Finding your true purpose and building your empire – effortlessly.

Ep #569 – Finding your true purpose and building your empire – effortlessly.

Trevor Mauch is the host of the CarrotCast podcast & CEO of Carrot, one of the nation’s fastest growing companies according to Inc Magazine, where they have helped the nations top real estate investors and agents pull in over 3 million online leads in just 5 years… closing thousands of deals… with their software and training.

Here’s some of the topics we covered:

• The value and benefits of peer relationships
• The process of finding your purpose
• Minimizing clutter
• Maximizing clarity
• “Is this the best I can do?”
• Energy audit
• Evergreen vs Hamster marketing
• Stacking marketing “bricks”
• Content that builds authority
• Localizing your videos

To find out more about our guest:
https://carrot.com/

Full Transcript Below:

Rod
Hi, my name is Rod Khleif, and I’m the host of The Lifetime Cash Flow to Real Estate Investing Podcast. And every week I interview multifamily rock stars. We talk about how they built incredible wealth for themselves and their families through multifamily properties. So hit the like and subscribe buttons to get notified every Monday when a new episode comes out. Let’s get to it. Welcome to another edition of How to Build Lifetime Cash Flow through Real Estate Investing. I’m Rod Khleif and I am thrilled you’re here.

Rod
And I know you’re going to enjoy the gentlemen we’re interviewing today. His name is Trevor Mauch and Trevor is the host of the podcast, which I just got interviewed on, which was a blast. And he’s also the CEO of Carrot, which is a company that helps real estate investors and agents bring in leads. And I saw you do websites as well. And just a super nice guy who lives in Oregon, very excited. We talked mine said on his show and we’re going to do it on this show as well and just talk about some other strategies that that he has got standing ovations for when he talks live. So I’m really excited to get into it with him. Trevor, welcome my friend!

Rod, man, I’m pumped to be on here, dude, especially the energy from the last podcast we just recorded for the Carrot Cast. Love your energy, man. And so, so happy to be on here with you now.

Rod
Thanks, bro. So why don’t you do a much better job of your bio than I just did and kind of give us a little bit more history on who you are, where, where, you know, why you do what you do. And, yeah tell us a little bit more about you.

Trevor
Yeah. For sure. So I’ll kind of start with where I am today to kind of set the context. But yeah, I own a company called Carrot, Carrot.Com, worked for about eight thousand real estate investors right now. And just to show kind of the journey, were a multiple eight-figure business, forty some employees, but it wasn’t always that way. So let me go back. Right. I bought my first rental property in 24 when I was a junior in college and it was literally Carleton Sheets’ course stuff, you know, the infomercials up there.

Trevor
And then my dad, he had started a small business and at that time I didn’t want to do it. I didn’t want anything to do with business because I saw what, how hard my parents were hustling. You know, they were they had a small business and we would be on weekends packing chairs and tables and tents and to set up weddings and they would work nights. And we literally lived above the business. So the phone would ring outside, and the shop and it would ring at 1:00 in the morning, 3:00 in the morning or whatever.

Trevor
My dad would always answer them. I said, if this is what business is, I don’t want it. And so I went all the way through high school and started college, didn’t want anything to do with business. And I had a professor actually, who was a multifamily investor and an attorney, and it was a business law class name is Eric DeGroote, who passed away a couple months ago. And he was an amazing guy. But he had a similar energy to you Rod where amazingly this projected energy, any time you could, you would talk to him.

Trevor
You’re in the room with him and he’s teaching a business law class, which should be the most boring topic in the world. But it was the most fun topic at college and I was attracted to it. And so what he did was he was an attorney and invested in multifamily. And that’s what kind of got me initially interested in multifamily. And so about the first property, literally using Carleton Sheets’ course, I was for unit building by college, no money down the whole thing.

Trevor
And since then I’ve been a buy and hold guy primarily, owned some commercial buildings down here downtown somewhere. And being Airbnb is things like that. But I’ll fast forward really quick is for me. For me. I had discovered that I didn’t want to do real estate as my active income. I don’t want to flip houses. I don’t want to wholesale. That wasn’t that wasn’t me. And so I said I’d love to use real estate as my long term income, the passive income, or as much as I can to build wealth.

Trevor
But what do I love to do right now? What gives me energy? And I’m going to build businesses around that. And so that’s been marketing found the Internet around 2010-2011 as it relates to to growing business. And then a couple businesses, one or two failed. And it’s just been blown up the past six or seven years. So that’s the abridged version of it. But lots of mindset shifts along the way.

Rod
You know, I think the first question I want to ask you about is, you know, you’ve got this very successful excuse me, guys. I’m still getting over Covid. You’ve got this very successful business. And I know one, when you interviewed me, we touched on the fact that you have a mastermind that you’ve had for years. I would love for you to describe that on my show as well, because it’s just such an important piece of success. Can you can you talk about what you did with yours and how it came together and and how it’s evolved? And let’s just have a conversation about that for a moment.

Trevor
One hundred percent. And what I want to do here on is I want to talk about the first mastermind I ever paid to be in. And here’s a real reason for that, because this would have been in 2012, it was three years into a business I had started, an online publishing company here in the real estate space. And I had realized I’d built a job for myself that I didn’t like anymore. I was making good money from the outside and everyone was looking at me, yo, man, he’s got it made. He’s got an amazing family, is healthy. He has a nice house from mid 20 something year old guy. He can go travel and things like that. I didn’t live a lavish lifestyle, didn’t have that much money. I was making Mid-low six figures, but now said and I had it made and and I remember on one day waking up, my wife was going to work my oldest daughter at that time, she’d gone to the babysitter and I was supposed to be working.

Trevor
Right. And it’s 10:00 in the morning. I’m laying there in bed looking at the darn ceiling and I’m thinking, why am I not getting out of bed to do work in the business I had created for myself like this. This was my dream three years ago. And I had just realized over the course of the next few months I said, man, I don’t, number one, I don’t have a purpose. I believe in in my business, I had something written.

Trevor
I had something written on the wall that that looked like a business purpose, that would be good. But it didn’t hit me at my core. And I can kind of talk later on how to find a purpose that hits you at your core. But then I sort of look at it. So let me write down what I’m doing on an average week and let me just see why I don’t want to do this work anymore. And I created a process called the Energy Audit, which we’re talking about here in a bit.

Trevor
But I wrote it down and I realize most of what I was doing was draining my energy, but making me money. And I said something’s got to change because either this entrepreneurial dream, you know, this entrepreneur dream is a farce, that entrepreneurship doesn’t help you get freedom and impact or I’m doing it the wrong way. And so that’s where I led into my first mastermind. I looked out there to people that I knew and I said, who?

Trevor
Who from the outside, it seems like they’ve got it made. Like they’ve built a business that has given them freedom to where they can do the work they want to do, not get dragged down. Who out? There is a person of faith that I can follow and see how they’re also doing that. Who out there seems to have good balance with their family and is a generally nice, positive person people like and a buddy of mine named Greg Flament, who’s also a big investor, he’s up in Ohio.

Trevor
He started a mastermind. And it was the very, he only had it for one year, like he did it this one year, almost like it was made for me that year, you know, and I plunk down 20k and which is a, that one I plunk down 20k. This would have been 2012, more money than I probably should have. But I said man all my only goal here is to get around the right people and get around Gregg specifically and I just want to learn from him, I want to soak it up for this year.

Trevor
And so that changed my life Rod. And where I heard the concept of Mastermind’s was from Napoleon Hill’s book originally. And so 2010 is when I started before that one, when I started my mastermind, which is still today, the same structure, pretty much the same people. Twelve years, thirteen years later or eleven, twelve years later, we get together once a year. It’s mostly people.

Rod
Wow.

Trevor
Just once a year they pay for it’s fifteen hundred bucks to help us pay for the expenses.

Trevor
Your wives come now dude. It’s like amazing. And it’s been so cool us all growing from trying to figure out life in business. We’re still trying to figure out life of course, but from going to try to figure out life in business. In the early years, having families to more than half of us have multiple eight figure businesses, huge real estate portfolios. And

Rod
They grew through that through this process in the mastermind, you grow these businesses you know guys, let me let me interject, if I may. You know, whenever you can get, and Napoleon Hill, the way he describes it is you get two like minds together that both have the same definiteness of purpose, meaning, you know, they’re headed the same direction. They create this third intangible mine that’s greater than the sum of the parts. And I will tell you what’s really exciting is, is if you own a business where you get with other entrepreneurs that are in different businesses and you cross pollinate strategies, you know, one of the greatest marketing minds out there, Jay Abraham, does this.

Rod
He brings things that work in marketing in one sector or one one business vertical to another, business vertical, and they just kill it. But I just wanted to bring up the mastermind guys. If you’re not in a mastermind, go create your own. Just do, because a rising tide lifts all ships and and you want to be around people that think what you think is hard is easy, you know, I created my multifamily boardroom mastermind like over 14 billion in assets represented by the members.

Rod
I started it here in my house was sixteen people, you know, several years ago. And now it’s turned into that. And so I just wanted to bring that up because we talked about that on your show and I just thought it was so important.

Trevor
Rod, one last thing on the mastermind really quick is one thing that I’ve learned and then I would I would suggest everyone do is join a mastermind list specifically for the discipline that you’re wanting to grow in, like your mastermind. But I always suggest, joining a mastermind that is not specifically for the discipline, but it’s for entrepreneurs that are looking to grow. Because here’s the thing, especially in multifamily, you’re going to get around entrepreneurs who are not in real estate, that have made money through an online business or through whatever.

Trevor
And I can guarantee you the biggest problem that comes up in these higher level mastermind’s today, like two weeks ago, is in Charleston at our mastermind for this year. A lot of information businesses in there. There’s multiple eight figure your businesses. The number one topic people wanted to talk about was what do we do with our money now? And so what do we all do? We go, cool, let’s look at the four guys who are crushing it, doing big multifamily developments and we’re funding their deals.

Trevor
And so that’s a big thing. If you’re looking to find potential lenders, get in a business mastermind that has successful entrepreneurs talk about what you’re doing. They’re going to then say, I want to learn more about what you’re doing because they want a place to put their money

Rod
Sure and a tax shelter as well. And that’s why we love what we’re doing here, guys. But, you know, you said multiple disciplines. I love that because I’ve been in numerous mastermind’s. I was in Digital Marketers War Room, which had to go to marketers in the world.

Rod
You know, I’ve been in a story mastermind. I’ve been in, you know, real estate mastermind’s. I’ve been in entrepreneurship mastermind’s and, you know, just because they’re so incredibly valuable. So, I’ll tell you what, let’s I would love to start with what you just said about finding your purpose, because that is so frickin important. You know, I forgot who it was that said, you know, the the the two greatest days of your life are the day you’re born and the day you discover why and that that ties into your purpose.

Rod
So if you would describe your process for finding your purpose, I think that’s an incredible conversation.

Trevor
Do for sure. The first thing for me, Rod, is I had to realize that that there’s probably not going to be, for me, one single purpose that’s going to go throughout the whole my whole life. It’ll probably change. Right. I have three young kids, six, eight and 10 right now. My life today is different than it was 10 years ago. My life is going to be different in twenty or twenty five years. And so that was the first thing is realize, don’t put the pressure on ourselves to find this one thing that’s going to be your thing your whole life.

Trevor
It might be your one thing for the next five years or the next ten years. And this would have been 2012 that same period. Right. When I was trying to figure out just business in life, I was going to man, I, I figure out how to make some money making low six figures early to mid twenty year old guy, but I didn’t figure out how to do it and be happy. And so I started to look at and say, man, obviously me going out there and searching for my purpose isn’t working similar to I married my high school sweetheart so I didn’t get a chance. I didn’t go through the process of trying to find a spouse out there in the world. But I’ve heard I’ve heard that when you’re out there searching for a spouse, as soon as you stop searching, then you end up finding that right person. Right. And so with purpose, I said, well, maybe it’s the same way. Maybe as I’m diving into this mastermind and I end up selling my half of the business I had created so I could just get away from a business.

Trevor
I love the business partner. He’s the guy I still have that mastermind with. We love, love each other, but I just need to get out of that business. And so this is the biggest thing. I would give yourself space number one. If you’re so busy with everything, with daily life, with grinding on a business that you don’t like, one of the biggest things you need to do is you need to get space.

Trevor
You need to get time to think and just, just explore. And for me, that meant parting ways from everything that was a distraction. The business that made most of my income. It might sound fancy that I sold it. I asked my business partner, I want to retain the relationship. I said, Patrick, you name the price. And I will say, yes, there will be no negotiations. You name the price. I’ll say yes because I want to retain the relationship and I’ll figure out how to make the extra money if it ends up being less than it’s worth.

Trevor
The price that he paid me was five thousand bucks. This business netted four hundred thousand dollars a year, paid me five grand up front and it was payments over five years. I ended up getting paid about seventy or eighty thousand bucks. That sounds crazy. I was pumped about it. It was probably a terrible financial decision at that point. But I’m like, I want to retain relationship and I know I can gain it back later. So that’s the first thing for me.

Trevor
It was gain the mindspace, because if I can gain the mindspace and get away from the daily part that’s dragging my energy down, then I think I can get closer to my purpose. Number two,

Rod
No, hold on. Hold on. If you don’t mind, let me just let me expand on something you just said. You know, I have gone through transitions. You know, in life you go through transition. Sure. You going from one business to the next, like you just described here. I had coaching, you know, I believe in coaching and mentorship. And I had a coach that said, you know, get some trail mix, get some bottles of water, go into nature and spend a couple of days in nature.

Rod
And of course, I went to the Ritz Carlton, stayed at the concierge level, but I didn’t talk to anybody. So I did at least I did that part. I didn’t talk to anybody. But but it talks about, you know, you talk about space. And so I just sat and journaled and connected with myself and journaled, filled up a legal pad full of paper. And that really helped give me clarity. So I just wanted to, you know, as an example of space. So please continue.

Trevor
I love it. So I got the space, but I didn’t know what to do with that space, and I said, okay, I don’t have that business anymore. I looked at everything else on the list and I read a book at that time, Rod called The Pumpkin Plan and the Pumpkin Plan by a guy named Mike Michalowicz. I’ve probably given out 500 copies of that book. It’s the simplest book in the world.

Trevor
I literally only read 16 pages that book Shut It. And on page 16, I said, this is all I need. And I went away. It’s got this story. But what essentially the pumpkin plan is as it relates. And here’s how it relates to finding your purpose. It relates how world champion pumpkin growers grow pumpkins. Right. And they say, okay, well, they interviewed world champion pumpkin growers. Those huge ones like to say,

Rod
I’ve seen them in Massachusetts. They’re like a thousand pounds or something, right?

Trevor
Yeah, exactly. So so they said, hey, Mr. Farmer, how do you do this? He said, well, first of all, you have to start at the right seed. You said you can’t just take any old pumpkin seed and grow a big pumpkin. You have to start the type of pumpkin that’s going to grow big. And he said no, to plant a handful those and then water the crap out of them. You’re going to water, water, water, water.

Trevor
You’re not going to see anything happen for a little bit. But then eventually there’s going to sprout popping up, which is great, keep watering it. And then he said, what’s going to happen is you’re going to the vine and the vine is going to be growing leaves and it’s going to eventually pop out a handful of pumpkins on that vine. Is that what’s your next job is to do is to trim the heck out of that vine because you want to get all the energy going towards the one pumpkin that’s probably going to grow the best.

Trevor
And so he said for the next several weeks, you just have to go out there every day hacking at the leaves. And you look at and there’s three pumpkins on there and you see that one. Right. There’s probably going to be the biggest. Let me cut the other two. And he said that last week, you can almost physically see those pumpkins grow. He says when you’re just water in the heck out of it and trimming everything off of it.

Trevor
And he said business is the same thing, that when we’re trying to grow something big and life, we end up, especially if we have a level of success, we end up adopting all these pumpkins in all of our energies, going through that vine and just getting dispersed. And he said, if you can ruthlessly trim and focus on the one thing, you’re going to grow a giant pumpkin instead of a bunch of mediocre pumpkins that will rot on the vine eventually.

Trevor
And so I said, okay, that’s my next step. I got rid of that one business. What else? Let me pumpkin plan my business in my life. And so I went out there and trimmed everything else except for one business to pay the bills. And then I said, okay, now I’m going to figure out what to do next. And here’s the next step I took. That was the biggest for me, Rod, and I’ll toss it back to you was was this I said, okay, what if I just quit looking for my purpose?

Trevor
What if I quit looking for my purpose at this stage of my life? And what if I just dive in and say, I’m going to work for the next year so I’m going to give it a timeline, I’m going to work for the next year, 12 months on this one business idea that I came up with, which eventually became Carrot. And I’m not going to get distracted. I’m not going to start a second business. I’m not going to do anything else other than honing my craft and enjoying my daily work and my purpose in life.

Trevor
This year is going to be looking back at the end of the year and saying, did I do the best that I can personally do as a human being? Was I the best father I could be? Was I the best husband I could be? Was I the best friend? Best son was I had the best business person I could be. And I found myself Rod during that year. I know it sounds crazy trivial, but I found myself during that year.

Trevor
I literally opened up my shirt drawer one day and I’m a historically not clean guy, okay? I grew up in a house where my mom was clean, except she they let our our, our bedroom just get crazy messy. I didn’t have like clean up times. I’d clean up days where my parents would say, all right, Trevor, it’s time to clean up your room. It would take a whole day. And so I carried that into my adult life.

Trevor
God bless her. My wife is not that. And she’s amazing. She helped me get back on track. But I remember opening up my shirt drawer one day and it was as messy as heck. It was just shirts everywhere. And I think some people can probably relate to this where you get it folded nice and neat and you’re all proud. And then a week or two later, the shirt that you want’s at the bottom of that drawer. So you pull it and then it flips everything, then you just let it go.

Trevor
And I looked at that. I said, man, this isn’t the best I can do. And so once again, looking at my purpose for that year, is this the best I can do? Because I need to get the foundational done first before I can impact others. And I took everything out, folded everything neatly, put it back in. All right. And I can tell you to this day, my shirt drawer is perfectly full to this day.

Rod
And that’s a great analogy probably for the other areas of your life that you looked at and asked yourself, is this the best I can do? Yes?

Trevor
It’s all just clutter. Like, that’s the thing. When we’re really trying to find that purpose, we have so much clutter in our lives, it prevents us from finding that. And that is the biggest thing that kept me from it. And so I kept on finding these opportunities. You know, I rinsed my dish, put it on my counter. I was used to that. That’s my what my mom had done. She did everything for us when we were kids.

Trevor
And so I put the dish on the counter and I walked away from it. I’m like, damn, that’s not the best I can do. Take the dish, open up the dishwasher, put it in the dishwasher and just thing after thing. And as I was doing that that year, Rod and I was honing my craft, learning how to really build this software company, which I’d never built a software company before. And I said, okay, well, shoot, that’s.

Trevor
My whole goal was just to keep getting better and keep challenging myself on that. It wasn’t until two or three years later, in about two years later into that software company, as I had honed the craft that my current purpose popped up. And here’s here’s how finish is this, this was key for me Rod. Every single year I do a contract with myself for a year, like literally when the year flips over. I do 2021, 2022, 2020.

I look at it and say okay, am I, am I going to do this business for the next year? Am I going to do this whatever I committed to for the next year. Even marriage like I never asked the question, am I going to do this right? I’m full in with my wife. But I look at my marriage, I look at everything, say cool, I’m recommitting my commitment to my wife this year, recommitting that.

Trevor
So it doesn’t so it doesn’t get old. And every year I look at it, too, and I say, cool, is this going to be my purpose for the next year? Is it going to be my purpose for the next year or whatever it is? I never go longer than a year with my purpose or my commitment to my business. Now, I will do a three year plan for my business because you got to have the vision out there.

Trevor
But every year I go, am I repeat, my commitment. That was the thing that was key for me as I got the business going because the first year was all about can I get a business, can I focus on one thing and be the best I can do and find some shred of something with this business working. Year two, like cool, it’s kind of working. Am I going to do this another year to see if I can scale it?

Trevor
Okay awesome. Yeah. Year three was can I be the best in the world at this thing? Like can our company Carrot be the best in the world at generating motivated seller leads for house flippers, wholesalers, agents?

Rod
I got to show you something, I got to show you something. Can you see that sign on my wall? You probably can’t see. It says,

Trevor
Says I got a look at what I do

Rod
And then when you declare it happens. And, you know, I’m sorry. I please keep going. I just I just had to had to show you that, real quick

Trevor
Dude, I love it. So year three was that. It was like that was my purpose to be the best in the world at that craft.

Rod
Year four of the business now is where it shifted because I started to get a little bit antsy because I’d always been a serial entrepreneur. When I started a business, I’d get tired of it by year three.

Rod
Shiny penny

Trevor
Dude, I couldn’t shift into purpose. Right. You have the motivation of what got you to to be motivated to start the business in the first place. It’s a job you didn’t like an income ceiling you didn’t like proving someone wrong.

Trevor
But usually about three years into that business, after you see success, that is no longer a motivator. That is your purpose. Your first few years is to get away from that thing. okay, but then after you’ve already done that, then we have to shift towards contribution. We have to shift towards something that we’re running towards, not running away from. And at that point, when we became the best in the world, it generated motivated seller leads.

Trevor
House seller leads for investors, I said, man, what’s next? And what I had done Rod was this. I said, who are the people I like to to serve? And that I’m passionate about? And what ended up being was me. Like, I wanted to serve people that they had gone, that I wanted to serve people, entrepreneurs, to prevent them from going through what I went through to build a business that traps them and makes them miserable.

Trevor
And so that that’s my current purpose. And I absolutely love working with entrepreneurs to help you guys not get trapped in your business to you can make an impact.

Rod
Love it. No, I love it. And and, you know, I like, you know, the strategies that you utilized around minimizing the clutter in your life. And really what it boils down to is getting clarity. And that’s the only way to get clear. You know, sometimes I’ll go for walks with my wife and it’s really for me to get some clarity. I walk through things I need to think about that I just don’t take the time to do.

Rod
And some people do it through meditation, so on and so forth. But let’s talk about the energy audit. Brother, I want to, you told me that that’s something that that you get a lot of kudos for. And I’d love to, I’d love to hear it. Cool. No clue what it is.

Trevor
Yes. Going back to that same period that that that a couple of years was huge for me, you know, where I went from, what was a great income for me at that time as a mid 20 something year old guy. You multiple six figures to literally in 2011. I was looking at my tax returns when we moved to our dream home about two or three years ago. There was this box in the garage. We dropped it at the new house and I was going through it like I made $27,000 in 2011 when the year before I made a couple hundred thousand dollars taxable income.

Trevor
But that was purposeful because I trimmed everything right. I trimmed all the things that were making money except for one thing. So I get the focus. And so when I started to look forward, Rod and I said, well, what do I want to do? I discovered what I don’t want to do. I don’t want that again. And so I sat down, I said, well, let me get really clear on what I want to do.

Trevor
And I heard some advice back then. It’s so true that oftentimes we struggle to find and be clear on what we want. But what’s really easy for us to be clear on is what we don’t want.

Rod
And what we focus on is what gets bigger.

Trevor
Exactly. Exactly. And so I was. What I don’t want and I sat down, I said, well, let me just write that list down and then let me flip it to the positive. And I said, these are my I call them my non-negotiable. So I still have them today on my computer screen, on my wall, the same non negotiables. And it was it was why I didn’t like my income was inconsistent. I didn’t like that I was building a business that was not based on my unique abilities, things that gave me energy.

Trevor
I didn’t like that I wasn’t building an asset. I was churning transactions, but I wasn’t building an asset that could be sold if I wanted to sell it. I didn’t like that I wasn’t really having a lot of fun in my business. So I had this whole list of don’t likes now it’s flipped into the positive. I said, I want to build a business that’s fun. I want to build an asset that grows and is valuable.

Trevor
I want consistency and predictability in my business. I want to work within my unique abilities and others.

Rod
Were these the non-negotiable, as you’re describing?

Trevor
Those are the non negotiable. And I wrote them down and like I said, I still have them today posted. And I said, okay, every business I ever run moving forward has to meet these non negotiables now. And that’s where that’s where I said, okay, what type of business model will give me this consistency, predictability, building an asset. That’s where software came in. But real estate, multifamily real estate, that’s what I do as well.

Trevor
That’s where that comes in. So where does energy out come in? Well, I looked at the item that said work within my unique abilities and have fun. And there’s a very specific reason I put those, because like I said earlier, I was doing so much work, Rod, that drained my energy and I was getting advice. It was probably very well-intentioned advice from insanely smart people. They would say your unique genius or your genius or whatever it is, is when people pay you a lot of money and tell you you’re really good at this thing.

Trevor
And so people are paying me a lot of money to do these things. And I said, well, that must be it. I just need to do more of that stuff. And in hindsight, at that time I looked at and said everything that’s draining my energy. Those are the things that make me the most money. And I said, how do I get those off my lap? Like, if those are draining my energy but they’re making the most money, I can’t just kill them, can I?

Trevor
And so I wrote them down on a piece of paper on the left side of the piece of paper. This is what the energy audit is. If everyone wants this, you guys can literally go to my site, get it for free. I don’t think you have to do an opt in. I think we literally just putting it there on a page. But go to carrot.com/energy, grab the page.

Trevor
It’s just a little template for you and then draw a line down the middle of the paper. On the left side of that paper is drains energy on the right side of the papers gives energy. And I want you to go through this. We can write down a list of everything you’re doing on an average week that drains your energy. Okay, that could be especially if it makes you a lot of money, especially if it makes you a lot of money, because those very things are the things you need to get off of your lap and to either have someone else to do or that you need to separate from to find a new way to make money because you cannot build a business sustainably if it’s draining the crap out of your energy.

Trevor
And so you’ve got to list there, on the other side write down a list of all the things that give you energy. Now, here’s the caveat to that, especially the things that you’re not doing right now. Okay, so if you love working out and that gives you energy but you’re not working out, write that down. If you absolutely love walking with your wife every evening, but you’re not doing as much, write that down and write down the things that give you energy.

Trevor
And so I had this list of energy drains and energy gives the energy drain side was much bigger. And then at the bottom I remember shoot what’s not measured can’t be moved. And so I did a little line down the bottom that the templated carrot.com/energy gives us to you. And I said, well, what percentage of my average week drains my energy versus gives me energy? And at that time, 80 percent of my week was that box of items Rod, the things that drained my energy.

Trevor
Only 20% gave me energy and I’m looking at to go, no wonder I didn’t like my my job that I created. No wonder, because if more than half of your work drains your energy, you’re not going to show up at home happy, you’re not going to show up in your life amazing, you’re going to be putting yourself at a cap because you cannot live your greatest life if most of your waking hours are draining your energy.

Trevor
And so what I did is I said, okay, my aim now and this is in 2011, 2012, my aim now is every quarter I’m going to do this audit and every quarter I’m gonna circle. The one or two things on the left, the one or two things that drain my energy the most. And I’m going to write down how many hours per week I spend on those things. Let’s say item number one is writing blog post, seven hours a week.

Trevor
Item number two is checking email six hours a week so that right there is thirteen hours a week. Cool. Thirteen hours. And then I circle one thing on the energy give side. And I said, I said if I’m going to eliminate these, these thirteen hours here, what am I going to fill it with. Whether it makes money or not. Doesn’t matter. Doesn’t matter if it makes money at all. And so that was always my very first thing each quarter does I take those energy drains and then I pull that back before any other objective.

Trevor
And I would say, how do I systemize this, outsource it or eliminate it in my business asap. And one by one each quarter I start to eliminate the. An example with the blog posts, blog posts at Carrot make us money, that’s what we’re known for. We do amazing content that gets ranked well in Google. And I was the guy who wrote all of that stuff and I looked at it, how the heck can eliminate this?

Trevor
This is the thing that’s growing our business. And I said, I’ve got to go. I’ve got to because it’s killing me. I’m staying up until 1:00, 2:00, 3:00 in the morning to get these articles out. And it’s just draining me. And if it’s not going to kill me, it’s going to kill my family. So I might run off the road falling asleep one day or something. And so I looked at it and said, well, if I could hire someone who’s better than me, what on the energy give side, can I do?

Trevor
I love strategy, dude. I love going to the whiteboard, writing stuff in the whiteboard and blowing out of the I don’t want to execute anything. I just want to I want to I want to give strategy. And I said, well, what if I could just do strategy on articles, blogs, but someone else can do all the writing. And I ended up finding the best writer I could find, who, after working for me, became the editor in chief at Shopify for their blog.

Trevor
And he worked for me for two years and he wrote amazing blog posts. And I just strategized and said,

Rod
better than you could have. Right. I mean, you know, it’s very easy for the CEO to hold on to wanting to do everything. And because we can only do it, we’re the best at it and we can do it the best. Not realizing that there’s always people that can do it better than we can do.

Trevor
So, so true. And here’s the key to it. Okay, yes, that’s cool that I found someone to do that and amazing that that kept the moneymaker going. And I could use my time in a spot that gave me energy. But what was the coolest Rod is there was this limiting belief in my mind that I should only be spending my time doing things that make money because there’s a lot of exercises people walk through. It’s like write down the things that make you the most money and circle those.

Trevor
And that’s what you should be doing the most of. I was looking at it saying I’m going to shift my whole thinking from what makes me the most money to what gives me the most energy, because if I can have a lot of energy, I will probably find better ways to contribute to the world, which will then probably come back an income. And so this was that switch for me was the blog post I outsource to that writer.

Trevor
And I did the strategy which gave me energy. Then I looked at the one thing on the right side that gave energy that I wasn’t doing. I said, man, I love talking with entrepreneurs like, that fires me up to have these combos. I get energy from this. But I said I have no clue how I can make money doing this. And I said, who cares? I’m going to start a podcast. And so that was 2016 when I did that, that energy audit the year that I started the Carrot Cast and I said, I don’t care if I make money on this thing.

Trevor
I don’t care if twelve people listen to it. I don’t care. I just want to talk to interesting people and have interesting conversations that gives me energy and that’s every Thursday. That’s all I do now. And so guys, if you take that process, carrot.com/energy free. I don’t think you have to opt in.

Rod
I just looked at it. It looks cool. I’m going to download it myself. So that’s that’s that’s a great give. Thank you. I love it. So let’s do this before we before I let you loose. You know, let’s talk about Evergreen versus hamster marketing, okay? Because, you know, this is a topic that’s really important to me. In fact, I started going on Clubhouse and I was really struggling with it because it’s not evergreen, you go on there and once you’re done, you’re done. And nobody sees it again versus something on Facebook that’s there forever. YouTube there forever, podcast there forever. And so it’s not evergreen. And so, you know, I was really struggling with Clubhouse, but then I came to the realization and I’m doing Clubhouse now that I get so many people over to my other platforms that that are evergreen that it’s okay. But anyway, I’d love to hear your take on this. So let’s go for it.

Trevor
Dude, you’re 100% percent correct there. So same thing. I’m going to go back to that period, 2011, 2012. When I looked at those non negotiables, one of the things on there was build a business that was consistent and predictable. And so Rod, I then looked at the marketing that we were doing in my previous business and I looked at everything. What marketing was working the best? What marketing was the highest leverage I’ve spent, the least time on what gave me the most leverage over the long term.

Trevor
And the marketing that made up maybe 10 or 15 percent of our revenue was literally just doing content online. It was it was putting out articles and videos on YouTube. We created one time, yeah, we created one time and they were up there for years. And then people will go to Google and they do a Google search around the topic and they would find us. And I said, what if I just did that? Like, what if I just did that and got really good at creating content, building authority and it was something that built momentum.

Trevor
And then then I magnify it with paid marketing, magnify it with social media. And so essentially is this Rod is, evergreen, the word evergreen is something that’s perpetual. It’s here. It’s going to be here for a long time. It’s something that renews. And for Evergreen marketing for us, what that means is you create a piece of content or a piece of marketing that’s going to be working in six months and 12 months and three years. We have some of our videos that have been out for six or seven years that are still getting us customers today that I spent 30 minutes on seven years ago.

Trevor
Now, the Hamster wheel side of it is this is hamster wheel marketing or the definition of a hamster wheel is, pretty much like it never ends, there’s no end in sight, you get on it, and as long as you’re on the thing, it works, you get immediate feedback. That’s why hamster wheel marketing is so awesome. Clubhouse is so awesome. Right. Because you go, oh my gosh, people are liking me. They’re hitting up my Instagram.

Trevor
I’m getting immediate feedback. But the second you get off the hamster wheel, it starts to slowly come to a stop and then all results are gone. The only way to get results again is to get back on the darn hamster wheel. And so I started to look at that years ago and I said, well, what if I could build my business based on evergreen marketing? I’ll give a couple examples that multifamily investors can do for Evergreen. What if I could build my business based on Evergreen and only use hamster wheel to amplify the results of it?

Trevor
What is hamster wheel marketing? Direct mail, cold calling, knocking on doors, Clubhouse, even social media is hamster wheel because you’re going to put that content up there and it’s really only going to be in front of a lot of people for the first 24,-72 hours after that, very few people are ever going to see that thing that you just posted. The best evergreen marketing is getting in front of that flow of motivated people through Google and YouTube and also personal connections.

Trevor
Right. That is evergreen building your network personal connections, joining your mastermind building that is going to be evergreen big time. And so for multifamily investor, what I would do is this is number one, especially if you’re looking to raise funds and you just met somebody who potentially might be an investor, the very first thing they’re going to do is they’re going to Google search like they’re going to Google search your name, they’re going to Google search who you are, what you’re about, the whole thing.

Trevor
And depending on what they find is the decision they’re going to make to work with you or not. And can you imagine this, one thing was this is let’s say someone were to do a Google search and then they landed a really pretty website that has like your deals that you’ve done and maybe a little About Page, and that’s awesome. They’re going to look at it, okay, it looks like they probably have a real business anyway. There’s a website.

Trevor
It looks like they’ve got some deals and they’re probably real. But let’s flip that around now and say, what if on that same website there was a series of videos where you’re walking through exactly how you’re acquiring and repositioning these these projects, walking through before and afters of the reposition, walking through some of the deals that you’ve done, walking through some of the returns that you guys are making and how you’re how you’re analyzing a deal and you’re pretty much educating people on what you’re doing.

Trevor
That content’s going to be up for a long time and your investors are going to look at it go, man, this guy or gal knows what they’re doing. Another way is, is this right here. Let’s say I’m in Philadelphia. I’ve got a multifamily project in Philadelphia with my buddy. He’s the guy who runs the project. I’m funding the project and we’re we’re building that property there. We also have another investor that came in.

Trevor
What if I’m in Philly and I was looking for a place to put my money and I typed up best investment options in Philadelphia, you know, multifamily real estate in Philadelphia, investment advisors, Philadelphia and Google. And what if your content, your videos and articles in your website were actually the things that popped up in Google to get in front of those people looking for investment options? So we’ve done that with clients in the multifamily world or they just create one video a week.

Trevor
I called it a video post, you’re at a property or you’re in your office analyzing a deal or whatever it is. You take out your cell phone Rod and you pull up that on camera app. You put it on video. And it could be just like this. It could be your camera doesn’t have to be professional. Okay, I need to say, hey, this is Trevor with X, Y, Z properties. We worked a lot of investors here in Philadelphia and we’ve got a couple of projects going on.

Trevor
What I want to do is walk through how do we choose a site to build a new multifamily property? What do we look at? What about the neighborhood? And on this video, we’ll show you where what are the best properties for multifamily in Philadelphia. And so I walk through that in seven or eight minutes, take that video uploaded to YouTube, title it something like the best, best areas for investment properties in Philadelphia. And then here’s the key to get it on Google, to turn it into Evergreen is now I take that and transcribe it.

Trevor
Now we have a tool in our system called Video Post that takes your YouTube video, automatically transcribes it, makes a full written article for you, emails you two days later and says your articles ready, but you guys can replicate that. And Rev.com also, get it transcribed. Take your video put at the top of the article, copy and paste your transcription. And if you do one of those, less than twenty minutes a week over the course of a year.

Trevor
It’s hard stacking bricks. It’s like stacking bricks if you want to.

Rod
Sorry. Sorry. Let me just stop you for one second. So, do you post these in your on on a blog on your website, yes?

Trevor
Yep. Yep. For sure.

Rod
Just want to make sure to ask where you post those. So video plus the transcription

Trevor
and make sure your title is something that someone in your area might type in. Right. And you can do this for tenants. So I get my tenant leads online.

Trevor
I have optimized a website for Klamath Falls Apartments for rent near OIT and some other phrases where the apartments are. And we pop up really high. I also feel my AirBNBs with the same with this same strategy, but that’s kind of the basic run through. Guys, I want you guys to think about the way you’re doing marketing, because if you’re doing hamster wheel marketing, that is then going to that is then going to perpetuate a lifestyle in your business that is keeping you on the hamster wheel of time, preventing you from having true freedom from your business, preventing you from from shifting into impact.

Trevor
Okay, but if you can shift towards how do I build Evergreen as my foundation, then only use hamster wheel to amplify, then that’s where you get that freedom and start stacking on content. The content is what’s going to build your authority. It’s what’s going to convert investors into investor prospects and investors way faster. And that’s what’s going to build your authority for people who want to partner with you on deals. If they see a consistent piece of content out there where you’re dropping videos every week, every every other week, and you take that same video and put it up on Facebook and Instagram, too, they’re going to demand, this person’s active, if I trust them.

Trevor
And they’re an authority in the space and it’s going to way ramp up your effectiveness in everything you do.

Rod
Yeah, yeah. No, that’s really good. And, you know, I, I think the key points here, you guys have heard me say this before. If you when you’re creating reach is consistency, you need to be consistent and you need to focus on adding value, period. And, you know, one thing I want to mention about you talked about posting videos on YouTube. The titling is really important because and you could Google titles and you can see which titles on YouTube have pulled the most listens and model some of those.

Rod
We’ve done that. Now, I don’t know if you know, if you if if you believe this is accurate or not, but I’d also heard that that because of Google’s algorithms, it’s not a bad idea to actually say the title in the first minute of the video because it gets transcribed in YouTube’s algorithms. Look for that. Is that an accurate?

Trevor
Dude, 100 percent whenever you’re doing videos, I call it localizing it because especially if you’re going to transcribe it and make it a written article, what a lot of people will do Rod is they know that they’re in Philly, but they won’t mention Philly.

Trevor
Right. Hey, if you’re looking to invest in multifamily it, yeah, you definitely need to say if you’re looking to invest in multifamily in Philadelphia, I’m going to walk you through the five best areas here in Philadelphia for blah, blah, blah. Yeah. So definitely use those words in the video.

Rod
Right, right, right. Well, listen, brother, you have added a ton of value today. This has been a real hoot. And and it’s really been my pleasure to meet you today and have these back to back interviews. And, you know, you’ve got carrot.com. You guys need to check that out. That energy audit I looked at, it looks very valuable. And I’m definitely going to do it myself because I can see that I need it.

Rod
And I just appreciate you coming on, brother. So, you know, I want to thank you and, you know, very excited to to start this relationship with you, my friend.

Trevor
Rod, likewise big time. And I’m proud of the work that you’re doing. I’m proud to try to connect with you finall,y have been kind of watching from afar. And everyone, everyone who’s listening to this podcast, I just want to want to let you guys know kind of like the pumpkin plan. I think you should pumpkin plan the information you consume and plug into Rod’s podcast. Stay with that one. Find one mentor in multifamily. And if you resonate with Rod, which you do since you’re here, like literally cancel every other podcast in your world except for Rod’s potentially try out the Carrot Cast but dove in on that guys.

Trevor
You just get hyper focused on going as deep as you can into a lifetime cash flow podcast. You’re doing amazing things.

Rod
I appreciate it. Yeah. I forgot to mention your podcast. Forgive me. Yeah you do. Good. Yeah. So you’ll see me on there in a couple of months but anyway. All right. Well, listen, thanks again, Trevor. It’s been, it’s been a blast and I look forward to talking to you again soon, my friend. Appreciate it. Thank you. And take care.