Ep #536 – MFRS – Redefining life after a tragedy
After a construction accident shattered his dream of law enforcement and changed the course of Nick Lamagna’s future, he discovered that 70% of all millionaires made their fortunes through Real Estate. Nick applied himself into this new direction and created a life that is inspiring to hear. These are some of the topics we covered:
- Wholesaling multifamily properties
- Team building
- Secret hack to screening potential teammates
- “Dollars are in the details”
- Holding vendors accountable
- Don’t force a deal
- The inspiration of others’ success
- Pay close attention to your inner dialogue
- The importance of starting with an investment criteria
To find out more about our guest:
https://nicknicknick.com/
Full Transcript Below
Rod: Multifamily investors are just flat out creating massive success in their businesses and in their lives. As always, I’ve got my co-host, Mark Nagy, on the call. He’s the director of our massive action team and our warrior group. Mark, what’s up brother?
Mark: Hey rod, not too much. Hey, I just wanted to give a quick tip to all the listeners listening right now as you’re going into these podcasts. I would think about what you want to get out of these shows, whether it’s knowledge, inspiration, gold nuggets, always come in listening to this podcast thinking about what you want to take away from it rather than just, you know, listening in the background and gathering what you get. And so, I always want to remind people to do that because I think you definitely will pick up a lot more things if you go into this knowing what you want out of it.
Rod: Oh, that’s great advice guys. Anytime you’re in a learning environment and you set your intention in advance, it greatly enhances your– you set your intention which greatly enhances your retention. So, great advice Mark. Well, I’m excited to welcome our guest to the show today. His name’s Nick Lamagna. Now, Nick has been around real estate for quite a while. He actually joined the warrior program at my Chicago event like a lifetime ago when we had live events. It was august of 2019, I believe, and he’s been around real estate a long time. We’re going to have a lot of fun in this conversation because he’s doing some other things that we haven’t had on this show for a while like wholesaling and flipping and things of that nature. He’s got his own podcast as well. It’s called “The A Game Podcast” so you’ll need to check that out. Nick, welcome to the show brother.
Nick: Rod, thanks so much for having me man. I’ve been a long time fan of yours. You’ve always been very kind to me and I’m a little star struck. I’m trying not to act like it but I have a lot of respect for you and I’m very excited to be here.
Rod: Oh, that’s so kind of you to say that my friend. I really appreciate that. So, tell– you know, let’s do the normal do where you talk about how you got into this game, and maybe why you love it, and where you came from, and so on and so forth. I know the story but I want my listeners to hear it.
Nick: Sure, sure. So, I started out I was going to college in Upstate New York. I’m born and raised in Long Island, lived in Manhattan for a while. And, you know, I tell everybody when I first was going to college, I was going there just to party. I didn’t really have a sense of purpose. And that I’ll never forget on September 11th when everything happened and I was in the capitol district, and guys that I was friends with that were kind of my goofball buddies, they started saying like, you know, we’re gonna join the marine corps, we’re gonna join the rescue efforts, we’re gonna do all these things, and I realized that at that point I needed to find a sense of purpose instead of taking up space. And I’ve always been the kind of person who’s a big believer in I’m gonna go bigger, I’m gonna go home. So, I decided to switch my major to criminal justice and I took all the standard FBI, DEA, CIA, NYPD, FDNY, anything with three or four letters you can think of that was related to law enforcement or counterterrorism I tested for because I wanted to be an air marshal and do all these things to help with the counterterrorism and law enforcement. But as that process was going on and I graduated, there’s a long wait to go into a lot of these academies. So I started doing construction on Long Island and I wound up getting into a really bad construction accident and having a permanent injury on my hand. And then, they told me that after about a year of physical therapy and occupational therapy every single day, I finally got called for these academies and they all said I was no longer eligible because of my hand injury. So I wasted years trying to reprocess and then they told me that it just wasn’t part of my future anymore. So I had my student debt, I had all my plans that I thought were in front of me and they were instantly taken away. So I moped for a while but then my mom followed me around with the “Rich Dad, Poor Dad” book and told me to read it. I told her no, leave me alone for years like a bratty kid does and then eventually I read it and I saw that 70% of all millionaires made their money through real estate and all the rest pretty much invest that after. You didn’t need money. You didn’t need credit. I said, that’s me and because moms are always right, she got me interested in real estate. I started going to, you know, courses and reading books and just putting out offers, offers, offers, offers, offers. And my first six months of really getting involved, I went up doing about eight deals in my first six months and I never looked back.
Rod: Wow! So, isn’t that interesting that you had something at the time was probably horrific happened to you and derailed something you thought your direction in your life was going, and it almost ties into that borealis video. You’ve got going on behind you like, you know, life you know, you want to make god laugh, tell them your plans and– but, it all worked out, right? Because do you love what you do now?
Nick: I do love what I do. I mean, as an entrepreneur, don’t get me wrong there’s days or hours that if you ask me that question, you’ll get a different answer but overall man I love my life. I’m very grateful especially when you see so many people struggling now in the pandemic and knowing that I have some cushion, and I’m still doing deals, and I have these opportunities to take care of my family, and do all these great things because over that period, you know, both of my parents went up losing their jobs and, you know, I wound up being a support system for that. So, if it wasn’t for me taking a shot at real estate and all those things happening, I don’t think on a cop salary I would have been able to take care of the financial responsibilities that I really am going to need to over time so, it was one of those things that was the worst days of my life that probably turned into the best thing that ever happened to me.
Rod: That’s what I was trying to, that’s where I was going with all that because you know, again, and just to flip it, for me it wasn’t a physical thing. It was a financial thing for me that devastated me and I would have never met my wife and I’m the happiest freaking guy on the planet with her. So, you know, it’s the truth of it, you know, and so, yeah.
Mark: I love that story man. That’s from going down to all the way where you are, I love hearing stories like that. So Nick, tell us about, you know, where are your areas of expertise that you think the listeners should want to learn about here?
Nick: Sure. So, kids sometimes think that I’m a jack of all trades, a master of none but I think part of what my skill set was is when I first started investing in real estate, I didn’t have the confidence or the resources to really play in the playground in New York. So, things were expensive. It was really competitive. It was very hard to play in that playground so I had to figure out how to invest in some of these tertiary or sub markets before I really knew what that term was. I just said, you know what? I can buy houses in Georgia for 50,000. I can buy houses in Vegas for 75,000. There was all these ways to do other deals. So I started investing remotely before investing remotely was a thing. So I have probably 10 years of experience on things not to do and tricks of the trade there for managing things remotely before everybody was forced to do it in 2020. And because of that, I’ve had contacts that I’ve put together all over the country so I definitely bring value as far as being able to, you know, somebody sends me something, maybe it’s not for me but it’s for somebody else or something comes in for me. I have a buyer, or a contractor, or a lender, or something. So I’m connected pretty much across the country which is pretty awesome and you know, again, I think one of the things that I always loved about Rod story was the way, you know, he took a hit and rebuilt. I think I’ve made a lot of mistakes that people can learn from on things to do right and things to do wrong that, you know, definitely bring value but I’m great at putting teams together. I’m great at networking.
Rod: Yeah. And, you know, that’s a great segue into one of the things I wanted to talk to you about because you’ve built that network and, you know, and you could do the same thing guys. Those of you who are you listening could do the same thing going direct to sellers, going direct to property owners, and building, you know, building relationships, or finding, you know, building relationships with people bird dogging deals for you, or other wholesalers, or flippers, or you know, people in this business which is what you did Nick, and you set those relationships up so you have deals coming at you. And I mean, correct me if I’m wrong, you’ve been doing some wholesaling recently and you’re, you know, netting 40k to 60k a deal, is that an accurate statement?
Nick: That is accurate but before we jump into that I do want to backtrack a second and say that, being part of your warriors program and having connections within that group has been a huge resource for me because you can reach out at any point in the networking, and the resources, and the connections on that Facebook page within that warrior group is so beyond the value that I paid for. It’s been amazing. So I want to thank you for putting that.
Rod: Oh yeah, thank you for that shout out and I know especially because, you know, you’re getting deals from all over the country. It’s such an incredible resource to be able to pick up the phone and call a warrior that lives in that town, and because we’ve got people in darn near the whole country now, and get the, you know, get the boots on the ground story, and have somebody be able to go look at it, and give you insights as to that, you know, that neighborhood for example. You know, all the relevant things that you need to figure out before you tie a place up so, you know, that’s awesome. And you know guys, I tell the story, you know, so many people are wholesaling and flipping single families, and there’s so much money to be had flipping and wholesaling multifamilies. For example, you know, I know you’ve even done like mobile home parks and things like that, correct Nick?
Nick: Yes.
Rod: Yeah. And you wholesale them and I mean, what a fantastic way to make, you know, big money very quite easily. And so, you know, I’ve got four students that have done over a hundred thousand, make a hundred thousand dollars from one deal that they wholesale. Four of them that did it. So, one actually significantly more than that but so guys, you know, don’t think that, you know, there’s multiple ways to make money in this business. And if you don’t have a lot of cash right now, wholesaling is an incredible way to get rolling and get some money in your pocket while you’re learning and building this business. So, yeah.
Mark: Well, on that topic Nick, I want to ask you what is your favorite type of deal? Is it a wholesale? Is it a multi? Is it a– what’s your favorite type of deal? What does it look like?
Nick: You know, I think I just say my favorite type of deal especially on the wholesaling side is really something that I can feel good about passing on to the empire and, you know, I get a lot of deals that come through and I see a lot of people that try a wholesale multifamily, and one of the the tips I would say is do your due diligence on that deal, put some time into screening it and screening the people, so I help set people up with teams and help do a lot of the due diligence process to make sure it’s actually the deal that we think it is before I pass it on to somebody else. So, that feels really good when you get somebody who needs to spend money and they appreciate the extra work and the extra time that you put in to explaining it to them, and going over all the numbers, and giving the realistic possible scenarios that could go wrong, so they’re not just, you know, trusting you for everything–
Rod: That’s cool. That’s really cool, brother. That is based in integrity and I’m really, my salute to you for that. That is a beautiful thing which then it’s unusual, I will tell you. There is some dog eat dog in the wholesale world as well, so you know, the fact that you’re taking the time to help them with their success just speaks to, you know, why we’re blessed to have you in our group, you know, and I just love that. Now, then talk about, when you talked about team building, talk a little bit about the dynamics that you see come together in a cohesive effective team that’s able to execute and really make things happen. So, what are the qualities that you’re– you know, if you’re helping somebody put a team together, what are the qualities that you try to combine into a group? Could you speak to that a little bit?
Nick: Absolutely. So this has been one of my favorite things because, again, even when I was starting with the single family side, when you’re putting out offers all over the place and then one gets accepted, you have to really put a team together from scratch within a day or two when you only have on the single family side. Sometimes it’s a seven day due diligence period. So, once that comes in, I start putting out the feelers to figure out, okay, who are my managers? Who are my contractors? Who are my maintenance guys? Where my lenders, my insurance, my closing attorneys? And I’m able to get a large list of those coming in fairly quick. That’s not really the hard part. You can look those things up. But then, I start to screen them really quick and I’m a big believer in giving simple tasks and seeing if they can respond to the simple stuff, because if they can’t respond to me in a way that we can communicate well in an organized and efficient manner on the easy stuff, how can I trust them with a 50, 60, 70 unit apartment, or a multi-million dollar deal, or feel good passing them off to a buyer when we can’t handle stuff? So, I like to start out with just very basic easy things like call me at this time or send me just this information, and get them really, really small steps. And what I’ve found is I don’t really have to qualify all that many team members because 70%-75% of them disqualify themselves by not listening, not sending me the right things, I have to follow up with them three or four or five times, not my person. People will rise to the top pretty fast and you’re gonna start to see the ones that like it, they’re offering other things, they’ve already been out to the property, they’ve already pulled comms versus the other ones that are just waiting to be told or followed up with, so communication to me and following simple steps have been a massive, massive thing. Like even for instance when I send them emails sometimes or text messages. I’ll put just the basic synopsis of what I want in there or if I have my assistant do it, we’ll put in it, by the way, what’s your favorite color? And then, two or three people out of 40, 50, 60 will write back blue, red, green. And I’m like, I got my three people that are paying attention to detail because in real estate especially multifamily, the details are in the dollars and the dollars are in the details. And if they can’t get those right, that could turn into a nightmare fast.
Rod: You just said a lot and I just want to enter, just circle back to a couple things you said and put an exclamation mark on them and that is, when you’re communicating and working with both outside team members and inside team members like potential partners, take a look at how responsive they are, how proactive they are, and that’s such a huge measurement of what you can expect in the future. And then secondarily, just trying to draw attention to one other thing that you said which is around the detail and I love your little trick of throwing a little thing at the end of what color they like. I love that because that means they read the whole thing. That’s, so I just want to draw attention to that guys because that’s so important. It’s so easy to make mistakes as you’re, you know, putting partnerships together and putting deals together. So, in fact, let me mention this to you as a freebie and I’ll quit rambling. We have a list of partnership questions that you should ask before you get into a partnership and if you want it I’ll give it to you for free, just text the word “partnership” to “72345” and we’ll send it to you. It’s an awesome list of questions. In fact, there it is right there, “A Question Asked When Forming A Partnership.” And just, you know, because you’ve probably heard me say it before, partnership’s easy to get into like a marriage but very hard to get out of, so you want to ask all the hard questions up front. All right.
Mark: And by the way, Nick is not the first one on the podcast to say that you should give little things and test partnerships first before you get into a full-on partnership with people. That’s probably the third time that I’ve heard that from guests on the podcast.
Rod: Yeah.
Mark: So that is definitely a gold nugget for people listening to write that down. Don’t forget about that one.
Rod: Yeah, yeah. Well, just to clarify what you just said, so if you’re going to partner with somebody on a deal, decide to do it on that deal. Don’t decide to do it forever. Hey, let’s test the waters. Let’s see how well we work together. Let’s see if we get along with each other. Let’s see if we like each other’s work ethic on and on and on and maybe do one or two deals together before you totally get married. You date a little bit. Yeah, that’s just to clarify what you said.
Nick: Spike in that too, that resource you just gave people, I hope they understand how much value that has because I’ve seen deals that are great deals but when you have a great deal with a bad partner, it’s a miserable experience. So I really wish I had that resource when I started. It would have saved me years of stress and money and that’s amazing that you’re doing that for people. I think that’s awesome.
Rod: Yeah, you bet.
Mark: In my opinion, that’s more– stress is more important than money in this business a lot of the time as well to keep on going, keep on going, right? So, I want to jump back Nick because I heard you earlier say that one of the areas where you can add value is the mistakes that you’ve made, right? Tell us about like, you know, one of your biggest juiciest mistakes in the past and how that went?
Nick: Sure. Well, definitely trusting people I think was a massive mistake that I made. I’ve talked about this couple times before but, you know, I had exactly what you just talked about. I had a partner that I trusted, that I thought was a good partner, and I was supposed to be learning alongside of him, and I didn’t know to just not take somebody’s work or something, Oh, he’s good. He’s a nice person. He knows what he’s talking about so his numbers must be right and his team must be good. And then you start forking over money, money, money, money, money, and then things go wrong, and now you’re left for debt and that you have an option to, you know, I’m a Jiu Jitsu guy so I always refer to like, you can tap out or you can find a way to fight out of it and get back on top. And that’s one of the things that I went up having to do is really figure out how to verify no matter who it is because even if it’s somebody that I like and trust, maybe they haven’t slept for a couple days because they have a new baby, maybe they’re stressed out or jet lagged, they’re just tired and they made an honest mistake. So, verifying everything, no matter who it comes from was huge because on those specific deals when we dug into what we actually needed, I started writing checks and then it turned out we needed a lot more money than we did. And that’s not something you want to find out after you’ve already purchased the property and you’re in the middle of rehabbing it. So that’s definitely one thing. The other part is setting up, if not daily at least weekly checks, that you get everybody on the phone, you get everybody on a zoom now, if you’re doing it remotely and having what was the agenda for this week? So like, on a smaller scale for instance, my property managers. I tell them, look, we’re going to do this based on performance. So, if you’re working from 12 to five every day, when you go into that office at noon, you’re gonna facetime my assistant and show her that you were in the leasing office, you’re at the building, you’re at work, and we’re gonna come up with, what are the three things you need to get done today? We come up with those three priorities. Now at five o’clock when they’re gonna leave, they need to facetime my assistant again and say, hey, I’m still at the property and here’s proof that those three things were done. Here’s a sign on the door to evict this guy. Here’s this property that’s– this unit that’s completely rehabbed. Here’s the grounds taken. Here’s the dumpsters taken away. Whatever it is, if they have not facetimed me when they go in and when they leave and show them progress of the three main agendas we had today, they don’t get paid for that day and back to easy stuff, small stuff. If they can’t be responsible enough and communicate enough to just facetime somebody for two or three minutes a day and handle three tasks, little kids do that with their parents when they’re on business trips. If an adult can’t do that, you’re not the person for my business. So, there’s signs in those things when you know, okay, this week we’re supposed to have three units rehabbed, two units leased, one eviction, and then the next week comes around and none of those things have been done, pull that trigger fast on what’s the problem here? Am I not communicating with you well or you’re just not the person for this job because if you’re not, I want to find out now, week one or week two, instead of three, four, five months went on a multifamily that could be 30, 40, 50 thousand dollar mistakes.
Rod: Yeah.
Mark: Yeah. Well, let’s go a little deeper on that if we could for the listeners, what made that partner a bad partner? What ended up happening?
Nick: You know, it was an initial thing where I looked at the numbers that were given to me, and I looked at the rehab scope, and I looked at the team, and he was supposed to be putting all those things together, and I trusted it. So, started writing some checks, writing some checks, and then those things that were coming up, I’d start to have a lot of questions of like, hey, I know you said this was where it was supposed to be at, and this is what the budgets are supposed to be, and this is what the timelines are supposed to be, but now that I’m looking at these every week, we’re not really hitting those marks week after week, after week. And all I’m doing is cutting check, after check, after check. So, like what’s going on here? And the more I started hammering for specific questions, I was not getting straight answers and I was getting a lot of defensiveness which to me again is always guilt. So, I started learning all these things and going, man, and then I found some other guys. Shout out to one of my buddies, Jared, but he jumped in and he was helping me. My other friend, Earl, so I started reaching out to other people in groups like the warriors group and getting people that I could ask these questions to. And then when you started to see that there was people that actually knew the answers, I realized that this guy really wasn’t qualified. And then what happened was I got a phone call out of nowhere and he said, hey look, you know, I know I’m supposed to be taking the money and paying these bills. I haven’t been doing it. They’re going to shut the water off, you know, the drain pipe’s about to pop, I’m out. And I was like okay, well, this partnership is done and now I have to go and I have to figure out how to do all of this again from scratch, fire all your people, and get these situated because I don’t know what you’ve actually been doing and telling people so, it was a bit of a disaster but it was also, again, it was a great learning lesson. All my investors were made a hole that invested in that property because I started raising private funds when I realized how much more money I needed for that deal than the initial thought, and I learned valuable lessons and I made some really great relationships that have helped me on future deals from there.
Rod: Nice, nice, nice. That’s, you know, that’s a valuable lesson that will serve you the rest of your life and I will tell you, you know, those lessons come even late in the game. I have a situation like that myself with a guy that had 4,000 doors on an asset that we bought and very, very similar to what you just described and, you know. And so, even for someone as seasoned as me, you know, assuming that somebody with that many doors knew what they were doing and they flat out didn’t, you know, that lesson is not– it’s a good one and so you learn from it. And as long as you survived it, which of course we did as well, there’s no issue there. We’re killing it there now, but so let me ask you a question. You know, we’ve got a lot of aspiring investors that want to get into this business, that want to do this, they want more for their family, they want financial freedom, what words of wisdom would you share with someone that’s thinking about getting into this business? Maybe hasn’t pulled the trigger yet, you know, what would you say to that person?
Nick: I would say, definitely expand your network right now with groups like the warriors group. There’s so many resources of good people that have integrity, have experience, have contacts, have connections, that you don’t have to do this alone. You don’t have to rely on that one person to hopefully help you. That might not be the person that you thought they were, so I would definitely say get into a good group, get into a good network, again, I can give the gold star to the warriors. Those people–
Rod: Oh, that’s kind of you. That’s not what I was reaching for but, you know, I just want you to encourage them to do it buddy. By the way guys, let me just say this, if you’re interested in the warriors text “crush” to “72345”. Text, that’s the word “crush” so we can help you crush it to “72345”. And you can apply if you’re interested and we can have a call to see if it’s a fit on both sides. But thank you for that but I just want you to encourage them. That’s really where I was going with that.
Nick: Yeah. So one thing I’ll definitely say is, I tell people this a lot, when you’re first starting to get in, you’re worried. Your first deal feels like it’s the hardest thing which usually is. Mentally, all that stuff. You feel like it’s never going to happen. You go up. You go down. I love looking at other people’s wins on Facebook and not looking at it as competition but being inspired by every single day somebody’s posting, holy crap! I got my first deal. It took me three months, six months, nine months, a year, a year and a half, but I did it. Now, we’re gonna make all this money. So, be happy for those people and celebrate them because your time is gonna come too. And I look at that and I go, you know what? I watched that person for the last three, six months posting, looking for deals, looking for teams, and now they got one, I can do the same thing so I look at it as if they can do it, I can do it and that inspires me. So–
Rod: Yeah.
Nick: That’s out there and your day will come. Just stay persistent, stay optimistic, and don’t force a deal. I’d rather see you wait and get a good deal than get into a bad deal because that sucks.
Rod: Yeah. That’s one of the things that we love, you know, and I have all the warriors post in the Facebook group because, you know, that’s the whole purpose for that. And then when we have our weekly calls, I circle back to those wins and call them out in front of the whole group on the group calls and because it inspires everybody. And guys, if you’re listening and you hear about someone’s success and it doesn’t inspire you, then you need to go look in the mirror, okay? Because that’s jealousy, that’s regret, that’s– there’s some issues there that you’ve got to deal with. Honestly, respectfully, I’m saying this from my heart, okay? Because you’re not going to get ahead feeling like you’re less than if someone else is successful. You’re going to get ahead if you’re inspired by that and motivated by that to push forward for yourself and for your family. Okay, so that’s how you want to look at that stuff. So pay attention to that and I can’t tell you that I haven’t fallen in that trap in the past. It’s been a long time now, myself, where I’ve got some jealousy or some angst around someone else and thinking that I may not be good enough to do that or whatever. But if that’s the case, just take a look at that and spend some time working on being the best version of yourself. You know, in our warrior program we do these high performance calls that relate to things along those lines because that’s such an important piece is continually, you know, looking in the mirror every year and being the best version of yourself in every aspect of your life not just financially, relationships, your health, and so on and so forth. Anyway, I’m rambling.
Mark: No, you’re absolutely … Right now, I’ve noticed so many people ask me about the community when they get on calls with myself and our team here. And everybody is so isolated in the world right now, being in a group of people where you actually see people doing deals, that is the number one thing that I tell people has been the biggest game changer for me personally. When I see somebody in the group who’s out there crushing it, closing on a deal, it lights a fire under my butt to get out there and do more and it pulls you further just by being around people that are doing that.
Rod: Yeah. That’s what it should do. That’s absolutely right. That’s what it should do. So Nick, tell me, you know, what’s your driver? What’s that “why” that’s making you kick butt? You know that because you’re a hustler man. You got your podcast going, you’ve got deals going, you’re, you know, you help other people anytime they ask for it, what’s the driver, brother?
Nick: You know, I’ve always been somebody who likes to bring, like I said, my “A Game” to everything but I think a lot of it’s born from my accident to be honest. When you have a plan in front of you and everything’s worked out, you think something’s going down a certain direction and then you lose your confidence, your self-esteem, your finances, your future, everything almost overnight, it puts you in a panic and I feel like that’s part of what has motivated me to always go, go, go, go because you just never know what tomorrow is going to bring, or what stresses, or tragedies, or injuries, or something. So, while I have breath, and I have energy, and I have a roof over my head, and I have technology and contacts, I just try and maximize that every day because you just, you know, I just have that fear that everything, I know it can be taken away any day, so I’m always trying to build and grow. And just at the end of the day, when I go to sleep, I want to know that I use the day great and I was efficient with what I did and I served a purpose instead of just sitting on the couch and, you know, watching Netflix all day. It’s just, I don’t know that inner dialogue to me. I just, I’m very hard on myself.
Rod: Well, and guys, you know, that’s one of the things that I speak about quite regularly in my boot camps is, is to monitor that inner dialogue, is to actually be an observer. You know, it’s a little foofy to talk about but to actually step outside of yourself, and observe your inner dialogue, and pay very, very close attention especially when you’re describing yourself because we, you know, it’s a natural human tendency to self-depreciate or make yourself, you know, even talk down to yourself. And I catch people whenever I’m in conversation because, you know, when you speak something, your brain is listening, so you just want to be really, really careful what you say to describe yourself, your situation, how you feel, because again, your brain is listening. So that’s really insightful buddy. I’m glad you said that.
Mark: All right Nick, let’s end it with one more question here.
Rod: I may want to ask more than that. But go ahead, you ask your question.
Mark: Okay. All right, fair enough. Well, so what I want to know what– give us one or two action steps that a listener listening to this entire podcast should go out and actually do right now to get started with all the things that we talked about today.
Rod: Great question.
Nick: I would say, one action step is figure out what you want and what your strategy is because especially on the multifamily, I see people just start hitting me up saying, you know, hey, I want a commercial dude. I’m on the multifamily. We want a commercial. They don’t want a multifamily and it’s like okay well, like what exactly do you want? Are you looking for a certain cap rate? A certain cash on cash? A certain cash flow? A certain market? What’s your strategy? Are you going to fix it up and sell it? Are you going to refinance it? How many doors? How much do you have to put down? Did they think about these certain things? Do you have partners? So, get a little bit more specific on what you have and what you’re looking for as far as an attainable size, price point, exit strategy, because that’s going to help you really target in on people, and areas, and contacts that can help get you there. So I made that mistake of just throwing a blanket out there of I just want a deal. Figure out what you want and what a deal is that fits you right now. And again, it can always change and grow but that would be one thing is really sit down and go through that. And then the other thing would just be, don’t overthink it and don’t get discouraged. You have to put yourself out there and I love that Rod keeps talking about, you know, that personal dialogue and insecurity because even me now, after all this time, I still feel silly sometimes postings, oh, I’m looking for somebody here like it, you know, you get people that do say stupid things but overall most people are good and they want to help you, so don’t let the fear of what other people are going to think or might see when you’re going out there and you’re trying to better yourself, better your life for yourself and your family, anybody who’s going to get down on you or discourage you from that it’s because they’re jealous or you’re never going to get criticism from somebody who’s doing more than you, only people that are doing less. So just, you know, go after it. Put yourself out there and don’t let that insecurity or that doubt deflect that. Just go after it because it’s out there and it’ll happen and people help you.
Rod: Yeah. Let me–
Mark: Real quick.
Rod: Okay.
Mark: One thing I want to say real quick is that, what you mentioned on what you’re looking for in deals even if, you know, the warrior group is not the right fit. Our team will help you do that as well in figuring out your asset criteria and picking all those things. And so, if that’s something you do need help with, you know, definitely text in “crush” and whether it’s a fit or not our team will definitely help you there.
Rod: To help you create your investment criteria because that’s the first step. You can’t be all things to all people and the only analogy that I’ve come up with, I need to come up with a better one, is you can’t shoot with a shotgun. You need to shoot with a rifle, period. Okay? That you need to have a honed approach. I want to circle back to one thing you said, as far as naysayers and people in your life, you talked about people that have more than you will never criticize you but guys it’s so easy to settle as it relates to your peers. And your peers are probably the most important decision you can possibly make because they will impact every area of your life not just finances. Those five people you’re around or 10, whatever it is, you’re going to be as happy as they are, you’re going to be as healthy as they are, and you’re going to be as financially successful as they are. So, in so many people default to the people they work with in their W-2 job or people they went to school with, and those people again, out of jealousy or fear and might just be fear of losing you because you’re improving your life will hold you back if you allow them to, and it could be family as well. So, you know, a line that I like to say is choose your family, love your family but I’m sorry, “Love your family but choose your peers proactively.” You want to be around people that want more, that are going to hold you to a higher standard. They’re going to be like, hey, quit whining and go do that. Go make it happen. You deserve it. You know, like a rising tide lifts all ships. So you want to get in a group like that that’s going to hold you up and hold you in a higher standard. And it’s just so critically important. Nick, awesome to see you my friend. You added a ton of value today. I appreciate you coming on and again guys check out his “A Game Podcast” and it’s great to see you brother.
Nick: You too. Thanks a lot for having me on. This is a real thrill. I always love touch and base. You inspire me every day. I really enjoy your podcast and your community. I appreciate you having me on.
Rod: You bet buddy. Thank you.
Mark: All right Nick, see you.
Outro: Rod, I know a lot of our listeners are wanting to take their multifamily investing business to the next level. I know you’ve been hard at work helping our warrior students do just that using our ACT methodology which is Awareness, Close, and Transform. Can you explain to the listeners how they can get our help?
