wholesale means you need buyers too? Or are you just selling the leads? I've completely gone away from wholesale as we know it. Wholesale as most people know it is pretty much dead in 2025. The traditional model of wholesalers, you get an off market property from a seller and then you find an investor that wants to buy it for a markup. That's, that's a dead way of doing business. The way that you're going to make the most amount of money and the least amount of time with the least amount of headache is you do the same strategy, you get an off market property from a seller but rather than sell it to an investor for a slight markup, you sell it on the retail market to an end user, a family that wants to move into the house for a hundred percent of full value. And through what's called a novation. A novation basically means it's just a set of paperwork that allows you to do that. So our entire business model has shifted to that. And is that also sort of sort of not what most people are doing or most people still trying to sell to investors? Yeah, I mean, I've been able to, I think swing the entire real estate investing market to do that. Now and most people have followed what we've, they see it. They see it's working. Correct. Correct. They're saying how people get so married to the way it's always been and they never, they never modernize their business. I mean, that's like the death of a business, like when you never change, when you, when you say like this is the way it's always been done. I mean, I'm always looking for ways that we can reinvent ourselves. How can we, you know, rapidly adopt artificial intelligence or systems and processes and stay ahead of marketing as an entrepreneur, you've got to be looking out ahead and making those R&D bets and yeah, with a lot of entrepreneurs. I think also a lot of real estate people, they seem to do a little bit of everything to diversify all their efforts and energy. You are the opposite. You're always like laser focused on one strategy, one market, one opportunity at a time. You feel like that's the best way to really be successful. 100%. The biggest reason that I see most people fail is shiny objects syndrome. You know, they'll do something for three months, six months, maybe a year or two and then they jump into the next thing. Yeah. And that is suicide. I think it takes years in order to be a true master at anything, especially in real estate, even just real estate, like is a very broad topic. Yeah, we could talk about wholesale, we could talk about subject to, we could talk about Airbnb, commercial, like they just branches out. Yeah. You have to stay laser focused and I would rather be, you know, a master at one thing than a jack of all trades. And that's where you, that's what, that's what you do. So you just focus on the one thing, you do it, you know, 10,000 times and eventually you'll figure it out. And I don't care how green the grass looks on the other side, I'm staying in my lane. When you started, you were looking for freedom, fulfillment, now you can travel anywhere. If you ever thought of like, I take it to the next level, exit it, have you thought about that? That's exactly what I'm working on now. That's why I moved from Mexico back to the United States was to be able to create a large enough real estate investment company to sell off the private equity. Nobody has really been able to successfully sell a wholesale company. Really, that's so surprising to me because the private equity buys up like everything one suggests a certain revenue. The majority of wholesale and companies are too small, they have key man risk, their systems and processes are not streamlined. They don't have high enough profit margins and it's just not appetizing to most PE companies. You know, for in order to get a decent multiple, you need to be able to be like 5,000,000,000 EBITDA. So once you're over 5,000,000 EBITDA, everything's systemized process, then it starts to be able to be a sellable. Are you doing that? Are you still doing that with a completely remote team? Yeah, I'll completely remote. One cool thing that I've also done is I'm doing it with my company, but then I'm also partnering with a lot of my students as well. So I have a coaching and mentorship program and the guys that are crushing it in my mentorship program will actually all bring them up and say, listen, don't pay me anymore for mentorship. We're going to do this together and I'll come into their business, help them streamline everything and then we'll participate in the upside together. So it's like you're almost like doing a little bit of your own roll up, doing a roll up. You're building your own companies to roll up into something that private equity cat is very smart. And that's the goal. So are you going to do roll up and then eventually exit out? Roll up and then exit out. I think that a lot of entrepreneurs, they don't think of the exit plan and they don't know where they want to take it. They just start it. It's growing and then they're like, okay, do I pass it on to my kids? Do I like do I sell to private equity? And I think that like having a good exit plan is probably one of the most important things just so like you have this direction that you're taking the business. If you don't have direction, you don't know where you're going to go with it. No, to me, it's still a stepping stone. Yeah, I still see that it's a small opportunity for, you know, if I could sell that this company right now for, you know, 80 to $100 million. Then that gives me some seed money to go play in a real capital now. Yeah, so let's talk about sales for a second because sales is, as we mentioned before, one of the most important things that not you can learn how to do. Obviously, it's sort of major career. It's major business. It's, it's something that I think is one of the most important skills. You learned it at indeed. It helped build the whole sailing business. Just give me a sort of an idea of what you look for when you're training somebody on how to sell. Like what's the, what's the skill set that an entrepreneur has to learn to be able to sell well? Who does be a good salesman? I mean, when I'm looking for guys that are on my team that can sell, I want to, I want to see body count. I want to see that they can pull girls. If they can pull girls, then they can usually sell. That's, that's one. So I'll look at their Facebook or their social media. And if they've got a hot girlfriend, that's usually a plus. Is that true? Yes. It's, it translates in high ticket sales. It translates extremely well into how well somebody's going to do. Number two, I want to see a successful track record. I don't hire entry level salespeople. And I think that when I say successful track record, it's not only in job, but it's, it's the other areas in our life. How do they treat, you know, themselves, their, their fitness, their faith, all the other areas? And then can they hold a good conversation? Yeah. That's extremely important. When you close deals, you contact the leads 18 times in 72 hours. So this is a very, very, I don't know, I would say aggressive to a degree approach, but it works. Why does, why do you need this amount of volume when you're contacting somebody and trying to close this? This is not just a real estate thing I'm assuming. That there's parts of your sales strategy that you picked up from indeed. You picked up from years of wholesaling. 18 touch points for the average person would seem a lot who isn't in sales. Why does that work? Yeah, it's like the first 48 when somebody gets kidnapped. You know, after that, it goes cold, right? Yeah. Turns into a cold case. So you've really got those first 72 hours to get in touch with that lead or just forget it. Like it's going to go into a long term follow up sequence. So the mechanics that we do, it's three calls a day, three texts a day, three emails a day for the first three days. And that's 18 touch points, 18 touch points. And what do you know the percentage of closing in the first 72 hours when you do that versus when you don't? It's true. It's through the roof. I can give you an exact percentage point. It's. It's like night and day night and day. You have to have speed to lead, especially with inbound online leads. They're contacting your competitors and they're just waiting for the first person to call them. So you've got to be on it immediately and then stays stalker mode for those first three days. How do you know? How do you know when to like shut down the relationship? Like there's a point where persistence. Well, to some people, they would describe it as harassment, but I wouldn't even say that. I would say that there's actually, it's just a waste of your time after a certain point. If you're going on and you're contacting them so much, like there has to be a point where you disqualify the lead as well. Correct. Yeah. So we will hit them for this first 18 times in 72 hours. And then they'll go on a longer term follow up sequence where we'll have an automated follow up sequence that goes out to them. We're still calling like once a day, but it doesn't get as aggressive. Like I said, this first three days are the most when you have to hit them. And this is, this is sales across the board with any product. With any product, any service, what do people screw up the most in sales? What do they get wrong? I think that right now in 2025, when we're recording this, people don't understand that iPhones completely change the game now. So if you look at your text messages, it summarizes your text message on there. And so you need to know what to say in a text message so you don't end up just getting tuned out and blocked by somebody. Number two, most people have their phone on D&D. And so you need to hit them three times just in order to get it to break through the D&D. So most people know like in sales, double dial somebody they'll get on. But if they're phones on D&D, which most people says, mine is, yeah, always. Then the first ring, it's going to go straight to voicemail. The second ring, it might go through, but the third time it'll actually punch through. And you know, it'll, it'll actually ring. It'll actually ring. When you're just onboarding somebody, you mentioned like sort of these are the prerequisites. They have to be able to, you know, sell themselves, be able to have a good conversation. What's the training to get somebody up the speed on sales? Is it just dialing and just facing rejection after rejection? No, no. So we've adopted artificial intelligence into our training process where we have a software that will actually roleplay with the new hire. And we've created different personas for the AI. And they can go back and forth and just get beat up by AI until they score a certain score on the AI. And then we have multiple different personas, they have to graduate through. So it saves us a phenomenal amount of time. And it doesn't burn leads. Doesn't burn leads. It doesn't take resources and time for my internal leadership team in order to do it. So that's been a game changer is doing AI roleplay. In addition to that, we have a course that we put them through. And then we have a sequence of different trainings that we do in order to onboard them in that first week. So if I hire somebody on a Monday, usually they're on the phones by Thursday Friday. How do you, when you're, when you're onboarding a new salesperson, and I say like onboarding a new salesperson, some of the audience sell themselves. Like some of the audience, they're founders and they're selling themselves. So this question applies to somebody who is hiring a salesperson or somebody who's selling themselves. How do you maintain the energy as a salesperson after tons of rejection? Now I know that you're not training them with real people, but for the long time, that's how you train sales reps. You don't have AI. How do you get somebody to like be excited after a hundred rejections or after not closing the deal for the first two months? Because maybe you're going to say they're not right for sales. I don't know, but there has to be something that keeps them going because there's going to be a lot of rejection. And I think that that rejection is what screws up more founders than anything. That's what stops them from being able to sell. Yeah, it's massive belief in the product or service that you are offering in order to be able to help your client. And then massive belief in yourself as well. So if you don't have those things, you better go find it where you're going to end up starting to fail. So if you start to see that your energy is waning, you're dipping, you're feeling like you're going downhill, audit. Okay, do I really believe in what I'm offering? If you don't, you better go and find that. You have to find that belief. Yeah, you can't sell if you don't believe in what you're offering. And if you don't believe in yourself, a lot of it's in between your ears too. Sales is a mental game. But what is it's a mental game? So like you mentioned, if you don't have belief in the product, that's one thing. You can go learn about the product, you can research it better, you can understand how it actually adds value to the customer. But belief in yourself, this is something that people struggle with. And I've been asked this a lot and I have an answer, but I don't if it's the best answer. People always ask like, when you have imposter syndrome, how do you overcome that? Because it's like a chicken and egg scenario for a lot of people. They have imposter syndrome so they don't take action because they don't take action. They don't have a proof point that they can be successful. So they sort of hold on to the imposter syndrome. So this is a great question. So I'm going to play out a scenario for you, okay? So you've got you and me, all right? You're a stud, you're confident, you've got it all together. Me, I'm a little shaky. We go and we show up on the job day one. We have the same script, we do the same training, the same role play. You go in and you start crushing deals right out of the gate and I'm sucking. I'm bombing. Why is it? We had the same training, we had the same script, but what was different between you and me? The difference was that you had the internal fortitude and where does that, where's that confidence in 42 built from? It's built from honoring the promises that you make to yourself. It's because when you said you were going to go work out in the morning, you got yourself in there and you worked out and you gave it 110%. When you said you were going to make your bed, you made that bed and it was tight, right? You do the things that you say you're going to do every time you honor the promises that you say you're going to make to yourself, you get a little bit more confident. Anytime that you don't, you end up becoming less confident. You go out and you say you're going to follow a diet, then you're out eating the cheeseburger, come a little less confident. So it's just from honoring the promises you make to yourself. I love that. So it's not even about success at work. It's about success everywhere else in your life. Yeah, it all comes together. It's all one. That's why I believe that working out, being strict with your diet, with your health, with your wellness, with all the other things in your life, I think that that compounds into business success. I can agree more. It all is the same. What are the things that hurt a salesperson or an entrepreneur the most? Like that could be limiting beliefs, it could be self-sabotage. Like what's the mindset that is actually detrimental to your success? Vices, you know, drugs, alcohol, junk food, pornography, like you fill in the blank. All those things will take you down to black hole, social media, right? So if you find somebody going down those past, it's a slippery slope to poverty. You know Patrick Beddavid? Yes. I love is that if you don't have God in a traditional sense, then something else will become your God. So if you don't have God, and you don't sort of subscribe to something that's bigger than you, then it could be work, it could be drugs, it could be women, porn, gambling. You're going to be some other vice that becomes your God that you really become like a slave to. And I think that that's where I think that's where a lot of people don't realize how damaging some of these habits are because it's not like it. They don't look at some of these habits as life-running and nobody nobody watches porn and things is going to ruin your life. But because of the dopamine release that you get from a lot of these activities, it's very easy to like start to let it take over your life and become the God, quote unquote, in your life, and then distract you from what actually matters. And I think that that's probably, listen, I think that that's probably where a lot of people let themselves go. Because then it takes up time, right? It takes the time. If you're addicted to drinking and gambling and porn, like even if you are a hard worker, even if you are focused when you're working. Like you have two, three, four, five, whatever amount of hours less per week to focus on the thing that could actually move the needle in your life or in your relationship. It's not even the time. It's the energy as well. Yes, 100%, 100%. For sure, there's actual time. But yeah, the energy, because if you, listen, if you're like, if you're drinking three nights a week, like I'm 35, my hangover's last two days now. Like that's 48 hours of less than productive, right? If you are, like if you are spending more time drinking or watching porn, then, you know, going on a date night with your wife, I mean compounded over a couple of years, your relationship's not going to be so good. 100%. Everybody that's watching this needs to go read the book Napoleon Hill, outweating the devil. The devil placed these kind of tricks on you. And it's called drifting. So what you see is like, oh, it's seemingly insignificant. Like, you know, what's a, you know, vape going to do or I'm just going to go play blackjack, you know, all my phone. Then, you know, what happens is like you said that becomes your God. And it's not so much about the time. It's that your mental energy is looking over here when you should be focused here. And you're constantly getting pulled by these vices into a direction that you don't want to go. And then a year later, you don't even recognize yourself. And you didn't accomplish your goals because your body. So when you do these things, there's like a dopamine or there's some sort of like hormone release. And your body craves that. And it's like, well, I could be doing like this over here, which is important, but boring and no dopamine release or. I remember I know I know that if I go play blackjack for like 30 minutes, there is a dopamine release. That's why social media is so bad. No, it's a constant dopamine. It's worse than alcohol is they've done 1000% of it. It's totally addictive. So I mean, I catch myself doing it now. And I'm like aware of it. I try and only use social media for business. I try and post. I try to not just scroll, but I mean like every human you get you get sucked into it. And I'll be bored. And boredom is good because boredom means you can think and boredom means you can sit with your thoughts and boredom means you can be creative. Like you don't always want to be on 100% working away. Right. You want to breathe a little bit. It's important. But I'll be bored. And instead of taking a second and like breathing and taking a second, you're immediately boom exactly because my brain's like, oh, well, I'm sure that brainstorming where my business is going to go is useful. But I also like dopamine. So let me just fuck around on TikTok. And it does nothing for you. Right. But again, you do that every time you have a down, you know, a down 30 minutes. There goes your life. But you don't think about it like that. I've never I've never heard of that Napoleon Hill book. Everyone knows I could think and grow rich. But I've never heard of this one. Outweeting the devil is even better than thinking grow rich. What are some other we've sort of spoken about? Okay, so biggest things that distract entrepreneurs biggest things that will make them successful. What are the most important lessons that you've learned over your career that you would hope is somebody who's just starting out would learn or I would even say, what is the most painful lesson that you learned that you hope nobody else would ever have to learn, but it was a useful lesson for you. Most important lesson that I learned growing up was do not take advice from people that are not early where you want to be. So my entire, you know, childhood out of lessons, you know, I was controlled by, you know, parents, teachers, you had to do what I was told. And I realized none of these people really had it figured out. And everything that they were doing was out of love, but it was leading me nowhere. So the ones that are closest to you, your friends, your family that have good intentions for you does not mean that you should listen to them. If they are not where you want to be financially, spiritually, mentally, fill in the blank, do not take advice from them. You have to distance them. So that was a very hard lesson that I learned in my adolescence. I had to go and unwire all of that stuff. And the way that I unwired it was, I would literally brainwash myself with personal development YouTube. And I pushed away friends, family, everything and kind of isolated for so you like to get like a hard reset on your belief system. I had to. Yeah. That was my only way out or I would, I would have been a, you know, been working in nine to five probably still in North of Virginia.