Episode 503
Finding the Right People: Key to Success in Real Estate Investing with Ace Hagerty
Welcome back to another episode of the REI Mastermind Network! I'm your host, Jack Hoss, and today we have a fantastic guest joining us - the incredible Ace Hagerty. This episode is filled with wisdom and insights about the power of finding the right people for your real estate team.
Ace shares their journey of building a successful real estate business, emphasizing the importance of having the right individuals in the right roles. From an amazing assistant who keeps their life organized to skilled project managers who ensure everything runs smoothly, Ace knows the value of a strong team.
We dive deep into Ace's experiences in flipping houses, turnkey rentals, and ground-up developments. They share inspiring stories of turning run-down properties into beautiful units, increasing cash flow, and achieving substantial profits. But it's not all smooth sailing - Ace also reveals the mistakes they've made and the lessons they've learned along the way.
Plus, Ace opens up about their personal transformation during a 100-day challenge, which led to the creation of an empowering book. We'll discuss the importance of maximizing our skills, setting clear goals, and focusing on specific niches. And let's not forget, Ace is also committed to making a difference in the world by supporting a nonprofit organization, Operation Rescue Children.
Get ready for a jam-packed episode filled with real estate insights, personal growth inspiration, and valuable advice on building the right team. So, grab your notepad, sit back, and let's dive right into today's episode with the incredible Ace Hagerty!
Connect with Ace Hagerty: SuperHerobyDesign.com
Key Topics and Bullets:
Importance of Finding the Right People for Your Team
- Role of an amazing assistant in organizing life and handling bookkeeping
- Importance of having the right people in the right positions
- Negative impact of a project manager who wasn't a good fit
Book Recommendation - "Who Not How"
- The book emphasizes the importance of finding the right people for success
Real Estate Investing Journey
- Success and profit from a quick rehab on a property
- Exploration of different real estate strategies
- Turning a run-down property into beautiful units for increased cash flow
- Transition to a turnkey rental business and ground-up development
Learning from Failures and Mistakes
- Mistakes made when flipping houses in Nashville
- Loss of significant money on a flip due to wrong contractor and lack of oversight
- Realization of the importance of sticking to prices and effective communication
Overcoming Challenges in Real Estate Investments
- Challenges posed by COVID-19
- Current success despite difficult times
- Smart pricing strategies in the face of a high-interest loan market
- Comparison with a nearby developer who had to drop prices and lose money
Focus and Setting Clear Goals
- Importance of focus in achieving financial freedom
- Determining a niche and type of real estate investing
- Need for creativity and standing out from the mainstream
- Achieving goals faster through specific targeting
Real Estate Investing Journey - Finding Strengths and Partnering
- Finding strengths in construction and fixing issues in the field
- Need to find people who are proficient in sales and marketing
- Development partner focused on finding deals and selling
- Speaker focuses on their strengths and responsibilities
Making a Meaningful Change and Giving Back
- Support of Operation Rescue Children, a nonprofit organization combatting illegal sex trafficking
- Efforts to rescue slaves, provide help, and assist in reintegration
- Desire to make a change and give back to society through book sales
Current Real Estate Market Conditions
- High-interest rates causing a slowdown in the housing market
- Panic-driven price drops and fire sales
- Holding firm on prices and betting on the quality of the product
- Successful sales and contracts for full asking price
Personal Growth and Empowerment
- Writing a book as a personal growth journey, not just for publication
- Love for comic books and belief in everyone's inner superhero
- Experiences during a 100-day challenge, including extreme activities
- Lifestyle changes and realization of the power of the nervous system
- Book providing personal tools and principles for transformation
- Motivation behind the podcast and sharing inspiring stories
Transcript
We have Ace Haggerty here with me today, and you can learn more about
Speaker:what Ace is up to by heading over to
Speaker:SuperHeroByDesign.com. And I'll
Speaker:make sure to have that as a clickable link in the show notes, but Ace
Speaker:has been in the real estate business now for 10 or more years.
Speaker:He also has a podcast of his own. So, again, head over to
Speaker:SuperHeroByDesign.com, and you'll find some links to that as well.
Speaker:But, Ace, I really appreciate your time here today. Hey, Jack.
Speaker:The pleasure's all mine. I really appreciate being on your show. I've
Speaker:listened to your show. The guests you have on are fantastic.
Speaker:They just give such good information to your audience
Speaker:and you yourself are phenomenal as well. So I just hope
Speaker:that today I just show up and add some value.
Speaker:I think you can add some significant value because when before we hit
Speaker:record, you mentioned that you are
Speaker:about to become financially free after 10 years of doing
Speaker:this. And It sounded like there was a
Speaker:winding road to this. Can you talk a little bit
Speaker:about what changed and
Speaker:the trajectory here. Yeah. No. I appreciate you asking that. That's a
Speaker:phenomenal question. It has been a windy road as
Speaker:being an oprenuer being a real estate investor.
Speaker:There's that joke. It's something like the shiny object
Speaker:syndrome where you see a shiny object and you run straight
Speaker:towards it, and that's how I was for a really long time.
Speaker:I started off in the business. Let me back up real
Speaker:quick. I'm a structural engineer by trade. So I went to college,
Speaker:got my degree. I got a couple degrees, and
Speaker:went into consulting and then jumped into construction
Speaker:being a project manager and running crews and still doing structural
Speaker:engineering. But about 10 years ago,
Speaker:a realtor buddy of mine came up to me and at that time,
Speaker:there were just a lot of us going on and he found
Speaker:somebody who was interested in doing a short sale. They were about
Speaker:to go bankrupt, give up the house, everything. So we did a short sale
Speaker:deal and he was like, hey. I've got this deal. Do you wanna fix it
Speaker:up? We can go in 5050, and we can flip
Speaker:it and sell it. And at that time, I didn't know much about real estate
Speaker:investing other than what Chip and Joanne gains did on fixer
Speaker:upper. I was like, oh, so we could do like a fixer upper type thing.
Speaker:And -- And it only does it's only done in 30 minutes. Right? Yeah. Exactly.
Speaker:Exactly. And they're using some of my crews that I had at the instruction company
Speaker:I worked for and some subcontractors that I had met over the
Speaker:years. We did pretty much a lipstick
Speaker:rehab on this property, got it done within 3 months. And the
Speaker:only reason it took 3 months is back then when you're doing a short sale,
Speaker:when you bought the house, at least this wasn't California where I was
Speaker:born and raised. That's where I started all this out at you had to
Speaker:wait 3 months. So within 90 days, we got it rehabbed. I did a lot
Speaker:of what people would call sweat equity. I did a lot of the work
Speaker:myself. with my guys, and we got it ready and flipped
Speaker:it. And we made after paying everybody and
Speaker:everything, we netted $90,000. So we split
Speaker:45,000 each. My first flip, it was a lipstick flip. And
Speaker:you would have thought at that time, with that kind of money and that
Speaker:short amount of time that I would have been like, oh my god. This is
Speaker:my golden ticket to creating the
Speaker:life that I've always wanted to create, but me being a structural
Speaker:engineer, I'm very conservative. I'm conservative with money. I'm conservative
Speaker:with my approach. And so I didn't learn
Speaker:from that first flip. And so I started off
Speaker:very slowly doing a flip at a time. then
Speaker:came across a property. How about we refinance this,
Speaker:pull all the money out that we put in, and get some tenants in back
Speaker:then, there was no burst strategy. And but I was
Speaker:like, this is a really cool strategy. Like, I could put some of my
Speaker:money in Purchase it, fix it up, refi
Speaker:it, get renters in, or, sorry, get renters in, refi. That's
Speaker:it. and rinse and repeat. So I started doing
Speaker:that one at a time. I loved Airbnb's. So I
Speaker:was like, let me let me start working on Airbnb as well.
Speaker:And so I ended up doing that as well. Instead
Speaker:of making it a long term rental, I made it a short term rental.
Speaker:And so you could see that I'm getting interested in all
Speaker:these different things, these different avenues because I was just excited. I was a
Speaker:young entrepreneur. I still had my w 2. So I
Speaker:was moonlighting at nights, weekends, and I the one
Speaker:thing I can say about myself is I'm a really hard work.
Speaker:I grew up in a blue collar family. So work ethic is
Speaker:not anything that's foreign in my family. And so
Speaker:it's not the best being a business operator instead of a business owner, and
Speaker:that's one of the other things I I struggled with over the years. But
Speaker:You could see as my progression went through
Speaker:real estate, I was trying different things. I was being creative, being an engineer.
Speaker:I'm a big problem solver. And so I was always big on
Speaker:just different strategies. There's something that I think the bigger pocket guys
Speaker:talk about a lot now. It's not long term. It's not short term. They call
Speaker:it, like, midterm or middle term rentals month to month.
Speaker:And I had a project in Georgia that I did where it was
Speaker:an 11 unit complex, 1 bedroom, 1 bathroom
Speaker:units, almost like efficiencies, and they were making about $700 a
Speaker:month and they were really crappy. Maybe, actually less than
Speaker:that $500 a month. And people didn't like it. It was
Speaker:infested with bats and roaches and just nasty stuff. And I was like,
Speaker:what if we did like an Airbnb thing? But instead,
Speaker:we go on to a website like furnished finder. and get nurses
Speaker:in there. There was a lot of hospitals in that town. I never had done
Speaker:it before, and this was a few years ago as well. And we
Speaker:turned those 11 units into these beautiful they look
Speaker:like Airbnb's, but we rented them out to nurses, and it was
Speaker:Cash flow was insane. They went from $500 a
Speaker:month to $1200 a month, and we ended up selling
Speaker:the property making a boatload of money off of that. And it
Speaker:was just we had this problem with this problem property
Speaker:And it was like, okay. Let's take this prop, and
Speaker:let's try to get creative with a solution. Let's not just
Speaker:fix it up half ass. Yeah. Sorry for cussing. I don't know if you have
Speaker:cussing on your let's take this really
Speaker:rundown property in fested nastiness,
Speaker:and let's make it something beautiful and get some
Speaker:tenants in that would absolutely love this and work with their schedule. And
Speaker:then, yeah, now I I know the bigger pockets guys push it a
Speaker:lot, but that's, like, the new sexy big thing. And
Speaker:It was just me trying to, at that time, just solve problems, and that's what
Speaker:I love doing. And I know I'm going on about
Speaker:this, but a business I started, I thought it was gonna be a fix
Speaker:and flip business, and then it becomes a turnkey rental business.
Speaker:We're fixing these places up We're getting them rented
Speaker:out and that now we're we've found a connection that the business
Speaker:partners and I have people who can offload properties very quick and
Speaker:easy to investors as turn keys. And so we started a
Speaker:turnkey business. As of today, I'm in Nashville,
Speaker:Tennessee, I love this town. It's a booming town. It has
Speaker:been. I've been here for the last 5 years. And
Speaker:more recently, I had purchased some land development
Speaker:is huge here, and I was interviewing contractors.
Speaker:And I have 15 years of engineering and construction
Speaker:experience. And I was interviewing the contractors, and I was like,
Speaker:man, they're expensive. And the workmanship
Speaker:in this town for the majority of the builders out here isn't very
Speaker:good. In my opinion, I'm very conservative, and I build a very
Speaker:good product no matter what I do. And I remember one of the
Speaker:contractors told me he's, hey. Like, he was joking because I
Speaker:was doing some engineering work for him. He was joking. He's yeah. You
Speaker:probably know this stuff better than me and could build it better anyways. I was
Speaker:like, thinking in my head, I was like, 1, that's not a very good sales
Speaker:tactic. But but, 2, like, his fee for this development
Speaker:was a 125,000. I was like, Man, that's like
Speaker:half of what I make doing my engineering business every year.
Speaker:Like, why don't I just do this myself? And then COVID hit
Speaker:And I was like, I'll just take my test and start
Speaker:building myself. So fast forward to the last
Speaker:year. That's what I've been doing. Now I'm a ground up developer
Speaker:building single family residential homes, multifamily
Speaker:townhouses and all of that. So it's been a
Speaker:pretty long journey for me. And I know I
Speaker:think Robert Kersaki talked about him becoming
Speaker:financially free. I think he said it took him 10 years. And so I'm about
Speaker:to follow that path, but I know this in this day and age,
Speaker:it can be done a lot faster. And I feel like it was a
Speaker:long windy road for me but
Speaker:I gained a lot of knowledge. I learned a lot about the different parts
Speaker:of real estate investing and I
Speaker:learned a heck of a lot of lessons because I didn't make a lot of
Speaker:mistakes. I did have a lot of failures on this journey, but
Speaker:I feel like it has made me it's gotten me to where I am
Speaker:today, and it's definitely made me a better investor, a better
Speaker:person, a better manager of people,
Speaker:And I don't recommend it to everybody because it was a hard
Speaker:road, but at the same time, that's what I
Speaker:went through. That's what I had to go through. Yeah. Before we hit
Speaker:record, you alluded to the fact that, you know, what is the old saying? You
Speaker:if you chase multiple multiple rabbits, you won't catch any.
Speaker:Right. Is that the situation there? You mentioned
Speaker:that you think it could have been a lot shorter? Was it because you've
Speaker:you were pursuing so many avenues that you think that
Speaker:Yeah. If that was the downfall there? Yeah. It took me a while
Speaker:to quit my w 2, so to speak, and go
Speaker:into real estate investing full time. I was still very
Speaker:conservative, and I didn't wanna just jump feet first
Speaker:into it even though that first flip you
Speaker:would have thought, oh my goodness, but you hear a lot of people's stories. Like,
Speaker:they get that taste and then that insatiable taste of
Speaker:real what real estate brings to you when you pick up
Speaker:that property or you sell that property, like that feeling is so
Speaker:amazing. And one of the biggest lessons I
Speaker:learned in the past 10 years is
Speaker:really the importance of focus.
Speaker:What is it you want? What is it that you really
Speaker:want? And then figuring out whatever that is,
Speaker:how to get to it and also obviously having to why to back that up
Speaker:and really reverse engineering it. You would think maybe in an engineer,
Speaker:I this would have been second nature to me. Where do I wanna be? So
Speaker:when I talk about being financially free, what does that mean in in
Speaker:terms of dollars? how much money do I need to be bringing in
Speaker:on my investments so that I can be
Speaker:financially free and and then reverse engineer that.
Speaker:Okay. if it's single family homes, how many do I need? How
Speaker:many what's the typical net that you're gonna be bringing in
Speaker:on the type of residential home. So is it what classes it
Speaker:is it in? What part of the country? Is it long distance, short
Speaker:term? And really just taking those steps and evaluating, okay, what
Speaker:do I wanna be doing as well? Do I wanna be doing single family? Do
Speaker:I wanna be doing commercial? And then learning everything
Speaker:you can about that niche that specific
Speaker:part of real estate investing because I always tell people, I
Speaker:one thing I love about real estate in general and real estate
Speaker:investing is you're only
Speaker:as good at real estate investing as creative as you can be.
Speaker:The more creative you can be, the more likely you are to
Speaker:break yourself away from that herd because as real estate investing gets
Speaker:more popular and mainstream and you get bigger pockets and chip
Speaker:and Joanne and all those people making
Speaker:everybody think that they can be the next big real estate investor.
Speaker:It is just vital to
Speaker:know what you wanna do and where you wanna go.
Speaker:And so I think, yeah, the biggest lesson for
Speaker:me over these past 10 years is I should
Speaker:have and hate to use the word should, but I
Speaker:really feel like if I had focused on something
Speaker:more specifically, then this 10 years would have been
Speaker:condensed a lot a lot more, and I would have gotten
Speaker:to where I am about to be a lot faster. Yeah.
Speaker:I have a buddy who recently said to
Speaker:in order to get multiple streams of income, you you must
Speaker:1st master 1. Yep. And that's very true.
Speaker:And the more I've been doing this, the more I every like
Speaker:you said, every entrepreneur has this where you're constantly fighting
Speaker:the urge of change chasing the next shiny object.
Speaker:Yeah. It's just it's a curse if you it's much more than
Speaker:anything else. When I was doing my turnkey rentals, so I'm in
Speaker:Tennessee, and we started down in, like, middle
Speaker:Georgia. Columbus, Georgia specifically. And
Speaker:we started buying rentals there, fixing them up, had a whole crew down
Speaker:there, started selling them to investors. Then we moved to
Speaker:Cincinnati, Ohio after that. Me being the hands on
Speaker:person that I love to be, and that's it
Speaker:gets to a point that it's actually a detriment. I was driving down to Georgia,
Speaker:which was about, I think, 5 a half hours and then driving
Speaker:up to Cincinnati, which was another 4, I think, 4
Speaker:hours and doing that about once or twice a week in
Speaker:addition to running my engineering business, which was me
Speaker:because I'm the structural engineer doing it all. And then starting these
Speaker:developments at the same time, you can see yourself, and that's been
Speaker:a repeating theme throughout my history as well. It's not only I was going for
Speaker:different things and not focusing. I was stretching myself way too
Speaker:thin. I was being the business operator rather than the
Speaker:business owner. And I had employees.
Speaker:I had contractors. So I wasn't literally doing all
Speaker:the work myself, but my time management wasn't
Speaker:where it needed to be I think that's a huge aspect too is once
Speaker:you focus on something, you gotta figure out what
Speaker:your time management is gonna be, what you're gonna actually spending
Speaker:your time on day in and day out, and are you maximizing your time?
Speaker:Are you maximizing your skill set and then everything else
Speaker:can go to somebody else. And that was something that I had
Speaker:learned over the years as well. Sure. You
Speaker:just a minute there. You said that, you know, That's
Speaker:something that I've always struggled with too is that you frankly, you
Speaker:nobody you employ seems to care as much as you do. So you it's hard
Speaker:to let certain things go What type of strategies have you
Speaker:used to learn to rely on more of a team?
Speaker:One strategy I learned is finding the right people my
Speaker:assistant right now, she is absolutely amazing.
Speaker:One thing I learned about myself, even though I'm an engineer, I'm not a very
Speaker:organized person, And so my assistant organizes
Speaker:my life. From my calendar, she does most of my bookkeeping. I have
Speaker:an accountant and a CPA, but she does, like, the day to day stuff. so
Speaker:that she can keep me in the loop with what's going on
Speaker:with where we're spending because I'm doing 1,000,000 of dollars of
Speaker:development right now. And if I didn't have the right people
Speaker:in the right place, it would have blown up at this point
Speaker:and shoot from what I'm learning development, it's
Speaker:hard enough. without all of this. So it's, I think,
Speaker:finding the right people, but not only finding the right people, making sure
Speaker:they're in the right place. because not everybody is gonna be a great
Speaker:assistant. Not everybody is gonna be a great project manager. I had a
Speaker:project manager for that turnkey business who was a phenomenal person, a
Speaker:hardworking person, but he wasn't a great person
Speaker:manager, and it all just fell apart eventually because He hit
Speaker:what's called the Peter principle, and he got up to a certain
Speaker:level that was his ceiling, whether he realized it or I
Speaker:realized it or not. And so finding the
Speaker:right people. There's a book, who not how. It's finding
Speaker:the right whose and making sure they're also in the right
Speaker:position. Yeah. You're not the only one who's brought up this book recently,
Speaker:the this concept. And just to remind everybody, again, it's
Speaker:superherobydesign.com. Take a look at ACE's
Speaker:book and the links there for his podcast. It it
Speaker:actually sounds like you've taken the concept of niching down
Speaker:not only on your business level, but your personal level, where you're
Speaker:you finally have realized where your shortcomings are
Speaker:and filling in those gaps with those appropriate.
Speaker:Who's? Yeah. Yeah. 100%.
Speaker:What happened in this past year. So you had mentioned the book. I wrote
Speaker:a book back in January from about it I did this thing called the
Speaker:100 day challenge. And it's for anybody listening, if
Speaker:they know Andy forsella and 75 hard, take
Speaker:75 hard, and put it on steroids, and this is what the
Speaker:100 day challenge is. So for a 100 days, what I ended up
Speaker:doing was I did everything from waking up at 5:30 in the
Speaker:morning to taking cold showers to exercising 5
Speaker:days a week to really getting my
Speaker:diet in line the project I wanna do to do was write a
Speaker:book in a 100 days. I've never written a book before. I've tried, and I
Speaker:failed. This time I wanted to complete it. So I did all these
Speaker:things and I just was just up early,
Speaker:stayed up late and just got at it for a 100
Speaker:days as far as my business was concerned. I
Speaker:stopped. I took myself out of the engineering business. The
Speaker:turnkey rental business, I my partners and
Speaker:I made the decision to buy me out. And so I was
Speaker:focused solely on 1, the 100 day challenge and
Speaker:everything had to do then, but from a business standpoint, I was
Speaker:focused on the development business, and it's
Speaker:crazy because from January, 2022 to
Speaker:today, January 2023. Interest rates
Speaker:are absolutely insane. and the housing market
Speaker:is slowed significantly because of that.
Speaker:Now from the outside looking in, it's, oh my goodness, doomsday.
Speaker:worse thing possible. What the heck's going on? And
Speaker:I'm finishing up my developments. I've already had ones that have finished a
Speaker:couple months ago. We put it on the MLS. Everybody
Speaker:else around us. Not everybody else, but a lot of people were dropping their
Speaker:prices because they were freaking out. Fire sale so to
Speaker:speak. And my partner and I, we looked at each other where, like,
Speaker:construction costs have gone through the roof. these developments
Speaker:have taken a lot longer than we thought they would have taken.
Speaker:What are we gonna do? And I was we looked at each other, and we're
Speaker:pretty in sync with our values and our mindset. We're like, we're gonna bet on
Speaker:ourselves. We're gonna keep our price hold to our
Speaker:price and loan behold, some of the houses we've
Speaker:built have sold already or are under
Speaker:contract, for full asking in a market that
Speaker:most people are terrified at, but we knew the
Speaker:product. Like, I'm gonna say this again. our product is so
Speaker:important to us. We want the best product for what
Speaker:we're working on. And so they're
Speaker:not the cheapest houses around. They're actually higher end,
Speaker:not country music star, high end, higher end houses, and
Speaker:we bet on ourselves And these developments, I'm gonna keep
Speaker:some of them. I'm gonna sell some of them. This is the vehicle
Speaker:that's gonna make me financially free because I've been able to
Speaker:focus on one thing as far as real
Speaker:estate's concerned and also
Speaker:really just bet on myself and
Speaker:make decisions from a position of
Speaker:power rather than a position of weakness We had a
Speaker:just for an quick example, there's somebody a block away from
Speaker:us. Same exact house, a 1000 square feet more.
Speaker:than ours. He dropped his price. He's losing money on
Speaker:that development. We were priced $30,000
Speaker:more than him a 1000 square feet less.
Speaker:He sold his. We got under contract and sold ours
Speaker:for our price because they went through his
Speaker:house, didn't want it. It was a duplex. Ours was a duplex, so they
Speaker:went through the other available unit. And even though it was a 1000 square
Speaker:feet more a block away, gorgeous finishes, the guy
Speaker:did a great job, but they wanted our house.
Speaker:and that was a testament to us standing strong
Speaker:to what we believed was right and what we believed was a
Speaker:great product and that was priced appropriately. We did
Speaker:not need to play the game of take it down and just beg for
Speaker:somebody to take this off because the interest payments right now are ridiculous
Speaker:for these construction loans. Anyone that knows about construction loans, they are
Speaker:heavy at the end because they the interest is based off of the money you've
Speaker:used that you've taken out of the loan. So all the money has been spent
Speaker:and more. And so at this point, we're paying a ton in interest, and
Speaker:that's where investors really lose their money at the end of a project for a
Speaker:development like what I do. But, yeah, we held strong, and
Speaker:that's what we're continuing to do through this crazy time right
Speaker:now, and it's getting me all the
Speaker:results that I never got before even though for the last
Speaker:10 years, things have been going great with real state
Speaker:minus COVID hitting for a couple months, but everything
Speaker:else just keeps going up and up for the last 10 years.
Speaker:And now in what has been the hardest time in the last 10
Speaker:years, I'm seeing the best results. It's interesting that you
Speaker:remind me the concept that, you know, acting out of
Speaker:confidence in the value you bring versus acting out of desperation.
Speaker:Yep. And typically the when you have that type of stance,
Speaker:it's almost I hate to use the word, but repulsive in a
Speaker:way. In this situation, you gave the example where that
Speaker:fella had a house, bigger house, maybe similar
Speaker:accommodations, but him doing dropping the
Speaker:price and doing some of that, there's some signaling there to the marketplace
Speaker:that there might be something else wrong with the house. There might be something that
Speaker:that they're just not privy to, and you staying
Speaker:strong in the value that you bring. it it
Speaker:really is telling us to how that can impact
Speaker:a sale. Yeah. I think it's one of the things I've learned in this past
Speaker:10 years is setting the right on the front end. One of
Speaker:my biggest mistakes that I continued to make over and over
Speaker:again is I wouldn't set up the right expectations with my employees I
Speaker:wouldn't set up the right expectations with my subs and how you
Speaker:do that. It's a quick conversation. You could literally say
Speaker:I expect this and this. or you could just present yourself
Speaker:in a certain way, bring that confidence and say, alright. What's the time
Speaker:frame for this? What's the budget for this? Okay. I expect you to do
Speaker:y and z, and it's very and then all you have to do after that
Speaker:is just follow-up and make sure and be like, hey. Remember that
Speaker:conversation we had a week month ago, however long,
Speaker:let's just stick to that. It doesn't have to be a fight, an argument,
Speaker:anything like that, but if you're presenting yourself in a strong, confident
Speaker:way, And at the same time, you're setting the right expectation for everybody
Speaker:around you and the right expectation for yourself and upholding that
Speaker:things tend to work out a lot more than they don't once
Speaker:you do that. Yeah. That's a great lesson. Setting expectations.
Speaker:We've even got to the point where we set expectations even when we're
Speaker:going to a property and and talking to the distressed seller. It
Speaker:just having those they know the next step and what's
Speaker:gonna come out of it is it's meant to change the world when
Speaker:it comes to doing that type of work. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. And you hit
Speaker:on something too. Like, we're talking about strengths and weaknesses.
Speaker:almost for a full year within that time frame,
Speaker:I was I had this goal to get a house on my
Speaker:own. because traditionally, I would find my flips through a realtor or
Speaker:a wholesaler or somebody like that. So for a year, I was like, I'm
Speaker:gonna get my own deal myself. So I
Speaker:studied. I practice sales and marketing and talking
Speaker:to to clients and all this and that. And,
Speaker:one, lack of confidence back then. I'm sure the people could see it when I
Speaker:approached them. I wasn't confident in my offer or anything like that. But, 2, I
Speaker:wasn't very good at that. I was very good at the construction side
Speaker:of it. picking the right finishes, making sure things are structurally
Speaker:sound. If there's issues in the field, I could fix
Speaker:them immediately. That's my superpower. is
Speaker:the construction, not the front end or the back ends. Over the years too, I
Speaker:would find people and be like, front end people
Speaker:that are able to do what I am not really good at
Speaker:and back end people selling the property things like that. So my development
Speaker:partner, he's really good at the front end, finding the deals, finding the
Speaker:land, and he's fantastic also at selling the
Speaker:product. But then my strength is in the middle,
Speaker:and that's where I need to be. And once I did that as well, got
Speaker:in my own lane, so to speak, and let my partner be in his own
Speaker:lane and understood who was responsible for what. That changed
Speaker:everything as well. If you wouldn't mind, let's just spend
Speaker:a little time on your book and what you did regarding this 100 day challenge.
Speaker:I was glancing through the table of contents here And it almost
Speaker:reads like you you're another I shouldn't say you're
Speaker:another. You it almost reads like you're doing something
Speaker:like Tim Ferris if you're familiar with him. Oh, yeah. -- these
Speaker:extreme challenges just to see what results he's gonna get.
Speaker:because you're looking through this and you got you talked about
Speaker:sleep, breathing, dopamine,
Speaker:cold water immersion, thoughts, anchors, healing, prayer,
Speaker:habits, and rituals, there's a lot to uncover here.
Speaker:It's a relatively it's a relatively short book. It's
Speaker:would be easy to digest for most people. Out of everything you
Speaker:experienced during those 100 days, what was a
Speaker:couple of those things that you found were the biggest benefit. The best
Speaker:part of writing the book, and I told myself at the beginning of this,
Speaker:if I wrote this book and I never published it, That's
Speaker:fine because just the exercise of
Speaker:the countless hours that I put into research, the countless hours that I
Speaker:put into writing this thing, I did this thing in a 100 days. I was
Speaker:writing about, I think, 600 words a day, minimal, and
Speaker:I was doing about an hour to an hour a half research every day, 7
Speaker:days a week for a 100 days. So I told myself at the beginning, you
Speaker:know what? Worst case scenario, I never published this book,
Speaker:but that's That's not my mission. That's not what I'm here to
Speaker:do. And so the book essentially,
Speaker:it does a couple things. 1, it catalogs my life
Speaker:prior to the 100 day challenge, who I was before that,
Speaker:my journey in the 100 day challenge, and then who I became and what
Speaker:I'm doing after that 100 days, So it talks about personal
Speaker:stories of my life at that point when I
Speaker:was younger and I tie in the whole
Speaker:super superhero aspect of it because I grew
Speaker:up a comic book fan. I love watching Marvel
Speaker:movies. I grew up watching the X Men movies and Spiderman and
Speaker:Batman just love those. And I also have
Speaker:this belief. I've had this for years that people have
Speaker:this inner superhero? Why are people like Tim Ferris able
Speaker:to do these incredible things with their lives?
Speaker:And I've all I feel like everybody is born with a special gift and a
Speaker:special ability. We just need to know how to find it and how
Speaker:to train it and how to design it. That's why the book and the
Speaker:podcast actually are called superhero by design that
Speaker:we're able to design ourselves from the inside out
Speaker:of the type of life we wanna have and who we wanna be. So as
Speaker:I was going through this 100 day challenge, I was doing crazy stuff too.
Speaker:Yeah. Cold water immersion. So ice baths, cold
Speaker:showers every day. I was a big fan of the ice man,
Speaker:Wim Hof, and learning about the Wim Hof method, his breathing
Speaker:techniques, and what it does for is breathing techniques
Speaker:keep you from they boost your immune system. They keep you from
Speaker:getting sick. And so I was doing all this crazy
Speaker:stuff. I was working out 2 hour workouts 5 days a week. I was with
Speaker:a trainer, not even a local trainer. I did a teletraining from a
Speaker:guy in Miami, and I was taking in only
Speaker:1800 calories a day while doing all this
Speaker:exercise while stay getting up early, staying up late, cold
Speaker:water. I wasn't getting sick. I had tons of energy.
Speaker:I kicked. I wasn't doing any bad habits anymore, so I stopped drinking
Speaker:alcohol. I even stopped drinking caffeine. And so I went
Speaker:with through caffeine and sugar withdrawals. At the beginning of the challenge, I did
Speaker:a I started with a 10 day cleanse, and I was able to do all
Speaker:this extreme stuff to prove I I
Speaker:didn't realize that at the time, but I was proven to myself that you can
Speaker:do a lot of things in such a short 100 days
Speaker:sounds like a lot. And when you're in it, it's a lot. But a
Speaker:100 days just goes by like this. We just finish this year. That's 365
Speaker:days. This was only the 1st 100 days of 2022.
Speaker:And so I did all these incredible things. I wrote this book and as I
Speaker:was writing it, I found what is the ultimate
Speaker:superpower of anybody and every chapter breaks down
Speaker:the same basic superpower, and that's our nervous system.
Speaker:So I started listening to guys. Amazing podcast, HubermanLab,
Speaker:Andrew Huberman, He's blown up recently this past
Speaker:year. Great neuroscientist. And I was like, all these superpowers,
Speaker:breathing, cold water, neuroplasticity, habits
Speaker:rituals, and you could read books like atomic habits as a phenomenal
Speaker:book about micro habits. and all of this
Speaker:stems back to our nervous system. So once I realized that and I
Speaker:started leveraging and using the tools that's that are
Speaker:already inside of me. All this stuff's free. All this stuff is at our
Speaker:fingertips. We just need to know how to use it and to take the day
Speaker:that's the great thing about the 100 day challenge. It's daily discipline
Speaker:doing all of these things. It was an incredible journey.
Speaker:in the past, in a 100 days, I completely turned the script on
Speaker:my life. And now I'm living a life that is completely different If you
Speaker:had talked to me a year ago, you couldn't you wouldn't even write you'd recognize
Speaker:actually, I was £45 heavier. So you might not even physically
Speaker:recognize me, but you wouldn't recognize the per and who I am today. In
Speaker:this book catalogs that it teaches people the tools that
Speaker:I used personally, but it also teaches them the principles of our
Speaker:nervous systems there's tools that haven't even been created yet that people
Speaker:can figure out for themselves. And so this is a great
Speaker:book. There's a lot of good stories about it. And then from that sparked the
Speaker:podcast. The buddy of mine who has his own podcast was like, let's sell the
Speaker:book. You need to build an audience. So why don't you start a podcast? And
Speaker:I was like, a pod what? I know Joe Rogan does
Speaker:this show online from time. I didn't know what a podcast was.
Speaker:And so I started a podcast and you know what? Starting
Speaker:my podcast has been one of the single greatest things I've done in my
Speaker:life. I'm really proud of the book and the book that I wrote, and I
Speaker:think it's gonna add tremendous value to anybody that
Speaker:reads it, but the podcast itself has become a passion project
Speaker:for me because I get to interview people that I
Speaker:consider real life superheroes that are just doing amazing things.
Speaker:It's not a real estate podcast. but it's a podcast to hear
Speaker:good inspiring stories to empower people
Speaker:and just really promote people taking control of their lives and
Speaker:taking control of their destiny and learning a lot of cool things
Speaker:that they can do to become a superhero and really just change the
Speaker:world. Yeah. I've had some people ask me, I don't run
Speaker:very many ads on the podcast, and it's really for a
Speaker:reason. Most people ask, why do you continue to do this? like, why?
Speaker:What are you getting out of this? And it's I find it a main
Speaker:the mindset getting out of it equals strictly
Speaker:some sort of cash transaction that
Speaker:they the you there's a lot more value
Speaker:in talking to somebody like you and
Speaker:making this connection, building the network, learning from each other,
Speaker:and having this conversation that's worth far
Speaker:more to me than any kind of direct
Speaker:monetary gain that you may or may not get. I agree with
Speaker:you a 100%. I had said this from day 1 when it
Speaker:comes to the book that anybody that purchases
Speaker:it a portion of the proceeds goes to a nonprofit
Speaker:that I support and am a part of. I've become a part
Speaker:of recently in the past few months. It's called Operation Rescue
Speaker:Children. And, essentially, it is an
Speaker:501c3 nonprofit that
Speaker:trains seal team 6, the Texas Rangers, like,
Speaker:not just the elite groups, but the elite of the elite groups, and
Speaker:even down to local police officers and all that. Yeah.
Speaker:They train all of these people to go into these op
Speaker:these illegal operations for sex trafficking,
Speaker:and they bust up those operations free these slaves.
Speaker:And then get them the right help that they need to get them back
Speaker:into society and get them jobs and and all of that. So it's
Speaker:just it's something I never thought I would
Speaker:specifically be a part of and do, but now
Speaker:that I'm in it, I can't see my life without being a
Speaker:part of something like this. I have no experience with sex trafficking. I was not
Speaker:trafficked. I don't know anybody that was traffic, but it is a huge problem.
Speaker:And for years years, just like becoming
Speaker:financially free and all of that, I I there was always a part of me
Speaker:that wanted to do more and give more, but then I looked at the 1st
Speaker:38 years of my life. And I was like, I provided. I worked hard, but
Speaker:really did I give back? Did I do something meaningful? If I
Speaker:died today, is there something that I could point
Speaker:at and say that I really made a change in this world that this world
Speaker:is now different after I'm gone, then when I first got
Speaker:here, and the answer was no. And that
Speaker:scared the hell out of me. And so part I love
Speaker:working with ORC, but part of what you were talking about,
Speaker:the book, obviously, I want to sell a lot of books, not for
Speaker:money, because that's not important to me. What's really
Speaker:important to me is changing people's lives. I know this book can do it, and
Speaker:so that's why I put the money where my mouth is and every book
Speaker:that's sold, a portion of those profits go directly to ORC.
Speaker:Oh, that's awesome. It's coming full circle. You're in the trenches
Speaker:now helping the actual superheroes among us. I
Speaker:appreciate you saying that it There's 2 pillars that I
Speaker:live by in my life now, and that's
Speaker:growth and contribution I love
Speaker:learning. I've always loved learning. I'm a structural engineer by trade. Like, I went
Speaker:to crazy universities and studied my butt off
Speaker:because I absolutely loved it. but then I got caught in the 9
Speaker:to 5 and the w 2, and I lost that love of learning. So this
Speaker:past year too, being able to learn about the nervous on being able
Speaker:to learn from all these amazing people in the world has just
Speaker:reignited a fire. And so part of my daily rituals
Speaker:are to study every day. I read more now than I've
Speaker:ever read before. I'm going online. It's so cool today because you could watch
Speaker:YouTube videos you can listen to podcasts. And
Speaker:so I'd love the nonstop learning,
Speaker:and I also do it for the second part because if I can be more
Speaker:then I can do more. And I feel like
Speaker:learning is great, and it makes me feel great, but now I can transfer that
Speaker:to other people. And since I've transformed my life,
Speaker:people have been coming to me asking for my help,
Speaker:and I've been able to empower, inspire, and help other
Speaker:people. And that, to me, game over. I'm
Speaker:living the best life. ever, and it's because of my
Speaker:growth and my contribution. So, well, that's just so great
Speaker:to hear. I just wanna remind everybody one more time,
Speaker:SuperHeroByDesign.com for links to
Speaker:the book and podcast and a few other resources. Check out
Speaker:Ace's podcast, superhero by design. I'll make sure to have
Speaker:all of those direct links, clickable links in the show notes.
Speaker:But to hate to do this to you, Ace, but we're gonna close out with
Speaker:some of those rapid fire questions I warned you about. I love it.
Speaker:Bring it on. So first off, what is a real estate
Speaker:investing myth you'd like to bust here today? One of the myths
Speaker:that I had, and I would call it a
Speaker:limiting belief as well, is when I first started out in real
Speaker:state. I thought you had to have money to make money in real estate. So
Speaker:all the deals I was putting my own money in, I was
Speaker:never borrowing money, I was, yeah, other than, like,
Speaker:bank loans. But from the turnkey
Speaker:property, the turnkey business that I was in, I didn't put any
Speaker:money in. We raised money,
Speaker:and we had happy investors. and
Speaker:we were able in just a span of 2 years by, I believe,
Speaker:over 150 houses, not using a single
Speaker:dime. I did put some money in eventually, but what I had
Speaker:learned was the power of other people's
Speaker:money. And the cool thing is you can get as creative as
Speaker:you want. Like, when you have private money, you can
Speaker:really make the terms whatever you want as long
Speaker:as it works well with whoever's lending you the money.
Speaker:And I'm also a very moral person too, so I'm never one to
Speaker:take advantage of anyone, but I had these limiting beliefs that borrowing money
Speaker:from other people was bad, but you know what? We made money. They made
Speaker:money. Everyone was happy. And once you start doing that,
Speaker:your mindset completely changes and using
Speaker:the power of leveraging other people's resources, whether it's
Speaker:time, money, doesn't matter. Like, that accelerates
Speaker:the growth of your business and your mission. It it
Speaker:was absolutely incredible to break that old mindset. What book
Speaker:would you recommend, or what are you reading right now? Alright. I'll give you
Speaker:both right now. Literally right next to me. I'm reading
Speaker:David Goggins new book, never finished. Love that guy to
Speaker:death. I want I don't wanna be him because
Speaker:I don't wanna run ultra marathons. but his tenacity with how
Speaker:he attacks life, I respect so much and
Speaker:me doing that 100 day challenge. I feel like putting myself
Speaker:in the fire every day is makes
Speaker:life come alive. One of my favorite books of all
Speaker:time is the compound effect by Darren Hardy.
Speaker:And that's that that goes back to the 100 day challenge too. Just
Speaker:small incremental changes every single day. atomic
Speaker:habits talks about that as well, but I love the compound effect
Speaker:and the principle behind it of that accelerated growth at
Speaker:first. Every day, it might be mundane. You don't wanna do it, and you don't
Speaker:really see any changes, but man, that exponential curve he
Speaker:talks about, those results just shoot you into the moon
Speaker:after that. It's absolutely an incredible book.
Speaker:Yeah. Goggin, you would bring up Goggin. He he has a fluidity
Speaker:about his cursing that is unraveled and just unbelievable.
Speaker:Yeah. I I love following him on social media too. Every other word is a
Speaker:mother effort. It's he's an incredible, credible person. Yeah. But
Speaker:his mindset is unbelievable. What is your biggest real estate
Speaker:investing mistake and what did you learn from it? I think we
Speaker:got we went over quite a few mistakes that I've made. I would say one
Speaker:of the worst I came to Nashville thinking I'd be the
Speaker:next big flipper, and I picked up a property within the
Speaker:1st month and a half And I just made so many
Speaker:mistakes because I had flipped houses in California before I moved here and I was
Speaker:very successful. Never lost money. And so got
Speaker:into this flip. I found the wrong who's wrong
Speaker:contractor, wrong realtor, I didn't know my
Speaker:numbers. I didn't do enough research to figure out my numbers well
Speaker:enough. Shoot. I didn't even know the right formula
Speaker:for flipping at that time because I relied on my partner in California
Speaker:to figure all that out, but now it was on me. So I didn't know
Speaker:my numbers very well. I didn't have enough oversight. I
Speaker:didn't set the right expectations with my crew my contractor and
Speaker:my realtor on the front end. And during the
Speaker:project, I didn't keep track of my numbers as well as I do now. I
Speaker:didn't have my assistant keeping me organized. And so I
Speaker:lost a significant amount of money on that flip. I did the scared
Speaker:thing because choice of weakness I
Speaker:the realtor was like, let's drop it. Okay. 2 weeks later. Let's
Speaker:drop it. Okay. And I sold out of weakness And
Speaker:the worst part of that selling out of weakness is the people that bought
Speaker:it were pissed off at me because there were some floor sloping that went
Speaker:on. And we did some foundation work that I ran and engineered,
Speaker:and we did some phenomenal foundation work on that house, but it was
Speaker:still sloped and they thought that I had sold them a
Speaker:poor house, and they were telling me they wanted to sue
Speaker:me They were saying some pretty horrible things behind my back
Speaker:to my contractor friend who was out there trying to help me
Speaker:fix the situation. And you know what? If I had stuck to my guns, didn't
Speaker:reduce my price, said this is the price. This is what you're gonna pay.
Speaker:It's worth this is a good product because it was I would
Speaker:never have had that backlash at the end. It I never thought about that
Speaker:till now until we talked about this earlier as absolutely insane.
Speaker:what people think they buy depending on how you sell it to them. That's
Speaker:a really interesting perspective. So what if you could
Speaker:go back in time and give your younger self one piece of advice, what would
Speaker:that be? It would be focus focus. I wish I
Speaker:would have focused on something accelerated my growth,
Speaker:accelerated my expertise. Like you said, what you said earlier was phenomenal. Focus
Speaker:on one thing. get that going. And then you can add something else
Speaker:in, but until you get that dialed in, don't just try
Speaker:3 or 4 things at the same time and give them partial focus because that's
Speaker:what I've been doing the last, not 10 years. I guess the 9
Speaker:years prior to that, and it was showing mediocre results
Speaker:for a ton of work, a ton of stress, and it was
Speaker:not worth it whatsoever. Okay. You have 60
Speaker:seconds. You gotta give everybody a tip or trick that they can
Speaker:implement in their lives today. What would it be? I would say there was a
Speaker:documentary that doctor Dre had done That was phenomenal.
Speaker:And the lesson learned from Doctor Dray's career
Speaker:is he always bet on himself. And at the end of the day, you said
Speaker:it earlier, no one's gonna care about your business
Speaker:or what's going on with you more than yourself. You gotta be
Speaker:looking out for your interest. And then when it
Speaker:comes like my development example I gave where we got
Speaker:our price we were betting on ourselves, and that
Speaker:changed everything. So if you don't bet on
Speaker:yourself in life, by default, you're already telling yourself you're not
Speaker:a winner because why would someone not bet
Speaker:on a winner? So if you're betting on other people to help you get
Speaker:to where you need to go. That is the wrong way of approaching
Speaker:life. Business doesn't matter. So bet on yourself because
Speaker:you are a winner And once you start doing that and making
Speaker:your own reality, everything's gonna follow
Speaker:that. Please, this was a great conversation. I hope you come back
Speaker:again sometime. Again, it's superherobydesign.com,
Speaker:but is there a question or concept you wish we would have covered here today?
Speaker:Oh, man. I I think we covered it all as far as, like, mindset and
Speaker:and potential miss. I know there's a lot more mistakes out there, but I've made
Speaker:a whole slew of them. but it's, like I said, I wouldn't be
Speaker:here today if I hadn't gone down that journey. It would have been nice
Speaker:for it to be a little more condensed, but you know what? I'm not in
Speaker:control. There's already a plan set out. I just gotta follow the
Speaker:path. Thanks again. This was great. You're welcome back. I hope
Speaker:you'll take me up on that. Last time here, superherobydesign.com.
