mom and dad

Mike: [00:00:00] Hey everybody. Welcome back to the Flip Nerd Show. Really excited, uh, to have you here today. Really excited to have, uh, my good friend Steve t Trang. I was on his podcast several years back, and I know I told him it’s, it’s always a little weird being on the other side of the microphone and being a guest on somebody else’s podcast when you have a really dominant podcast.

Mike: But, um, you know, he gets the opportunity to kind of put the shoe on the other foot, and Steve really is an amazing leader in the, in the sales side of the industry as a real estate investor. But he’s responsible for helping train a lot of teams and a lot of. Uh, salespeople directly to help take their business to another level, and that’s when the business gets good.

Mike: So, welcome to Real Estate Investing Secrets. We’re all looking for freedom and the opportunity to live better, more fulfilling lives, but most of us were trained our entire lives to work for someone else and chase their dreams. How can we use real estate investing as a vehicle to achieve? Financial freedom.

Mike: My life is dedicated to answering your real estate investing questions and helping you build an [00:01:00] investing business that allows you to change your life and the world around you, and to enable you to turn your dreams of financial freedom into a reality. My name is Mike Camp Bright from flip nerd.com, and your questions get answered here on the Real Estate Investing Secrets Show.

Mike: Uh, Steve, welcome to the show.

Steve: Thank you. Thank you for having me. I’m, I’m really excited to be here.

Mike: Yeah. Glad to have you here. We, we’ve been talking about doing stuff like this for a while and glad we mm-hmm. Uh, finally have you here. So I don’t know if you need an introduction, Steve, but for those that might not know you, maybe just tell us a little bit about your background and how you got into real estate.

Steve: Yeah, sure. So, um, you know, real estate disruptors, how most people know me, I got in real estate the same way I think as everyone else, which is reading Rich Dad, poor Dad. Uh, the purple Bible is what I like to refer to, to that as. But you know, I’ll go back a little bit further. You know, something that, uh, seems to resonate with a lot of people is I talk about creating a hundred millionaires and I’ve had someone ask me like, why do you create millionaires?

Steve: Uh, and for me it really goes back to his historically speaking, [00:02:00] um, You know, I, I, I’ve been preaching the gospel of capitalism, of entrepreneurship. You know, profit’s been a bad word for like the past couple decades. Uh, and, uh, I, I run a profitable business. I’m not ashamed of that. Uh, and the reason why this is, is, uh, my grandparents, uh, many, many decades ago, uh, lost everything in China due to communism, and they fled China, uh, to Vietnam and rebuilt everything, and then lost everything again.

Steve: Due to communism, right? And so my parents fled on, on these terrible rickety boats, uh, where they were, not themselves, but other people that were on these boats, you know, perished in the oceans because of shark attacks, or people that were, you know, raped and murdered in the, in the open seas by pirates, right?

Steve: Because there’s all these people fleeing with, with their stuff. And so I was born in a refugee camp, uh, before making all the way to the states. So, you know, when I talk about creating a hundred millionaires, The reason why it’s so important to me is [00:03:00] that I, I believe we should be valuable. I believe we should invest in ourselves.

Steve: I believe we should be helping other people, and the more profitable we are, the more people we can help. So, Uh, just, that’s just a quick background about myself. Yeah, that’s a

Mike: hard one to top. I mean, I care about other people’s success, but, uh, you know, and I, I didn’t, I just, I didn’t have, you know, I had a loving family but we grew up very poor and stuff, but never went through anything like that.

Mike: So, you know, very, very well I didn’t

Steve: Awesome my parents.

Mike: Yeah. That’s awesome. And I think, you know, one of the challenges, and maybe you appreciate this cuz you have kids too. Is like how do you convey those like work ethic things to your kids because what they see is life that’s easier than what you had.

Mike: For sure. And in my instance, the same thing. Oh yeah. Different but just, you know, yeah. Those are challenging to convey those things. Right. And so, you

Steve: know, definitely as a challenge, especially with uh, you know, we tell our kids we’re poor, which is an outright lie, but you know, we’re telling ’em we can’t afford things [00:04:00] and it makes sense to them cuz they don’t know any better.

Steve: Right. Just like we were poor and we didn’t know any better. Uh, but then, you know, mom and dad are both dropping him off in Teslas at school. And so, you know, all their kids friends are saying like, you guys are rich. Like, we’re not. And so if we’re getting to the point now where like we’re having honest conversations about, more honest, not completely honest, but more honest conversations and instead of saying, you know, we can’t, uh, we can’t afford it now we say it’s not in the budget.

Steve: So it’s a different way of saying the same thing. Yeah. Yeah.

Mike: Well, Steve, along the lines of creating millionaires, I know what you really want probably is. To help people achieve freedom, right? Their goals. And it, and it’s not all about money. It’s about living a lifestyle that supports whatever you wanna do with your life.

Mike: I think most people would probably agree with that. And one of those things, you know, that I found over the years, and I’ve done plenty of coaching and, you know, uh, lots of, you know, supporting lots of real estate investors is helping people transition out of. Essentially a job, which is what a lot of real estate investors have, even if they have some level of success.

Mike: Of course, most [00:05:00] people fail before they ever do their first deal or even a deal or two. And then the next level is really stuck in a job where they’re doing everything themselves. Right? And so from a sales perspective, it it honestly, even a lot of people that are successful in real estate early on, it’s because they’re good at sales or they hustle really hard.

Mike: Yeah. To just make it happen. Right. So we’re gonna talk today about essentially building a sales team, becoming a sales leader. And, um, part of that is becoming a sales manager and not just a sales salesperson. Right. Right, right. And so let’s talk a little bit about that transition because just because you’re good at something doesn’t mean you can manage it.

Mike: You know, I found that, and I think a lot of folks have found that too. So just talk about that transition of going from the doer to the person that has to recruit, train, and lead doers.

Steve: Yeah, it’s, it’s such a tough transition because it’s a completely different skillset, right? Like, It’s one thing to sit in a living room across from a homeowner and talk to ’em about what they’re going through and helping ’em out of a tough situation.

Steve: Right? That’s one thing. And then eventually, you know, [00:06:00] we, we, uh, hand off the paperwork to someone else, right? And then eventually we’re generating the lease for someone else to go, and we ask ourselves like, why won’t this person run the appointment the right way? Why aren’t they accountable? Why aren’t they doing the follow up?

Steve: That lead’s been in there forever? Why aren’t they hitting it harder? And one of the things that we fail, uh, as we’re, as we’re moving up into sales management, which is not something that we do because we want to, but just because it’s like the next logical step is I need to hire salespeople, otherwise I’m gonna be doing it forever.

Steve: Right? We don’t, we don’t do as great a job of putting ourselves in the position. Of a new salesperson that’s coming in, right? Because when we come in, like when we first start, uh, I started on the realtor side. I worked underneath a, a broker, right? There’s all these promises, like we got these leads where you saw these appointments and you just show up and you just close these deals and we’ll take care of everything else, right?

Steve: Those are the promises. And then you get in and there’s not nearly as many leads as promised. Appointments are not booked as promised, and it feels like we’re just micromanage all day. [00:07:00] Why didn’t you do this? Why didn’t you do this? Why didn’t you do this? And. For us, what we found, uh, thanks to my good friend, uh, Ren is the best way to get a salesperson to run their book of business, like it’s their own business.

Steve: It’s to help them build that book of business and help ’em understand as a partnership where we work together. So one thing we’re guilty of is we’re setting KPIs. Right. But when we say KPIs, what do we do? We have our business plan, all right? This year I wanna do 10 million in revenue. In order to do 10 million in revenue, I need to do 800 K a month in revenue in order to do 800 K a month in revenue.

Steve: I need this many contracts, blah, blah, blah. And we break it all the way, all the way down. Now, all sales guy, you’re responsible for this many contracts a week, this many dials, this many contacts, right? But at no point when we did the annual plan that we asked the sales guy, What do you want? What’s important to you?

Steve: What’s your lifestyle you’re trying [00:08:00] to achieve? Uh, what are your outcomes? What’s your big, hairy, audacious goal? Right? We don’t ask these questions. We’re more, it’s more of a top-down management, and what we found was, if I say, all right, Mike, what’s important to you? Why is that important? You know, and you hear like, whether it’s, you know, I wanna put my kids through private school.

Steve: I wanna retire my parents, I wanna retire my spouse. I wanna be able to buy that nice car. I wanna buy that dream house. I wanna do this epic trip, uh, epic vacation, whatever it is. How many of us know what is the driving force behind our salespeople? And then after understanding the driving force behind our salespeople, sitting down with them and helping them uncover to hit those targets, how many contracts do they need to hit a week?

Steve: And after that, okay, in order to have this many contracts, how many appointments do you need to sit? How many conversations do you need to have? How much talk time do you need? How much follow up do you need to do? Right? But once we do all of this, it’s no longer [00:09:00] my KPIs and my quotas, right? This is no longer about Steve.

Steve: This is about Mike, right? Mike said he wants to live in a gated community. Mike said he wants to be able to put his kids through private school cause that’s important to his wife. Whatever it is, right? So Mike has said he wants to make a hundred thousand a year to do A, B, and C. Now it’s my responsibility as your leader and mentor, which we don’t really consider ourselves to be.

Steve: But if you look at it, we spend a lot of money on mentorships and our sales guys don’t, right? As your leader and mentor, how can I help you accomplish your goals? And now we’re working together side by side and so, What we’re seeing now, which is like an incredible blessing, is our sales guys right now are working just as hard as me, the business owner.

Steve: And that was not true prior to 12 months ago, right? You’ve always got that guy that’s gonna hustle, right? I you always have that one in a hundred that’s gonna hustle. Now we’re getting, like, everyone’s either hustling or they voted themselves off the [00:10:00] island, and that’s, it’s, it’s a beautiful sight when you’re looking at

Mike: that.

Mike: And the problem is, is uh, if you don’t evaluate everybody’s goals, Then you let one person set the bar for how everybody else should act. But that might, they might, they might, that might be unrealistic for them. Right. Or they don’t have enough. Mm-hmm. You know, it’s not in their heart to achieve that level.

Mike: So you could have a really high performer and then you’re, you’re whipping everybody else because they’re not performing at that level, but maybe they have very different goals. Right?

Steve: Yeah. I mean, look, if you wanna make 80 K a year, For a lot of us, we hear 80 K a year and we hear that’s pitiful. Right?

Steve: That’s just the reality. If you’re listening to the podcast, 80 K a year is probably not your target. Right? But that’s a lot of freaking money for like 95% of the country. Right? So then who are we to say, you know, 80,000 a year is unacceptable, really. It’s like, okay, you wanna make 80 K a year? Okay, so do 80 K a year.

Steve: You need to 800 K a year in revenue, assuming you do a 10% compensation, right? Right. You need to do 800 K a year in revenue. Okay, well then you’re good for [00:11:00] 800 K. If I wanna do 10 million, I need to find the other 9.2 million in sales members that can do that. Right? So it’s not me getting you from 800 K to 1.2 and pushing you harder.

Steve: It’s like if 800 K helps you sleep good and you run a good family and this and that, it gets balance. Whatever’s important to you and you’re, and you’re aligned and your, and your align and your core values. I’m aligned and my core values. Then it’s on me to find other 9.2 in revenue to build my team.

Steve: Yeah. Yeah.

Mike: Share your thoughts on, so you, you mentioned something a moment ago with, uh, bringing salespeople on and the leads, they never get as many leads as what they thought they would get. So what mm-hmm. In every, every real estate investor struggles with this, and some people have very different business models than others, but what is the role of a salesperson and generating leads?

Mike: Like, honestly, in my business, for a long, long time, nobody on my team that was in sales had to generate leads, but the burden was always on me. Mm-hmm. You know, I could see them sitting around twiddling their thumbs because they don’t have enough leads, and that’s my problem. Um mm-hmm. [00:12:00] But I also know people that like, Hey, if you wanna work for me, you have to hunt for your own leads as well.

Mike: And there’s balances there. And everybody’s models are different based on what their channels are for lead gen. And there’s probably not a right, there’s probably not a right answer, but what is your answer? Like, what is the role of salespeople in actually generating leads to help feed themselves?

Steve: Sure.

Steve: So the first thing, the ideal right, is, is appointments. That’s the ideal, right? And do we offer those? Yes. But if you’re only relying on that, you’re relying too much on me. Right? So we have the scheduled appointments. Then the next part is we have people that raise their hands. This is the ppc. This is a direct mail, right?

Steve: They raise their hands. This is up to you to hustle. Cuz for us and our organization, the acquisition managers are jumping on the hottest, high, hottest, most expensive, most motivated leads, right? We don’t have lead managers talking to those guys. Right? So it’s up on, it’s up to you to like jump on those and, and, and, and run those right after that.

Steve: We’ve got so much freaking data, right? I’ve been in this business for 16 years now. It’s kind of crazy to say out [00:13:00] loud. So in all the years we have pulled every homeowner in this market. We’ve got their phone numbers in this market, right? So when you’re done with the hot leads and you’ve got time hit the warm leads, After that hit the cold leads, hit the leads we’ve never gotten ahold of.

Steve: Because if you wanna make money, there’s a way to make money. We’ve got the data, right. It’s up to you to go get it. So for us, the target is two contracts a week if you can’t hit the two contracts a week, right? Again, this is their target, not our target. Uh, but the target, we generally have two contracts a week.

Steve: We know that in order to do two contracts a week, you gotta have to have three quality appointments a day, right? And you’re not doing three quality appointments a day. Then you gotta hit a certain number, certain number of conversations. If you’re gonna hit a certain number of conversations, then you have to have a certain amount of talk time.

Steve: Right. And and this just goes back to, just think about back when you were hustling, right when you started Long time ago. When I started, a long time ago, there was no [00:14:00] question how hard we were willing to work. We were working weekends, we were working late, right? Lee comes in at 8 45 at night and we’re out to dinner.

Steve: Guess who’s taking the call, right? Babe, hang on a second. I gotta take a call. This is the money line. Right? And that’s what we called it. It was the money. I had a different ringtone when they called that number. I had a different phone. I the money. It was the money phone. The money phone, yeah. Right. So w this is, this was the standard of performance for us.

Steve: If we’re helping them build a book of business, why is this not the standard for them? And the reason why is cuz we’ve tolerated it. Because we were scared. With the hold salespeople accountable. And the reason why we’re afraid to hold salespeople accountable is cuz every time we held them accountable to our metrics and our targets, we got pushback.

Mike: Yeah. Yeah. One of the things I’ve realized is, um, that, you know, when people are trying to go from a solopreneur to building a team, one of the challenges is there, there could be these long cycles in [00:15:00] between having a, a salesperson on your team that’s a performer. And if they’re not mm-hmm. Then they quit or you fire ’em.

Mike: Mm-hmm. Then you’re back to just yourself. And so, oh yeah. There’s, you really should not have just one person. There’s this line, if you have one, you have none. Right. Because they’re so fragile. Mm-hmm. And for all of us as entrepreneurs, we don’t have a lot of bench strength. We don’t really have backups. We don’t have redundancy in our business often, but it’s mm-hmm.

Mike: Sales, sales and marketing are such a, a Dr. Important driver for the business. Just talk about the importance of, as we’re talking about building a team here. Having more than just one other person other than yourself, cuz then you’re only one person away from getting pulled back into the business at all

Steve: times.

Steve: Oh yeah. And that is the ultimate truth. I mean, that, that part hurts, right? So if you don’t have a strong bench when things go bad, you are back in the seat. Right. Which means you’ve gotta take time away from your wife, your kids, and your other commitments that you’ve made. Right? Especially if you’re, if you’re probably like Mike and myself with shiny object syndrome and we’re playing in these other arenas, these other [00:16:00] businesses.

Steve: Those other businesses get put on pause. Yeah. And you have to get back into the business, right? And so the importance of of building a team, if you look at wholesaling, right? It’s a sales and marketing business. If you look at flipping and realtor, right? It’s a sales and marketing business. Building a team is also a sales and marketing business.

Steve: We’ve got to generate leads, uh, just this past week. We, uh, we, we sign up for a new crm, go high level, right? And so we use Wise Hire to post the ads and we just set up the Zaps literally yesterday. Um, so that anyone that comes through Wise hire goes into go high level. And now my director recruiting gets to operate just outside of go high level.

Steve: And now he’s, now we have KPIs for recruiting. Right now we know how many outbound dials is he making, uh, to potential prospects. How many appointments is he having, right? Like we’re building this out as a sales and marketing business. For recruiting to our companies. That’s awesome. So I, I, I believe it’s absolutely paramount.

Steve: If you’re not [00:17:00] looking at recruiting as a sales and marketing component of your business, then you’re gonna be always lacking, or not lacking, but wanting, right? It’s like when you need somebody, you’re not hiring the most qualifier, you’re not hiring the highest caliber, you’re hiring who’s available and who’s available.

Steve: Generally speaking. It’s someone that’s on Craigslist or it’s on wise hiring. Indeed. And if you’re hiring that person who’s applying for a job today, you’re hiring someone that, for better or for worse, is not a fit for someone else, right? It’s like, um, either they were unwanted and unmanageable by someone else, or they were poorly managed by somebody else.

Steve: But either way, uh, they weren’t good enough to be, uh, what’s the word I’m looking for? They didn’t do everything they could to keep that person.

Mike: Yeah. Yeah. The, it, it, there’s some truth in the best salespeople are like, people find them, they don’t, they’re not looking for jobs. Jobs. They’re not applying

Steve: for jobs.

Steve: Yeah. Yeah. [00:18:00] Right. Like I was, uh, we were going through this exercise like, okay, when’s the last time I updated my, my resume? So I was going through it. The last time I updated my resume was in 2012. And the reason why I was updating my resume in 2012 is cause I was applying for r e O accounts for Bank of America, Fannie Mae, these other things, right?

Steve: Yeah. Prior to applying for working for the banks, I was say 2009. 2009 was a rough time in real estate. 2009 I was applying for some jobs, right? That was the last time I updated my resume. Yeah. 14 years ago. Yep. Right. So if you’re looking to hire quality people, they don’t have updated resumes. They’re not on Monster or Indeed or Wise Hire.

Steve: They are working a job that they’re happy

Mike: with. Yep. And the last time they found a job, somebody found them and they didn’t need to update their resume. Yeah, you’re right. I think, gosh, that’s a good question. I probably updated mine. It’s probably been 2006 or seven. I don’t, I now, now I don’t have a resume.

Mike: I have a bio. Right,

Steve: right. Yeah. [00:19:00] Check

Mike: on my Instagram. Yeah, that’s right. Check me on, on social media. Yeah. Um, so, so, uh, let’s talk about the importance of process. Like, I think a lot of people when they are newer in the business or it’s just them, and you’ve alluded to, you know, Tracking KPIs, making sure you’re doing the activities to do things.

Mike: But, you know, I think that was a lesson for me. I mean, I had bought tons of houses, just hustling really hard by myself early on. But I’d never really thought of it as a process. I mean, I had a pitch, I had kind of a process I, I went through, but I didn’t think of it as a process. Right. So talk about that evolution for people that are trying to go from themselves to a team and the importance of relying on.

Mike: A systematic approach or a process to sales. Yeah. Versus just going out and hustling and knowing what to say. Right.

Steve: Yeah. So I think there’s a few different skills that are super, super paramount, right? When you’re building an organization and a, a lot of people that are listening are gonna be somewhere in one of these, you know, four or five stages.

Steve: I mean, step one marketing, right? Where do I find leads? That’s step one. And when you first [00:20:00] start, that’s freaking hard. After you’ve done this for a while, it’s freaking easy, right? It’s just copy and paste, right? What’s working for Mike? Okay, I’ll go do that. Right? It’s pretty simple after that. Uh, next thing is sales, which is something we teach, right?

Steve: How to sell effectively, how to talk to a homeowner effectively, and so on. I think that is a skill that, uh, requires mastery, but not everyone takes it as seriously. Uh, the third skill after that, I believe, is leading effectively and leading effectively. Is really caring about your people and doing what’s best for them.

Steve: And it’s, it’s the hardest skill because it requires you to be, uh, selfless. It requires you to lose more sleep. It requires more stress because when you’re a solopreneur and like you go, you know, zero two deals, zero four deals, one deal, three deals, whatever, right? You have a bad month. Okay, you’re out. 15 K, right?

Steve: Like 15 K in overhead in marketing, but that’s it, right? When you’re leading an [00:21:00] army, 20 people on payroll, like you’re going from like two deals to 13 deals to four deals, 12 deals, right? And you go through this rollercoaster and four deals doesn’t cut it cuz it doesn’t cut, doesn’t make overhead, right?

Steve: So you’ve got so much, um, Pressure, which I, I love cuz I love chaos, right? But you’ve got to be able to manage through the chaos. You’ve got to keep the people sane, you gotta keep them focused, uh, uh, on the target. And you got to be really, really good at finding the best talent. There’s two things that are simultaneously holding your company back.

Steve: First one’s the law of the lid. You can’t take the company further, then you can lead them, right? If you are the bottleneck and how far the company can go, the other restraint, you can’t go any further than your people who can carry you. Your people have to carry, your people have to support you, so you’ve got to have [00:22:00] world-class people and all these different seats.

Steve: So you’re trying to be best, a world-class leader, a world-class visionary, and you get to have world-class people. And if you’ve got, if you’re a world-class leader with B players, You’re not getting very far. If you are a B class leader and you get rock stars, they’re leaving you. That’s just the reality, right?

Steve: So you’ve got to be able to, to, to be an effective leader, you got to serve. You got to care. You have to be able solve the most difficult challenges. I kind of equate it like a heart surgeon, right? The most difficult problems you’ve got to be able to solve them. Simple problems, they can solve them. Heart surgeon problems, that’s you.

Steve: Right? So, uh, as far as the process goes, I mean the, the recruiting is one of the most challenging components, but it is the, uh, the moat that keeps the crazies out of your castle, right? You’ve got a building you’ve [00:23:00] gotta protect, you gotta company culture, you’ve got to lead. Um, and you gotta keep the crazies out.

Steve: And the way you keep the crazies out is through effective screening. Uh, having not just a couple of questions in interview, I feel good about this guy, bring him in. But like having a thorough screening interview, making sure they’re a core alignment fit, make sure they’re a behavioral fit, uh, make sure they got a reliable car.

Steve: Like there’s just so many things that go into Right. Uh, building a world-class company.

Mike: Yep. Yep. Steve, I think one thing that a lot of, uh, I think this, this hits real estate investors hard. I. Because they, a lot of ’em started as solopreneurs. They were probably the acquisitions manager in the business.

Mike: Mm-hmm. They know how they think. Cuz their goal wasn’t to be an acquisitions manager. It was that financial freedom. Right. So I think one of the beliefs that happens sometimes when they’re building out a sales team is people are afraid of, they’re almost sabotage themselves. They’re, they’re afraid of [00:24:00] finding really good salespeople cuz they think they’re just gonna train their future competition.

Mike: Like, what do you say to that? Yeah.

Steve: Uh, that’s the reality and, and deal with it. Like it, this is just the way it is, right? So, uh, the predictive index is something I absolutely love, right? It’s pi, it’s, it’s a more complex version of the DISC profile. If you look at the, the, the predictive index of a high quality salesperson, and you look at the predictive index of a business owner, a successful business owner, they’ve got a hundred percent overlap, right?

Steve: Right. Like, it’s not like, oh, you know, like if you’re talking about like a receptionist, an admin, uh, someone said recruiting, scheduling appointments, whatever, lead manager, lead, follow up, dispo guy, none of those profiles really line up with the traditional business owner. But the business owner and acquisition manager, like those profiles line up pretty strongly.

Steve: So all you can do is create a vision. An opportunity is so big [00:25:00] that they wanna stay and you have to care. About your people. Like you know, I’ve said before, there’s not a lot of people I could work for cuz their visions aren’t big enough. But Elon Musk, I could work for that guy. As a matter of fact, I was watching, um, I was reading an article.

Steve: Ron DeSantis right now is going to bill the largest door canvas convincing operation in the country. Bigger than Obama’s, right. I was like, that’s pretty cool. I wonder if I can volunteer there and talk to their door knockers and train them right. Like, that’s a vision I could be a part of, but has to be a huge vision that they can fit a part of.

Steve: So bringing in your sales people, you have to be, be able to build a large enough operation and vision and purpose for them that they can fit in. And if not, yeah. They, they will leave to compete against you.

Mike: Yeah, and I think, you know, one of the things that I’ve, that I’ve told people over, over the years, I didn’t always think this was, look.

Mike: Create an opportunity for people if they want to start their own business, that they [00:26:00] could be your partner. Like effectively they could go out on their own. And I did, I have done this in the past. I’m like, Hey, I can show you how to do the marketing. You can generate your own leads and, and I’ll be your main lender by the way.

Mike: Maybe you could assign your deals to me too. So create this opportunity right where they can go do their own business. Now the reality is, is the one person I did this with immediately realized he was in over his head with lead gen and marketing and you know, didn’t want to be partners anymore. Just wanted to handle acquisitions so they could.

Mike: Effectively have more of a W2 type job. Right. And so not, it’s not for everybody, but create a path for them to do that if that’s what they

Steve: want. Mm-hmm. Yeah. It’s definitely not for everybody. And you know, the one thing is looking back, and this is gonna sound totally, I don’t know, narcissistic, uh, but like everyone that’s left to compete against me has not really thrived, right?

Steve: So, like, this stuff’s hard, and everyone that’s listening knows how hard this is, right? So if you want to go off and compete against me, so be it. I’m not gonna hold you back. I’m not gonna be like a jerk about it. I’ve also accepted the fact that generally [00:27:00] speaking, you’ve probably peaked, uh, when you move on just because the, the, the challenges, the stress, the ego, all the things I wake up for and look forward to will break most people.

Steve: You know, I was, uh, I was mentoring somebody, uh, a few days, uh, a few weeks ago over lunch, and he was like, why? Why, like, why, why don’t more people try to do what we do? And I was like, because it breaks most people. He just, he, he was like, but this is fun. I was like, it is fun for us, but we’re broken. Like we’re, we’re we’re the weird ones, right?

Steve: We’re the ones that don’t fit. Yeah. Right. It’s like, you know, that whole, uh, apple ad, right? Like to the ones that, um, So the crazy ones who, who thought that they could dead the universe, right? Like right, that’s us. We’re insane. Yep,

Mike: yep, yep. No doubt. So Steve, uh, one more question for you. So this new market we’re in, obviously there’s been a shift over the past year mm-hmm.

Mike: Or so. Um, [00:28:00] how has, what, what are the, you know, I guess two part question. If you’re managing salespeople, what do you need to do differently to effectively manage them? Mm-hmm. And if you’re a solopreneur or you’re doing all the sales, What techniques or tactics or uh, whatever has kind of changed in this new market?

Steve: Uh, so from what we’re seeing, uh, the market has went, you know, had this bit of a nose dive and now it’s kind of like we’ve already cleared, uh, this, this downturn. It appears, uh, based off the sentiment and the conversations I’ve had. So as a business owner, it seems like, uh, if you survived this little bit of nuclear winter, we went through.

Steve: You’re in a really good spot cuz a lot of your competitors are gone and you had to batten down the hatches. You had to tighten down operations. You cut all the, all the bucket leaks in your organization. I would say as a business owner right now, now is, now is the time to feast. [00:29:00] Now is the time to just enjoy all that sacrifice you’ve done, you’ve gone through in the last, uh, nine to 15 months.

Steve: Now it’s the time to feast. It’s great. Um, if you’re a solopreneur, uh, I would look at this as opportunity because even though you don’t have the operations, everything isn’t buttoned in, a lot of your competitors are gone. Right? So like I’ll speak at, uh, I’ll speak on this topic for the, for the solopreneurs, uh, from the private conversations I’ve had with other service providers, right?

Steve: A lot of the people that were buying. Leads, buying data, buying phone numbers, buying services like mine, half of those people are gone. Right. And again, not citing any names here, but fortunately the, the reach we have is we get to talk to all the other service providers. Half of the people are gone. So as a solopreneur, I see nothing but upside.

Steve: Uh, be excited to, to take advantage [00:30:00] of the opportunity you jumped in. At a great, great time if you’re starting now as far as the, the skills you need, um, I personally believe leadership is the single most important skill. Um, I think finances is another skill that is absolutely tantamount cuz it, it determines whether you’re wealthy or not.

Steve: Doesn’t need to be learned today. But that’s mostly better learned in the next three to five years. Today, if you can’t close at, at a high enough clip, you’re leaving a ton of money on the table. And the things I’ve learned in the last few years is that cash is the, is is the fuel for your company. If you don’t have cash in the bank, you are driving with like sugar in your gas tank, right?

Steve: Um, you need cash. So, uh, the best way to get cash is to get really good at sales.

Mike: Awesome. Good stuff Steve. Thanks for sharing with us today. Great, great stuff. Always good to see you, my friend.

Steve: Same here. As always, always, my honor. Uh, I look [00:31:00] forward always to, to spending time with you.

Mike: Yeah. Thank you buddy.

Mike: I, I appreciate that. I feel the same way. Hey, if folks wanna connect with you, you’ve got podcasts, you’ve got sales training, you’ve got all sorts of stuff. Give, share some links here where folks can go connect with you or learn more.

Steve: Yeah, so for sure. I, I think the biggest thing, real estate disruptors, whether on YouTube, iTunes or Spotify, is the best way to, to, uh, listen to the materials that, uh, we put out there.

Steve: Uh, as far as connecting with us, uh, on Instagram at Steve dot t Trang, uh, we do have, uh, sales [email protected]. That’s our community. And then we also have, uh, our sales leadership program. If you text leaders to 3 3, 7, 7, 7, 3, 3, 7, 7, 7 leaders, uh, you’ll get more information about our leadership training and the leadership training.

Steve: The difference between a, an average operation, Yeah. And a highly profitable operation is the caliber of their salespeople because marketing, [00:32:00] marketing’s marketing. Everyone’s doing it.

Mike: Yeah. Yeah. Awesome. Well, good stuff. We’ll add all these links down below in the show notes here. For those of you who’re listening, if you’re driving and you almost got an accident, writing that down, don’t do it.

Mike: Just go check it out in the show notes. Uh, Steve, thanks again for joining me today, buddy. Great to see you.

Steve: Yeah. Thank you very much. Thank you very much for having me. I’m glad to finally be on Flip Nerd. I’m gonna put that, put that ribbon long, long overdue on

my

Mike: Instagram. It’s long overdue and everybody, hope you got some great value from today.

Mike: If you did, please share the show with, uh, some friends. Don’t share it with your competitors. You don’t have to. Uh, but just share it with somebody that you care about, share for us if you got some value. We’d appreciate that. So, uh, thanks for joining us today, and we’ll see you on the next show. Take care.

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