Ian Prukner is a dynamic Serial Entrepreneur, sought-after Consultant, captivating Speaker, and accomplished Best-Selling Author. With a remarkable track record of creating and scaling businesses across diverse sectors, including finance, real estate, e-commerce, and intellectual property, he’s achieved numerous seven, eight, and even nine-figure successes, culminating in a remarkable eight-figure exit. Originally hailing from Royal Oak, Michigan, Ian now calls Siesta Key, Florida home, where he shares his life and entrepreneurial journey with his cherished family: wife Jessica and their three wonderful children, Kayley, Zac, and Zoey.
Here’s some of the topics we covered:
- How Ian Went From Church Pastor To Millionaire
- The Advantage of Using AI in Your Business
- The Redefining of The World
- The Art of Making a Permanent Decision
- How Ian Started Coaching and Mentoring
- The Most Important Characteristic for a Team
- What Ian Would Tell His 18 Year Old Self Today
To find out more about partnering or investing in a multifamily deal: Text Partner to 72345 or email Partner@RodKhleif.com
Full Transcript Below
00:00:00:10 – 00:00:18:07
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 build, inquire audible wealth for themselves and their families through multifamily properties. So hit the like and subscribe button to get notified every Monday when a new episode comes out.
00:00:18:11 – 00:00:38:01
Rod
Let’s get to it. Welcome to another edition of Lifetime Cash Flow Through Real Estate Investing. I’m Rod Khleif and I am thrilled you’re here. And we are going to have a very interesting guest on Today’s name is Ian Bruckner. Now, Ian has pretty much done it all. He’s is what he calls himself a serial entrepreneur like myself. He’s a consultant, he’s a speaker, bestselling author.
00:00:38:03 – 00:00:58:04
Rod
He has Barton built and sold businesses in the eight figure range exits. And we’re going to have a wide ranging conversation. It’s not going to just be real estate. It’ll be about business in general. And he happens to live here in Sarasota. So I’m like, Dude, I see my Instagram every frickin day. I’m like, Let’s get together and have an interview because you’re an interesting guy, so welcome, brother.
00:00:58:06 – 00:01:00:19
Ian
Hey, Robert, Thank you so much for having me. Excited to be on.
00:01:00:20 – 00:01:15:02
Rod
Yeah, Thank you. So. So why don’t you do a better job than I could possibly do? And talking a little bit about your history and you know where you started and what you’ve done and where you are now. And just do it like that.
00:01:15:02 – 00:01:33:17
Ian
Yeah. So I started off as a pastor as a pastor for a church up in Michigan, which is where I’m from. I was a music pastor, so I wasn’t a speaking pastor. I ran bands for a big megachurch. And if anybody in your audience is a musician, they would know, like if you can be a musician and make enough money to survive playing music, you’re like the happiest person on earth.
00:01:33:19 – 00:01:55:06
Ian
And that was me. I love what I did. It wasn’t really a job, and my wife and I were newly married. We both worked for the church up in Michigan, and Detroit. Got super hard hit in the Great Recession, right in 0809. It started hitting Detroit about a year previous to that. And so working for the church, charitable giving just stops when you know, things get tightened and things got bad.
00:01:55:06 – 00:02:13:26
Ian
I ended up taking some pretty big pay cuts there. I was working a couple jobs on the side just to make ends meet and and we were on thin ice financially and we fell through the ice. And I’ll never forget, I need to make $250 a month. That was my shortfall. And so I was starting to look for how do I make a couple of hundred bucks a month?
00:02:13:26 – 00:02:32:02
Ian
So my best idea that I could come up with was to be a night manager at Rite Aid, and I was going to work three midnights a week for $14.55 an hour at the time. And after taxes, that would net me out my $250 shortfall. So that’s what I was going to do. And my boss at the church, his name was Steven.
00:02:32:07 – 00:02:46:07
Ian
He came to me one day after cutting my pay and he’s like, Hey, Ian, are you still looking to make extra money? I said, With all due respect, you are my boss. But you see what you pay me here, right? Like that is the stupidest thing you’ve ever asked me. Of course, I’m looking to make some extra money.
00:02:46:07 – 00:03:03:23
Ian
And he says, there’s this guy that goes to the church. He does this thing. You could do it part time. You’d probably be good at it. And I figured, well, I couldn’t make any less money than I’m making here at the church. So I called this guy up and I’m like, Hey, my name’s Ian. You probably recognize me being on stage at the church.
00:03:03:25 – 00:03:20:12
Ian
My boss told me you might have an opportunity. Said, Sure, come on by. Said when? He said, How about in an hour? This is a Wednesday afternoon in August of 2007, and I pulled up to this guy’s house right here, this big castle looking house on the lake. And. And I was super middle class. Nobody in my family had ever made six figures.
00:03:20:13 – 00:03:40:19
Ian
Nobody in my wife’s family ever made six figures. We were we were middle class, middle income. We didn’t really have any associations, no real wealth to speak of. And I pulled up to this guy’s house and no joke. I’m like, if he’s not selling drugs to kids, I’m in. I don’t care what he’s doing, really, Because I was smart enough to learn that like, Hey, this guy knows something about making money that I don’t.
00:03:40:22 – 00:03:53:08
Ian
Right? And so he was in the financial space. He offered to mentor me on a part time basis. I figured, what do I have to lose? So I got started. My first year in that business, I made a six figure income and it was like life changing.
00:03:53:08 – 00:03:56:19
Rod
So financial space, you got your series license and started doing financial planning.
00:03:56:19 – 00:04:21:02
Ian
Insurance and investments and all of that. Yeah, okay. And so started in that 2007 went full time in that business. Fast forward to 2022. We had 48 locations, 1400 reps all throughout the country. We actually sold that business in a multiple eight figure exit and no longer have that. And along the way, about seven, eight years into it was really on autopilot.
00:04:21:02 – 00:04:36:21
Ian
I had a great leadership team in place. We had good systems, we had some good software that we had built to help manage the team and manage that client base, which was close to 100,000 clients at the time We sold it. It’s a pretty big entity and so we built that all out and it was sort of on autopilot.
00:04:36:21 – 00:04:51:08
Ian
And I’m just like a creator, right? Like probably like, like entrepreneur mind. I can’t sit still, right? My wife’s like, You should take a break three days. And I’m like, I got to do something. I got to find it. So I started buying real estate and and putting it up for short term rental. I started doing some flips.
00:04:51:08 – 00:05:13:13
Ian
I built a pretty big house that was just sort of like, fun. I think I built it and and sell it. I started writing books and producing courses and doing some coaching and consulting and and that’s sort of where I ended up. And a couple of years ago, a couple of friends of mine from the finance business called and said, Hey, we want you to consult for a new idea that we have.
00:05:13:13 – 00:05:33:08
Ian
They were building basically a digital, a tech financial product and I loved it. I saw it and I thought it was like lightning struck me. This is a great idea. It’s super simple. It’s making a lot of money. This could be a really like a blue ocean scenario. Nobody’s doing this for the first here. And so we went to work on that.
00:05:33:08 – 00:05:46:16
Ian
We took that business in two years, done about 75 million in revenue, no ads totally from scratch with a commission based sales team that we built and we’re just really starting to ramp it up.
00:05:46:20 – 00:05:48:06
Rod
So that’s the digital real estate.
00:05:48:06 – 00:05:49:26
Ian
Yeah, that’s the digital real estate business.
00:05:49:26 – 00:06:05:22
Rod
So I asked him what he was doing before we got started. He said, I’m doing digital real estate. You know what I’m thinking? Okay, A fractionalized real property? No, he’s talking about digital assets, but he’s using the moniker real estate. And so why don’t you describe what it is?
00:06:05:22 – 00:06:09:26
Ian
Yeah, well, the reason we call it digital real estate is that’s actually a pretty good idea.
00:06:09:26 – 00:06:15:14
Rod
You know. You know what it really is now that you sit and think about it, once you hear how what it is, you’ll see it is a good name.
00:06:15:14 – 00:06:38:05
Ian
Yes. So what we do is digital real estate. The best way to understand it is these are lead generating websites that produce a cash flow by selling the leads they generate that are owned by third party disinterested owners. These are people who are just looking to have a cash flow that is passive in nature and they don’t want to deal with renters.
00:06:38:05 – 00:06:56:19
Ian
They don’t want to have, you know, millions of dollars of leverage out there. So it’s a it’s an asset that they can buy for a relatively small amount of money that produces, you know, multifamily US cash flows. And so we started building these out for ourselves out first. And then we had friends like, Hey, can you build a few for us here?
00:06:56:19 – 00:07:16:05
Ian
Can you build some there? And we saw an opportunity to scale that production up. So right now we’ve got about 7500 of these lead generating websites up. Some are owned by our company. Most of those are actually owned by friends, family, other people that we’ve built these for. And yeah, so, so they commission us to build them. We do the data research.
00:07:16:05 – 00:07:34:25
Ian
So what we’re looking for is where is there a lot of search traffic for a certain service? We’re in Sarasota. I’ll use Sarasota as an example. A thousand times a month, somebody goes online and searches Sarasota roof repair. You’re doing some roof repair here right now. Right? Right. And so they’re looking for local roofers. So what we’ll do is we’ll say, hey, there’s a lot of searching here.
00:07:34:27 – 00:07:57:09
Ian
There’s not very well-managed competition. These guys are great roofers, but they’re apparently not very good at online web traffic management. So we’ll go in there and we’ll buy up all those domains. Sarasota Roofing Pros, Sarasota roof contractors, the Sarasota Roofing Kings, whatever it might be, will obtain all those domains. We build websites on top of them, and then we rank them up to the top of the search engines.
00:07:57:09 – 00:08:20:11
Ian
So when people are looking for that service, they find our sites. And so when they call our sites, our owner said you owned that you don’t do roofs, you don’t have a roofing company, but we have an interface that we built that connects to those local service providers. So it’s really a win win win. The local service providers can get high quality leads that are unique to them.
00:08:20:11 – 00:08:37:10
Ian
They’re not being split. These people are searching for their service in their location, picking up a phone and calling. The consumers can get access to local pros who aren’t, you know, big regional companies crushing it on SEO. And we can make good money connecting those two parties together.
00:08:37:10 – 00:08:47:18
Rod
They’re selling them the leads. So I’m going to get I want to drill down with you a little better. So by no means that’s a good way to get started. Are you buying are you doing are you making ad buys as well on these sites?
00:08:47:24 – 00:08:51:11
Ian
So you can up until this point, we’ve done completely organic.
00:08:51:11 – 00:09:08:03
Rod
So it’s all been organic up to this point. So what do you talk about some of the things you’re doing because this will actually add value to any of my listeners that are you know, I have a website trying to get investors for deals or so on and so forth, passive investing kind of thing. What are some of the things you’re doing to organically grow those sites?
00:09:08:05 – 00:09:29:09
Ian
Well, so I’m not an SEO guy, right? I’m a non tech founder but the best. Yeah, but, but basically there’s a lot of different components to how people find things and people are finding things, they’re searching for things and a lot of different ways today than they were even 12 months ago and 24 months ago. They’re searching through I they’re searching on social platforms.
00:09:29:09 – 00:09:47:16
Ian
They’re searching in ways that you wouldn’t have thought about before. So you really need an all encompassing strategy. Every single one of our sites has full social profiles. They’re optimized for all search engines. They’re optimized for AI searching. They’re not built with AI because if you look at like Google right now, it can.
00:09:47:16 – 00:09:48:02
Rod
Tell if.
00:09:48:04 – 00:10:10:04
Ian
Yeah, and Google has their own API. And so if you’re writing copy with GPT, which is really good, if you train it well in a super, super cheap, right, Like we could cut the costs down in building these assets by 70%. The problem is Google would destroy them in about six more months when they push their next update that goes and kills anything not written by Bird.
00:10:10:11 – 00:10:31:22
Ian
Right. Which is their thing. So it’s an interesting world. You got to be, well, well-rounded. You’ve got to have tactics that work on all of those different platforms, right? So like what works for your social profiles in search ability is not what works when people are Google searching you or they’re on Bing. And so it’s part SEO, it’s part social platform management.
00:10:31:24 – 00:10:55:22
Ian
And then we are actually in beta right now on a couple of different facets. One is running ads to them and that’s been very successful, but it’s in a beta test, right? And then the fourth is actually lead arbitrage, which is really interesting. So what we’ve done is we built out this proprietary interface to take 100,000 plus calls a month from people searching for these services real time.
00:10:55:25 – 00:11:01:05
Ian
Those calls are live transferred to end buyers who’ve agreed to pay a certain amount for their.
00:11:01:05 – 00:11:10:06
Rod
Those are the best leads. Yeah. So if you’re getting a live transfer lead from somebody who’s calling on a website phone number and you can do a live to. Yeah, that’s a no brainer. That’s the best lead you can have.
00:11:10:11 – 00:11:36:19
Ian
So we’ve got all of that. And so we have these huge national buyers. We have contracts for them to buy all these leads. What we’re finding is Buyer A who buys leads from us, They have pest control leads for 30 bucks. They’re trying to offload and Buyer B that we use buys pest control leads for $70 from us so we can actually buy from Buyer A and sell to Buyer B and route through the sites and create an arbitrage.
00:11:36:21 – 00:11:50:04
Ian
That is really interesting. As far as we know, we’re the only people out there in that space doing that right now. That’s also in beta, but we see a great opportunity to scale these things much more quickly and put them on steroids as it relates to the income.
00:11:50:11 – 00:11:57:03
Rod
So how many roofers would get a lead from a website is, I’m assuming, more than one they whoever goes first.
00:11:57:04 – 00:12:01:24
Ian
So they’re exclusive schools. So we have a we have what’s called a ping post bid system.
00:12:01:27 – 00:12:02:13
Rod
Okay.
00:12:02:15 – 00:12:32:17
Ian
It’s really pretty phenomenal to look at the technology that’s involved in being able to do this all real time. So let’s say you owned Dallas concrete pros dot com hypothetically I don’t even know if that’s one of our sites but let’s just say you own that right okay. You’re not a concrete guy and that site gets a call from somebody in Dallas presumably looking for concrete right real time that gets ping post bid on by every concrete contractor in our network in Dallas.
00:12:32:20 – 00:12:45:11
Ian
And one guy bids $10 and one guy bids $22 and one guy bids $35 and one guy bids $50 real time. That $50 bid is accepted live, transferred over.
00:12:45:13 – 00:12:48:21
Rod
This is done while they’re on the phone. Really cool.
00:12:48:21 – 00:12:55:29
Ian
That’s cool. Yeah. 100,000 times a month right now on our way to 200 and and 300 and actually a million and multiple millions of times a month.
00:12:55:29 – 00:13:12:24
Rod
Interesting. Wow, that’s. That’s fascinating. Yeah. It’s a very simple business model. I mean, we build websites, we rank them. I mean, our own website and, you know, it’s it’s AdWords. It said, you know, and some of the things you just said, certainly all the social and, you know, the Google address and all these other things you got to do.
00:13:12:24 – 00:13:20:12
Rod
But yeah, it’s a very simple business model. Good for you, man. That’s, that’s really cool. And so if somebody is interested in exploring that, they just go to your Instagram.
00:13:20:12 – 00:13:28:18
Ian
Go to Instagram, have you shoot me a DM Yeah, and we have a weekly live webinar where you can go and see some case studies, talk to.
00:13:28:20 – 00:13:31:08
Rod
What does the website cost or how do you work it?
00:13:31:10 – 00:13:54:10
Ian
Okay, so an individual site right now costs 70 $500 a unit. Okay, You got to buy a minimum of 320, 25 minimum. Okay, Okay. And so each unit, I’ll give you the financials, the timeframes and the risks. Okay. So each unit, after a year, we expect that to be generating somewhere between three and $500 a month in gross cash flow.
00:13:54:11 – 00:14:12:20
Ian
Okay. So not a lot’s not life changing to have one. But let’s say you had ten of these, right? You bought that for 75 grand after about a year. Let’s say they’re making 300 bucks a piece. That’s three grand a month. We take a 25% property management fee. Okay, So that’s 20 to 50 a month. That’s just shy of 30 G’s a year.
00:14:12:23 – 00:14:32:22
Ian
On 75 grand. You have no renters, you have no repairs. You don’t have to go anywhere. There’s if you’re a business owner and you buy these through an existing business entity that has existing cash flow, you can get a cost segregation and you can write off virtually the entirety of that purchase against the same year’s income.
00:14:32:22 – 00:14:34:05
Rod
So Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.
00:14:34:05 – 00:14:35:21
Ian
An advanced depreciation.
00:14:35:21 – 00:14:37:17
Rod
How do you do a cost segue on a website?
00:14:37:23 – 00:14:46:27
Ian
So what happens is the 70 $500, some portion of that is spent obtaining a domain that’s an it’s got to be depreciated over time.
00:14:46:29 – 00:14:51:18
Rod
Everything you can you can you can depreciate intellectual property, assets. Sure.
00:14:51:20 – 00:15:18:06
Ian
You can depreciate, but you don’t even need the depreciation. Just forget that. You can forget you even want to do that. Okay. Such a small amount of that 7500 bucks. Let’s say that 70 $500. We spent $50 on the domain. Okay. Okay. You can’t write that off right now, right? It’s got to be depreciated. Okay. The rest of it is servicing, writing, copy building the site, SEO management, social platform management.
00:15:18:06 – 00:15:26:10
Ian
All of that is no different than you hiring an SEO company to run your website, and that’s a deductible expense to operate.
00:15:26:10 – 00:15:44:03
Rod
What’s deductible? Okay, you said cost segregation. That’s that’s a term that we use in real estate where you break down each of the individual entities or components of a building and, and, and shorten the the life span in the depreciable life span and accelerate that depreciation. So that’s not what you’re.
00:15:44:03 – 00:15:51:06
Ian
Doing in our world. Cost segue is what an accountant wants to see, to understand which of this money was buying an asset and which of this money you got.
00:15:51:06 – 00:15:58:10
Rod
You got you, got you. All right. That’s why I stopped. Just like, Wait a minute. Wait. I know. Okay. Okay. We’re talking to you. 2 to 2 of two different definition costs are great. Okay?
00:15:58:13 – 00:16:13:06
Ian
Yeah, but the long and short of it is, say somebody buys 100 grand of this, about 97,000 of that. If they bought it in an existing business entity that has existing business income, they could deduct that as servicing expenses.
00:16:13:09 – 00:16:17:23
Rod
And business carry that out over a few years. I don’t think you can expense it the first year.
00:16:17:26 – 00:16:34:00
Ian
They can’t expense it the first year where they can carry it or they can offset the income with it. They could do whatever it is they want. We’re not accountants. We can’t give them accounting advice, but we do provide the cost segues and and let accountants know, you know, here’s how these are standardly handled.
00:16:34:04 – 00:16:34:19
Rod
Okay.
00:16:34:19 – 00:16:46:05
Ian
Yeah, but it’s a nice tax benefit to people who are high income. They’re trying to figure out how to get rid of some of that income and they don’t want to buy another g-wagon or something else, you know, to to depreciate. Hmm.
00:16:46:10 – 00:17:03:16
Rod
Hmm. Interesting. Yeah. Me. Interesting. Well, that that’s a very cool business model. And I know you guys are thinking, well, this doesn’t have any to do with multifamily real estate, and I know it doesn’t. So this is more me is satisfying my own itch to find out what Ian is all about and see what he’s up to. So, you know, I still think it’s a fascinating conversation.
00:17:03:18 – 00:17:22:28
Rod
So I know you’ve done some real estate, you’ve done some Airbnb, you’ve got a place in Costa Rica, you’ve got a beautiful home on the beach here in Sarasota. And I know you had some Airbnbs on Siesta key, on canals that you sold. And so I know you’ve got a book coming out here as well. Let’s talk about that book for a minute.
00:17:22:28 – 00:17:24:29
Rod
What’s it titled and when do you think it’ll come out?
00:17:24:29 – 00:17:48:01
Ian
That’s called 12 Words that Change everything. Okay. And it’s coming out September, October. It’s just with the publishers right now doing some final tweaks on formatting. And and it’s essentially a book about words, 12 words that in my life have been instrumental in creating the success and the freedom and the peace and all of the things that we’ve been able to build that aren’t taught in school.
00:17:48:01 – 00:18:08:19
Ian
There’s a lot of ideas taught that don’t help us at all, and there’s a lot of things that people pass over, like resilience, right? Like relevance, like tenacity, like truth, where we just sort of scoot over that. But those are the very things that it takes to win in America today. You’ve got to be able to stick it out past everybody else.
00:18:08:19 – 00:18:30:15
Ian
You’ve got to be able to handle setbacks and negativity and challenges and handle them positively. You’ve got to be able to look at cause and effect and judge that accurately. And if you don’t, you’re going to have a lot of problems in life. And they don’t teach us these things. So it’s sort of an expository on these 12 words, these 12 ideas that I feel are really instrumental in helping you get where you want to go.
00:18:30:17 – 00:18:37:05
Rod
Well, let’s go through a couple like you mentioned truth. Talk about truth for a minute. Yeah, true. What does that mean in your in your definition, in your book?
00:18:37:05 – 00:18:56:19
Ian
So truth is the foundation on which basic basically all human cooperation can exist. Right? It’s a set of agreed upon actualities. Right. That we can understand, that we can see repeated. And truth is really under assault today in a big way. There’s a reason. Don’t get me started.
00:18:56:19 – 00:18:57:10
Rod
Don’t get me started.
00:18:57:10 – 00:19:20:19
Ian
On the redefinition campaign, on almost everything. Right. And that makes it really hard to cooperate. Right? If we can’t agree on basic facts, then we really can’t move forward from there. Right? We’ve got to have this set of things that that was and is and will be in the future that we could say these are real, these are accurate, these are right, these are true.
00:19:20:22 – 00:19:42:07
Ian
And we can use that as a foundation to build on. And right thinking ultimately creates right actions and right behaviors. And there’s a lot of people who believe stuff even vehemently that just is not right. We all know these people, right. And and they end up having lots of challenges in their life. And they you know, they feel like the world is out to get them and things just never work out.
00:19:42:07 – 00:19:48:10
Ian
And and really they just they didn’t pass the connect the dots in kindergarten. Right. They they weren’t able.
00:19:48:10 – 00:19:55:25
Rod
I get hate from them every single day, literally every single day. And sometimes I get sucked in and most time I don’t. But but but I.
00:19:55:27 – 00:19:57:01
Ian
Know truth individual.
00:19:57:01 – 00:20:17:12
Rod
Yeah, right. Yeah. That’s bottom line. They don’t understand what’s really happening in the world, you know, locked in their mom’s basements or whatever they’re entitled. You know, I remember seeing this video of this kid in a Starbucks crying because he had to work a double shift at Starbucks. And I’m like, you know, this whole entitlement mentality that’s out there right now and femininity of men, if you ask me frankly as well.
00:20:17:12 – 00:20:26:21
Rod
But yeah, I like that. I like that. So truth that that’s not what I expected and that’s an awesome definition of truth. So talk about relevance for a minute. You brought up relevance. Yeah, relevance.
00:20:26:21 – 00:20:52:15
Ian
Is is the second chapter in the book. Okay. And this is more today than ever before. Something that’s needed. If you want to keep winning, it’s one thing to win. It’s another thing to win consistently to become a serial winner, to win on a on a recurring basis. Right. Probably my next book will be called Repeat and it will be the study of why most people cannot repeat success and why some people in teams can create dynasties and legacies.
00:20:52:15 – 00:21:16:06
Ian
It’s a different way of thinking. It’s a different way you approach the game or the business or the problem. But ultimately relevance is about your ability to continuously reinvent yourself even after you’ve arrived, right? It’s what you do at the top that determines where you go from there. And there are so many case studies today of companies and people who get to the top of their game and they don’t continue to reinvent.
00:21:16:06 – 00:21:17:14
Rod
They stop innovating.
00:21:17:16 – 00:21:18:04
Ian
They stop it.
00:21:18:04 – 00:21:26:09
Rod
And Peter Drucker said every business is nothing but marketing and innovation. Absolutely, they stop innovating. So that’s relevance. That’s how you maintain relevance.
00:21:26:09 – 00:21:48:02
Ian
Yeah. And you’ve got to be willing to to hold nothing sacred. Right? You look at Apple, you know, Apple makes virtually none of their money today off of computers. It’s smartphones and other things and cloud services and then all sorts of other things that they have that are really miles and miles away from how they started. But they were willing to continue.
00:21:48:06 – 00:21:48:21
Rod
To innovate.
00:21:48:21 – 00:22:09:01
Ian
To innovate and to question who they were, where they were going and being willing to break things that are broken, because one day they will be right. And a lot of people don’t want to do that. They they have something that works, right? But if it’s working now, it’s pretty much a guarantee that 15 or 20 years from now or maybe much sooner, it’s not going to be working.
00:22:09:01 – 00:22:34:03
Ian
Right? Right. What got us here doesn’t get us there. It’s the same thing with businesses and in leadership. You’ve got to constantly be reassessing and leader relevance is really influence now. Like that’s what relevance is, right is I mean something to you in this moment and that’s why I’m relevant. And when I when I cease that, meaning when I see that impact, I lose my relevance.
00:22:34:03 – 00:22:38:14
Ian
When I lose my relevance, I lose most everything. Hmm.
00:22:38:17 – 00:22:44:06
Rod
Interesting. Interesting. I know. I think you mentioned commitment as well.
00:22:44:08 – 00:22:58:29
Ian
Yeah. Commitment isn’t is another one that’s like a lost art today, right? Like, nobody wants to be committed anything. They’re committed to their to they’re committed to real estate until it gets hard, till there’s a downturn, till interest rates go to eight, until there is a challenge right there. They’re committed to their role.
00:22:59:02 – 00:23:17:03
Rod
Interrupt you for a second. You know, I talk about this, how you have to make a decision. Okay. And the Latin root for the word decision means to cut off. It doesn’t mean dip your toe in the water, doesn’t mean one foot in one foot out. I mean, you know, and the example I give is if you’re going to attack the island, you burn your ships because you’re taking their damn ships home, then you’re committed.
00:23:17:06 – 00:23:18:28
Rod
Yeah. And that’s what we’re talking about here.
00:23:18:28 – 00:23:31:17
Ian
Yeah. And what’s interesting about the word decide is it ends in idiocy. And if you look at that, think like homicide, suicide, pesticide. These are things that really mean to make permanent. That’s what a decision is. It’s to make.
00:23:31:19 – 00:23:32:15
Rod
Oh, I’m going to use that.
00:23:32:22 – 00:23:51:29
Ian
And most people, they make decisions slowly, if at all, and then are quick to change them. And what I found about the most successful people I know as they make quick decisions and then they’ll rarely ever change them, right. They’re they’re in for the long haul, whatever it takes. One of my favorite quotes, Rod, and I’m going to paraphrase this because I’m going to Butch Butcher up.
00:23:51:29 – 00:24:22:29
Ian
It’s by a guy named William H. Murray a couple hundred years ago, and he said once one totally commits oneself, then Providence moves to all sorts of material assistance and unforeseen connections create and materialize that he could have never seen coming from that act of deciding. That’s what precipitates the people, the relationships, the connections, the funding. That is all a byproduct of being all in burn the ships, no backing out.
00:24:22:29 – 00:24:43:02
Rod
And you know, honestly, it’s a component of manifesting as well, because if you’ve if you basically in your mind believe you already have something that you want, it ties into what you’re talking and you’re basically committing your brain to that process. And that’s how I’ve manifested everything I’ve ever wanted in life is, is to, is to give thanks as if already have it.
00:24:43:02 – 00:24:58:03
Ian
Yeah. It’s a very interesting thing. In a previous book that I wrote, I talked about an idea called T-bar, and it’s an acronym. It stands for Thoughts Become Beliefs, beliefs become actions, actions become results. Right? And so what you’re talking about there in terms of the manifesting.
00:24:58:03 – 00:24:59:16
Rod
Is the T to be. Yeah.
00:24:59:18 – 00:25:13:15
Ian
And it’s the B to the to the A, it’s it’s when to really believe that you will begin to act in those ways. Right. So if there was a fire alarm going off in here right now, we’d probably get up and leave Right.
00:25:13:15 – 00:25:25:12
Rod
Just to it’s kind of funny you said that because in the last interview we had here, lightning struck literally, Oh, walk away. And I have a video of it where I’m like, Holy shit. Because it’s like, Anyway, this just funny you said that it’s timely.
00:25:25:12 – 00:25:48:00
Ian
If we really believed that, we’d probably pick up and leave the building, we would act on that right now. We might be wrong. It might have just been a false flag, right? But it’s still going to determine our actions, what we believe we act on always. Right. And so that idea of affirmations and, you know, I am statements all about what you’re doing is you’re conditioning your belief system so that you can take action on this.
00:25:48:00 – 00:26:09:25
Rod
Right, right, right. So what are the I mean, you know, you have let me give your advice to someone who’s sitting here listening to this that knows they need to frickin do something. They know they need to get off somewhere, want to make something happen. And most of the people listen to me or, you know, aspiring multifamily investors, they see, you know, the success that my students have.
00:26:09:25 – 00:26:20:14
Rod
They see you know, they hear about it and they just haven’t taken action. What might you suggest to them that might aid them in making a move? Sure.
00:26:20:16 – 00:26:21:25
Ian
You can’t steer a parked car.
00:26:22:00 – 00:26:22:09
Rod
Yeah.
00:26:22:10 – 00:26:45:12
Ian
Okay. So you got to get moving. Once you get moving, you can change direction quickly and easily when you’re at a standstill trying to crank that wheel, you’re going to exhaust yourself and you’re still not going to go anywhere. You’re just going to move the wheel left or right. And so action is everything right? There’s nothing that cannot be overcome with massive action, skill set deficiencies, lack of funding.
00:26:45:12 – 00:27:04:15
Ian
If you talk to enough people, if you shake enough hands, if you shake enough trees, something’s going to fall out of that. And that’s how I built my my first business. There are so many days I didn’t know where to go, how I would get another client, where I’d find another age. I thought I was out of business and I’d go in my neighborhood and I’d doorknock and introduce myself.
00:27:04:17 – 00:27:14:23
Ian
And sure enough, one or two of those people be looking to do something. Hey, I just left my job and you just got to go and make things happen. You can’t wait for things to happen.
00:27:14:23 – 00:27:27:26
Rod
My most successful students by far, are the ones that take massive freakin action. They’re not the smartest, they’re not the most well-connected. They’re not the ones that start out with the most, none of it. They just take massive action. And they’re the most successful students I have.
00:27:27:26 – 00:27:30:19
Ian
And they end up with the best relations. Oh, sure.
00:27:30:21 – 00:27:31:08
Rod
Sure they do.
00:27:31:08 – 00:27:47:25
Ian
Because the action, the byproduct of the action is the skill set they’re waiting on to take the action. Yeah, that’s right. So. Right. So they think, well, if I knew more, listen, you’re never going to know everything you need to know, right? I call this basically an action threshold. I actually talk about it a little bit in the upcoming book.
00:27:47:27 – 00:27:56:10
Ian
Every one of us has an action threshold or an amount of knowledge or skill or certainty that we feel like we need to have before before.
00:27:56:13 – 00:27:57:00
Rod
We make a move.
00:27:57:01 – 00:27:57:25
Ian
Yeah, And.
00:27:57:25 – 00:28:03:18
Rod
In the analytical people, it’s even more pronounced. They want to check off every single box.
00:28:03:18 – 00:28:20:14
Ian
Exactly. And so their action threshold is high. In other words, there’s a lot that needs to be overcome before they’ll move, right? One of the keys to leadership and success is to systematically lower that action threshold where you trust yourself and your instinct and your work.
00:28:20:14 – 00:28:22:10
Rod
Ethic, your abilities. Right.
00:28:22:12 – 00:28:42:23
Ian
And your tenacity and your grit went the higher level of trust. You have there, the lower level of action threshold you need. And then you can take action much more boldly and much more quickly than you were doing before. And they’re on the other side of that. Are all the lessons you’ve been wanting to learn. What you are waiting for is there on the other side of the action.
00:28:42:23 – 00:29:05:15
Rod
Oh, great example, great definition, a great way to describe that. So those of you that are analytical, I hope you heard if you need to rewind and listen to that again, listen to that again, that a great way to define what looks a lot of people up and how you get past it. So, you know, this is going to be a real general question for you, but talk about any epiphanies you’ve had in your journey.
00:29:05:15 – 00:29:13:03
Rod
You know about any aspect of life or business or whatever. Sure. Aha. Moments. You’re like, Holy shit, now I get it.
00:29:13:10 – 00:29:33:26
Ian
I had a couple of those earlier in my business career, so I was stuck making around 300,000 bucks a year for a couple of years. This is back in 0809. So that wasn’t bad money in Michigan. I was 25 years old. It wasn’t bad, but I was stuck nonetheless. Like we all get stuck at different places. And and I was really good at what I did, but I wasn’t duplicating that well.
00:29:33:26 – 00:29:58:29
Ian
I had not invested into taking my brain and putting it on paper, having soapies, having KPIs, having accountability systems, having metrics that I could watch that were looking at the front end of of the business. And so so I actually hired a coach back in 2009, and that’s what he worked with me on. And it took us 18 months, 24 months.
00:29:58:29 – 00:30:17:17
Ian
We went from making 300 grand a year net profit to $1,000,000 a year net profit, and my workload cut in half because I wouldn’t having to do everything. So one of the biggest things that I had is an epiphany or an AHA is the need to systematize everything that you do, because without that there is no freedom and there is no value in what you’re building.
00:30:17:17 – 00:30:35:13
Rod
Every business is nothing but people and systems. Really. You get the best people. You put the systems together. Great book on the topic by Michael Gerber called E-Myth. I’m sure I’m familiar with it. Yeah, Yeah. And there are lots of different iterations of E-Myth. E-Myth for attorneys, E-Myth for. Yeah. So. So you’re very driven guy. How old are you?
00:30:35:20 – 00:30:38:19
Ian
I just turned 42 days ago. Damn.
00:30:38:21 – 00:30:49:16
Rod
I’ve got socks that have two decades and so, so. So you’re very driven guy. Where does that drive come from? What’s what’s the what’s the why What makes you freaking jump out of bed in the morning. What.
00:30:49:18 – 00:30:52:18
Ian
That’s a great question And it and it evolves over time.
00:30:52:18 – 00:30:53:07
Rod
Oh of course yeah.
00:30:53:12 – 00:31:11:09
Ian
It evolves over time. What I always tell people right, is hunger is a discipline. Okay? If you stuffed yourself full for Thanksgiving dinner, you don’t want to go to Little Caesars Pizza. 2 hours later, you’re full. Right? And most people are full with average and ordinary and okay. And they don’t have any room in their life for the truly great in the truly spectacular.
00:31:11:11 – 00:31:29:28
Ian
So one of the things that I’ll say is part of it is is some wiring. Like I remember being in third grade and every Wednesday I would walk a half a mile after school to the American Legion Hall for the baseball card show. And I talked a guy named Rich into giving me one of his three boots. And I would buy and sell baseball cards.
00:31:29:28 – 00:31:46:08
Ian
By the time I was in sixth grade, I had 60,000 baseball. No kid. Yeah, I mean, it was tens of thousands of dollars of it. And that’s just like what I did. I got into music. I wanted a guitar. I figured out ten bucks an hour. This is how many hours I need to work. Who will pay me $10 an hour and what should I do?
00:31:46:08 – 00:32:07:20
Ian
So I started gardening for neighbors and landscaping to do it. I’ve always been able to see something. I want and then figure out how to go get that. And most people don’t know what they want. They’re unclear right when the why is clear. The how to appears when you are dialed in on what you want and why you want it, it is emotionally connected with you.
00:32:07:22 – 00:32:29:29
Ian
You will find a way to go and obtain that most people just are very clear on the wire. They don’t really believe that that could happen for them. And so for me it’s been a constant process of I talk about goal setting and vision on like this continuum, and we want to be in this sort of sweet spot where our vision and our goal pulls us.
00:32:29:29 – 00:32:47:02
Ian
Like most people are on one side of the continuum or the other. On this side, you have goals that are they shouldn’t even be called goals rights like tattoos. I can easily do these tasks and they’re so small that it doesn’t change your life in any meaningful way, even if you get it. So there’s no gravity there. There’s nothing pulling you on the extreme.
00:32:47:02 – 00:32:53:19
Ian
Other end of that are things that are so big and unbelievable that your subconscious rejects. It says, No, you’re.
00:32:53:19 – 00:32:54:22
Rod
To be a billionaire, right?
00:32:54:22 – 00:33:16:11
Ian
Yeah, you’re not talking to me. And so. So nothing happens. What we’re looking for is this sweet spot that has both gravity and believability, Right? And so what happens, right, is when you start achieving, when you start moving down that continuum, what happens is you can expand the outside metric of.
00:33:16:13 – 00:33:35:07
Rod
Success will cause you to expand that outside metric, and you end and the things get bigger once. So yeah, I used to have a sign above my bed that says 100,000 a month net income. It’s a million now. It’s been there forever. But but I know you believe in mentors. Talk about any mentors that you’ve had over the years.
00:33:35:07 – 00:33:41:27
Rod
You’re a mentor, obviously, now as I am. But talk about talk about the value of mentors and maybe some of the ones you’ve you’ve had over the years.
00:33:41:27 – 00:33:58:09
Ian
Yeah. So mentors are the cheat code, right? Right. Because you can learn by your experience or other people’s experiences. Right. Okay. So my very first mentor I had was my boss when I worked at the church. His name is Steve, and he was a young guy, but he was really, really smart. He’d built and sold a couple of businesses.
00:33:58:09 – 00:34:22:03
Ian
He traveled all over the world, just a genius sort of guy. And he got me started on self-development. He gave me a book by Dr. Brian Klemmer instead of how tos were enough, we’d all be thin, rich and happy, and it was just this little teeny booklet, and it taught me about cause and effect and how things really work and how we can think about things to bring things about right.
00:34:22:03 – 00:34:40:24
Ian
What we think that we think about. Right? Yeah. And that was sort of my start. That one book caused me to question my supposed lot in life, right? I was not a victim. I was not stationary. I could do something about this. And if I got better, things would get better. But there very many people that really believe that.
00:34:40:24 – 00:34:56:04
Ian
They think, well, what’s the point? What’s the point of me learning this? What’s the point of me investing in Rod’s boot camp? What’s the point? What’s it? All they’re saying is I don’t believe in cause and effect. I don’t believe that better information, better relationships and better systems will get me better results. But that’s not what they.
00:34:56:04 – 00:34:57:00
Rod
Believe in themselves.
00:34:57:00 – 00:35:26:04
Ian
Yeah, absolutely. So, you know, he was probably my first mentor in the finance business, man. I was so blessed to have a number of mentors who were well, well beyond me in terms of years. But also, you know, they were were, you know, DECA or center millionaires, great families. They had everything that I wanted in my life. I thought when I looked at these guys, I’m like, man, if I could ever be half the man that he is, that’s all I could ever want in my life.
00:35:26:06 – 00:35:29:27
Ian
Wealthy and and with families that approach.
00:35:29:27 – 00:35:34:04
Rod
Them to help you Or did you did you retain them and pay them? It’s a.
00:35:34:04 – 00:35:59:27
Ian
Good question. Yeah. So in that business, I earned my way into relationship with them. So so what happened is I studied their material from abroad. I would buy their CDs or I would I would listen to it and I learn from it, and then I would act on it. And then as I started getting better and better results, pretty soon these same guys would reach out to me and say, Hey, would you come speak for my group here?
00:35:59:28 – 00:36:22:18
Ian
Would you come do this over there? And so I ended up building really close personal relationships with almost all of these people over time, because I had been a student of their work and then implemented it, it’d be like somebody coming to you and saying, You know what? I took one of your bootcamps. You didn’t know me, you know, But I have $500 million worth of multifamily now, based on what you taught, you probably said, Hey, man, come to this next.
00:36:22:26 – 00:36:28:16
Ian
Oh, sure. Next bootcamp and talk a little bit about your experience. How did you do that? Course That’s basically what I said.
00:36:28:19 – 00:36:34:23
Rod
What happened? Yeah. So you said tapes. Was this like it was this business similar to like an MLM type thing?
00:36:34:23 – 00:36:46:19
Ian
So sort of it’s an agency. It’s like real estate. Yeah. Yeah. So I had agents at 1400 agents, right? And but I got paid off of sales that they did. So it’s no different that the.
00:36:46:19 – 00:36:50:08
Rod
Top agents would create tapes and sell them. No.
00:36:50:08 – 00:37:08:07
Ian
So they actually weren’t allowed to sell them. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. So people would go around and they’d, you know, film something, you know, at a big event or whatever. And then there’d be like these third party companies where you could go get it sell like me on my birthday presents, my Christmas presents, the first two or three years in business or CDs of different things, you know.
00:37:08:14 – 00:37:14:07
Rod
Yeah, right. Interesting. Very interesting. So. So you’re good at building teams?
00:37:14:10 – 00:37:16:04
Ian
Yeah, I would say that. Okay.
00:37:16:04 – 00:37:38:23
Rod
I mean, you built up your sultanate for your business. You had to unless you had a CEO that did it all for, you know. Yeah. Okay. So and the multifamily real estate game is absolutely a team sport. It is not something you do alone and it’s just not done. Everybody gets on a team or builds a team or joins a team and goes out there and buys these, you know, 40, $50 million properties, $10 million properties, whatever.
00:37:38:26 – 00:37:42:15
Rod
So how do you build a team? Talk about team building.
00:37:42:22 – 00:37:54:01
Ian
Yeah. So it starts with who you are and where you’re going and being able to make sure that your dream is big enough that other people can fit their dreams inside. Right? So. So that’s where it.
00:37:54:01 – 00:37:55:07
Rod
Starts with the vision.
00:37:55:07 – 00:38:11:17
Ian
Yeah. Because if people don’t know where you’re going, then any path will get you in them there. And so people want to be a part of something that’s bigger than them. They want to be a part of something meaningful, something that moves them in their life in some way. And so if you can provide that to them, they will find a home with you.
00:38:11:17 – 00:38:24:18
Ian
So that’s step one. Step two is integrity. You can attract people with a vision. You keep people with integrity and honor, and in bending over backwards to make sure that you’re doing the right things for people, even beyond what? What?
00:38:24:19 – 00:38:25:17
Rod
Even when it hurts.
00:38:25:19 – 00:38:41:24
Ian
Even when it hurts. I’ll never forget one of my mentors told me, and this is a long time ago with the founder of the company that we built, who’s now a multibillionaire. He said, You know, I walked in, I my commissions were 1500 dollars short. I walked into his office in the middle of a meeting, said, Bill, what do you need?
00:38:41:27 – 00:39:02:17
Ian
And all my commissions were 1500 dollars short. So he just opened his checkbook and wrote him a check. Didn’t want to see it, didn’t want it, said, I trust you. Here you go. And this was this sort of he said it was 1500 dollars, $100 million later, that one little act that said, I’m good for this. I’m going to do what I say.
00:39:02:24 – 00:39:21:06
Ian
I’m not going to question you over this little stuff that stuck with him all those years that when he picked up and moved his family to a completely different state to start to make sure that they were not just in one place, had to start all over again, that sort of thing. Like this guy’s going to be there.
00:39:21:06 – 00:39:21:29
Ian
Like that culture.
00:39:21:29 – 00:39:22:24
Rod
That built that culture.
00:39:22:24 – 00:39:27:22
Ian
Yeah, absolutely. So that’s the second thing you need. And then the third thing you need is some results.
00:39:27:24 – 00:39:43:24
Rod
Before you going to results is integrity for a minute. I mean, that’s our number one core value. I think it’s probably it should be the number one core value in anything that you do. There’s a book by a guy named Huntsman. Oh, God. Now the name is escaping me. Doggone it. But it’s just about doing what’s right. It’s a small little book.
00:39:43:24 – 00:40:00:05
Rod
Look up Huntsman guys, for you listening about integrity. It’s an incredible book, a billionaire that wrote it. But yeah, I just want to hammer home integrity. I don’t think there’s anything more important We and we hammer that in my organizations. It’s we do what’s right. Like I say, even if it hurts. Yeah. Okay. Please continue.
00:40:00:05 – 00:40:10:29
Ian
Yeah. No, it’s so important, because without that, you don’t keep great people. You keep bottom feeders, people who also don’t mind being people without integrity. You build a team of that, you can go to jail.
00:40:11:02 – 00:40:13:27
Rod
Sure, some people. Yeah, right.
00:40:14:01 – 00:40:37:04
Ian
Yeah. So. Yeah. And then third is result. So people will come for the vision. Okay? They stay because of character and integrity and they move because of results. They need to be able to look at you and say, This is the person who can get me where I want to go. And if you put those three things together, you’ll build massive teams and get a lot of multiplication going on and.
00:40:37:06 – 00:40:41:26
Rod
Nice, nice, nice. So talk about a time you got your ass kicked.
00:40:42:01 – 00:40:42:24
Ian
Oh, my gosh.
00:40:42:24 – 00:40:51:09
Rod
Seminar. I got seminars. That was a $50 million seminar. Talk about a seminar doozy. A big one. We really got spanked. And the lesson, obviously, those lessons.
00:40:51:12 – 00:41:20:04
Ian
Yeah. So, so I’m going to preface this with, you know, luckily I’ve made more good decisions than other ones. And so so I’ve evaded a lot of the really negative stuff that I’ve seen happen to a lot of my friends, thank goodness. Right. But I mean, I can remember in 2010, in finance business, I had a couple of guys who were building big teams and and I was just so happy that finally I had anybody doing anything right besides me.
00:41:20:10 – 00:41:30:08
Ian
And it all looked okay. And and but but they weren’t doing things the right way. And instead of digging in and trying to find out what was going on, I just sort of turned a blind eye to that. Right.
00:41:30:10 – 00:41:32:22
Rod
Subconsciously, you’re like, Oh, it’s going so well.
00:41:32:22 – 00:41:51:18
Ian
It’s okay. I’m just going to leave it be. I’m just going to leave it be. Well, that worked for about nine months and then that whole thing imploded on itself. And my income got cut by about 70% overnight. Wow. Right. And I just bought a new big house and I just had all this other expenditures. I was making.
00:41:51:18 – 00:42:20:12
Ian
And all of a sudden I’m like, this is not good. I don’t have what I need here. And it was good because it taught me to inspect what I expect and to to understand that things that are built inappropriately won’t be built for long. Right. And so those were valuable lessons that I recovered from and built a great culture where, you know, we had, as in the clients in that world, we we were always super high rated there because we built a team that did things the right way.
00:42:20:12 – 00:42:26:26
Ian
And in shortcut stuff. But that was tough for me. And it was really scary, right? Because I just had a new kid. I just got a lot of good.
00:42:26:26 – 00:42:27:27
Rod
Business over it. You could.
00:42:27:27 – 00:42:28:12
Ian
Have lots of.
00:42:28:13 – 00:42:30:27
Rod
Business regulators come in and you’re done, you know?
00:42:30:27 – 00:42:51:03
Ian
Absolutely. You know, and and so so that was, you know, a major challenge for me. The other thing is sort of different in in 2019, midway through the month of June, I started having like these weird neurological symptoms. All of a sudden, four weeks later, dude, I could hardly walk, I could hardly talk. I couldn’t do the job.
00:42:51:05 – 00:42:52:27
Ian
No, this is before that, right?
00:42:52:27 – 00:42:54:03
Rod
Oh, wow. Okay.
00:42:54:05 – 00:43:10:18
Ian
And and I didn’t know what on earth was going on. So you Google that stuff and it’s not good. It’s like you know, ALS or something like that. And then, you know, so I went into all this neurological stuff. I had the brain scans and all that and that specific disease, which is what they thought it might have been.
00:43:10:20 – 00:43:26:14
Ian
It’s just you just wait and see. Like if in a year, you know, you’re getting worse, you probably have that and you have like a two, three year life expectancy. So here I am, a multi, multimillionaire. I’ve worked all this time, have building a dream life. I’m building this beautiful home in Michigan. I got my place in Seattle.
00:43:26:16 – 00:43:30:10
Ian
I’m like getting where I wanted to be. And all of a sudden I’m like, I might not be here.
00:43:30:11 – 00:43:31:00
Rod
Well.
00:43:31:03 – 00:43:46:15
Ian
In two years. And that time, six months from now, I may not be able to, like, do basic things. And it was the scariest time of my life. And it was one of the loneliest times of my life because I’m like, I’m not going to see my kids grow up. I’m not going to do this. All the dreams I have them.
00:43:46:18 – 00:44:07:08
Ian
It was really tough. And so but it taught me to value every moment and to value every person and every interaction. And before then, dude, like so many driven people who are listening to this show right now, it was like the next deal, the next thing, the next goal, the next affirmation. I can check off, the next thing I can pull off the dream board.
00:44:07:11 – 00:44:11:15
Ian
And I was so future focused that I wasn’t living my life.
00:44:11:17 – 00:44:13:05
Rod
You weren’t present in the moment. Yeah.
00:44:13:07 – 00:44:31:20
Ian
And and it took me being what I thought was very close to losing everything to wake up to that. And so I can look back and say it was one of the scariest times of my life, but it was the biggest gift I ever had because it caused me to stop and focus on the things that really, really matter to me.
00:44:31:20 – 00:44:49:23
Ian
You’re saying, Hey, I was really driven and and I said, it’s seasons and it’s it’s it evolves and today is interesting. It is. It is. I would say I’m less driven today than I’ve ever been in my life, not because I don’t have goals or things I want to accomplish, but because I’m not willing. Let those rob me of my life.
00:44:49:23 – 00:45:07:29
Rod
Yeah, no, I will tell you, it’s one of the biggest things I spend time on with my students. You know, the financial success is super freaking important. But I remember, you know, I told you about that house over on Casey Key that I built on the beach like you have. And I. I come home to my kids every night, and I’d play with them, but I wasn’t there mentally.
00:45:07:29 – 00:45:25:05
Rod
I was in presence of greatest regret in my life to this day. You know, they they’ll say I was a great dad, but I didn’t live up to my own expectations. And so I spent a lot of time on that. When teach time management, you’re going to do a book on time management. You said, When I teach it, you know, one of the components is, is, you know, block in time for the things that matter.
00:45:25:05 – 00:45:30:03
Rod
I’m literally. BLOCK If you have to block time for your family, you frickin block time for your family because it’s the most important.
00:45:30:03 – 00:45:39:27
Ian
One of the things that I have taught people there is a concept called solid yellow line. So when you’re driving down the road and there’s oncoming traffic next to you and there’s two solid yellow lines, was that mean.
00:45:40:01 – 00:45:40:19
Rod
You’re not supposed to.
00:45:40:23 – 00:45:51:28
Ian
Pass, right? So you got to put solid you got to yeah, you got to put solid yellow lines around your five F’s. Faith, Family, Fitness, finance, your future self. And those things go in your schedule and they’re non-negotiable.
00:45:52:00 – 00:45:53:11
Rod
And you just wear those again.
00:45:53:11 – 00:46:00:27
Ian
One more faith, family, fitness, finance and future self. Who are you becoming? Your faith. That’s good. Your family, your fitness.
00:46:01:01 – 00:46:04:04
Rod
That’s good. Yeah. Do you get that from somebody or is that around? Did you come up with that?
00:46:04:05 – 00:46:09:20
Ian
Well, I’m sure I’ve heard of the four F’s, faith, family and fitness all over the place. Sometimes there’s friends.
00:46:09:20 – 00:46:27:12
Rod
Sometimes I like future self too, buddy. That’s really good, man. That’s good stuff. So if you went back and told 18 year old Ian something about with what you know now, would you do anything differently or do you feel like you needed all those life experiences to be where you are now?
00:46:27:14 – 00:46:49:25
Ian
That’s an interesting question, right? Because all those experiences made me who I am now, got me where I am now. Sure, there’s there’s definitely some life hacks that are right that I would help 18 year old Ian with, you know, learning. I’m a high a personality. I have no R in me whatsoever. Right. I love people, but people are work to me.
00:46:49:27 – 00:47:11:12
Ian
Right. And I would have worked much harder much earlier on just learning how to care for people and and working on that. That’s been one of my biggest Achilles tendons or Achilles heels, rather. Right. Is that I just you know, I’m so focused on the next goal. I and I think you are too. And I forget to tell you that you’re amazing tonight.
00:47:11:12 – 00:47:12:07
Rod
Right? Right, right.
00:47:12:07 – 00:47:35:11
Ian
Or I forget to stop and ask about what’s happening with you and your wife who are having some challenges and it’s weighing on you. And so I would have done that much, much sooner. The second thing I would tell myself is invest in a coach or a mentor much earlier. I mean, I didn’t I used that sort of is like my last resort when I was stuck instead of a cheat code to move more quickly, more.
00:47:35:13 – 00:47:53:20
Rod
You really know, you’re basically just paying for speed. That’s really I mean, can you do it yourself? Yeah, it’s going to take a lot longer. But Michael Jordan had five coaches at the height of his career. Okay. Best in the world with five coaches, right? Nutrition coach, relationship coach, head coach, assistant coach, you know, physical therapy coach or.
00:47:53:20 – 00:48:10:24
Ian
Whatever your passion for speed, but you’re also paying for longevity and relevance. Right. Because what’s interesting about Jordan at the time, he’s the best basketball player in the world, right? Yet he has coaches think about Tiger Woods at his prime best golfer in the world. There he is. Coaches by default, the people coaching him are not as good at executing on said thing.
00:48:10:27 – 00:48:32:01
Ian
But what they do is they help him see blind spots. They help around him out. They help him create rhythm and longevity and sustainability and physical health. And those are all things that people don’t necessarily see as the main product in coaching. They’re sort of byproducts, but those are the most valuable reasons.
00:48:32:03 – 00:48:45:18
Rod
That’s right now. They’re little things. They’re not big things, but they’re they’re big little things in many cases, if that makes any sense. Yeah. Love it. What Some of the best advice you’ve ever gotten in your lifetime.
00:48:45:21 – 00:49:11:20
Ian
Stay away from the three DS drugs, debt and divorce. Okay. It was one of my mentors saved myself. Broke was another one of my mentors. Those were probably two of the best pieces of advice that I acted on and, you know, saved myself a lot of heartache and was able to put away a lot of cash that let us make good decisions moving forward with things.
00:49:11:23 – 00:49:14:02
Ian
Those were probably some of the best.
00:49:14:05 – 00:49:15:07
Rod
You know, save yourself.
00:49:15:07 – 00:49:16:20
Ian
To save yourself broke.
00:49:16:22 – 00:49:17:19
Rod
Save yourself.
00:49:17:22 – 00:49:32:08
Ian
So one of the things that one of my mentors encouraged me to do, you know, again, we all have capacities and once we hit that capacity, we pull back from it. And so we all have financial capacities. And if we start exceeding, it will start self-sabotaging or will manifest.
00:49:32:08 – 00:49:33:08
Rod
Limits we’ve placed in our.
00:49:33:08 – 00:50:07:11
Ian
Own manifest challenges in other ways. And one of the things he helped me do that I do with some of my coaching students that are making more money than they’ve ever seen and it dulls them, right? Success doesn’t make you invincible. It makes fat lazy, and so it dulls them and their hunger goes down. And so when one of my mentors told me, Ian set up a RC every month, enough to put you in into the red like a pre authorized checking pole into an investment account and find a number that puts you into the red so that you work this month to make sure you don’t go into the red.
00:50:07:13 – 00:50:32:22
Ian
And as you continue to build, continue to raise that number eventually yeah we were saving 50, 60, 70, 80,000 $100,000 a month automatically so that I didn’t see it and I felt broke. I wasn’t broke. I tricked myself into becoming rich by saving myself to the point where my my money awareness was high. Always because I never felt comfortable.
00:50:32:22 – 00:50:37:26
Ian
I was comfortable. I just didn’t feel that way because the money was not accessible to me.
00:50:37:26 – 00:50:56:06
Rod
You did that to push yourself? Yes. You know, it’s a book called Profit First. It’s kind of along the same lines. You take out the profit and you save it or whatever, or you spend it, whatever you do with it. What do you think is the best book you’ve ever read for business?
00:50:56:08 – 00:51:05:27
Ian
That is a good question. Yeah. Um, gosh, there are so many of them. It depends on, I guess, what you want to learn. You have obviously your classics like Thinking.
00:51:06:04 – 00:51:07:27
Rod
That’s Giving away thousands. Yeah.
00:51:08:00 – 00:51:29:13
Ian
So that you know, all of those. Gosh, one of the best books I’ve ever read was called Launching a Leadership Revolution. It was by two guys named Chris Brady and Sean Woodward. And these guys were actually multilevel or they were with Amway. And then they had this and then they had that. But these guys built teams of like 100,000 people plus three times.
00:51:29:15 – 00:51:32:07
Ian
And it was just this really.
00:51:32:07 – 00:51:32:27
Rod
The name of the book.
00:51:32:27 – 00:51:40:27
Ian
Again, it’s called Launching a Leadership Revolution. And, you know, you can’t go build stuff like that unless you know what you’re doing. Right.
00:51:40:28 – 00:51:41:05
Rod
Right.
00:51:41:10 – 00:52:03:10
Ian
It’s just not possible. Right. And it was such a foundational book for me in terms of the X’s in the O’s of leadership, fundamental, practical, foundational. How do you get people to follow you? How do you keep them following you? How do you continue to grow when you’ve exceeded and surpassed maybe your wildest dreams? So that was one.
00:52:03:13 – 00:52:28:25
Ian
And then there was another book. You know, I don’t know what your audience is. Spiritual tone is we won’t go much into that. But it was a book called Breakout by a guy named Joel Osteen, who’s a big pastor. And that book, for some reason, there’s just something there that spoke to me on the inside that really got me to believe that I was supposed to do something big and be a part of some magnificent happening in my.
00:52:28:27 – 00:52:37:21
Ian
And again, what you believe you act on. And that book foundationally changed the way I approach life, approach my goals approach to.
00:52:37:21 – 00:52:38:01
Rod
Well.
00:52:38:04 – 00:52:48:04
Ian
What I did every day. Wow, it’s just talking to you. I talk to you with an expectation that you were going to do something amazing and we were going to and you just people can sense.
00:52:48:04 – 00:52:49:15
Rod
That, right?
00:52:49:18 – 00:52:50:01
Ian
Yeah.
00:52:50:04 – 00:52:54:06
Rod
Well, they said they sense that confidence or that drive or that passion. Right.
00:52:54:10 – 00:53:00:27
Ian
Right. It’s an intangible. They can’t put their finger on it. They couldn’t describe it, but they know it’s there.
00:53:00:27 – 00:53:09:27
Rod
Yeah. Yeah. Love it. All right, last question. I mean, you are successful in so many different areas. What is your definition of success?
00:53:09:29 – 00:53:28:27
Ian
That is a great question. I think it’s changed throughout my life. I think it depends where our values are at different times. But I’m going to go back to to coach John Wooden’s definition of success. He said. Success is the piece of mind that you get from knowing that you’ve done your best to be the best that you’re capable of being.
00:53:28:29 – 00:53:52:14
Ian
And that is one of my most foundational beliefs, right? That like, look, he said something in in they call me coach said when you’re doing your best, really your best, you’re giving everything you have. There’s no scoreboard that can label you a loser. And when you’re not, there’s no scoreboard that can label you a winner. You might beat some other people, but you’re not living up to your full potential and you’re winning, but you’re not succeeding.
00:53:52:20 – 00:54:13:08
Ian
And my goodness, there’s a lot of people out here winning today, but they’re not succeeding. They’re winning in an area, but they’re losing in some other places. And and so success to me, really, Rod, is is the Five FS right? You’re winning in your faith. You’re winning with your family, you’re winning with your finances, you’re winning with your fitness and you’re winning with your future self.
00:54:13:10 – 00:54:22:04
Ian
And I really believe that that those five things, they’re locked in together, right? And so they’re that winning and one and losing and another is not a win.
00:54:22:07 – 00:54:36:01
Rod
One of the things we do at my boot camp is we just like Wheel of Life. And you you read all the different all these different areas and how you’re doing and you know and you mark 0 to 10 from the middle on the outside and and you look at it like a wheel, you know, you see shade in the inside.
00:54:36:01 – 00:54:43:14
Rod
You look at it like a wheel. And is it going to be a smooth ride, you know, because all of those factors come into play. Yeah. Good stuff, brother. I’ve really enjoyed this conversation.
00:54:43:15 – 00:54:44:06
Ian
It was a lot of fun.
00:54:44:07 – 00:54:49:09
Rod
A sharp game. Yeah. I appreciate you coming on and coming over and great to meet you. How we live in the same town.
00:54:49:09 – 00:54:51:27
Ian
I know we’ve got a lot of the same friends and.
00:54:51:27 – 00:54:52:26
Rod
Yeah, right.
00:54:52:28 – 00:54:53:25
Ian
Let’s get together.
00:54:53:26 – 00:55:11:23
Rod
Yeah, for sure. We’ve got to do that. Well, I appreciate your brother. Great. Great to meet you and spend some time with you. Thanks, Rod. Yeah. So one other quick thing. We encounter so many people that are frankly frustrated. You know, they’re looking in the mirror and they’re frustrated that they haven’t been able to escape the rat race.
00:55:12:00 – 00:55:30:10
Rod
They haven’t been able to build cash flow to the point where they’re able to have financial and time freedom with their families, You know, and maybe they see other people buying real estate, creating, you know, incredible cash flow. And they think, well, it’s just scary. You know, buying apartments is intimidating. And I get it. See, that’s why we created a Warrior mentorship program.
00:55:30:16 – 00:55:51:19
Rod
There are coaching students and they’ve had extraordinary results. My students, I’ve been teaching about five years and upwards of 140,000 units now that we know of right. And we feel like it’s just getting going now we’re looking to grow this group and really take it to the next level and honestly believe that the greatest transfer of wealth could be upon us right now with this current economic environment.
00:55:51:20 – 00:56:23:07
Rod
Everything’s going on sale. So we’re looking for people who want to follow a proven framework, look really like a blueprint or a map, literally step by step, and then they’re able to leverage our systems and our incredible network to raise money and equity, to find deals and close those deals and build partnerships really nationwide. So if you’re interested in finding out more about how you can become more in our incredible network and take advantage of the unbelievable opportunities that are upon us, you can apply to my warrior mentorship program by texting the word crush to seven two, three, four or five.
00:56:23:12 – 00:56:38:12
Rod
Or you can go to mentor with Broadcom. And what we’ll do is we’ll set up a call so you can check us out and we can check you out and see if it’s a fit. Now, again, you can go to mentor with Rod dot com or text the word crush to 723, four, five to apply and we will speak soon.
