Make the Call Right Now

18 Oct Make the Call Right Now

Posted at 04:00h in Podcast by

Episode 14:

Jason Lucchesi founded real estate investing company, Global Fortune Solutions, in the year 2008. Jason has been enjoying a successful career in the real estate industry since 2002 where he started as a Loan Officer for Illinois brokerage, Bancgroup Mortgage. In 2004, Jason joined the Management team at Countrywide Home Loans, which was the nation's #1 lender. In 2008, Jason established his own company to pursue his dream of being a full-time entrepreneur and business owner.

Over the past several years as a real estate investor, Jason’s interests have been:

  • Real Estate Coaching and Mentoring
  • Working directly with Hedge Funds, Banks, Private Equity Firms and Private Sellers
  • Pre-Foreclosures and Foreclosures, HUD and Government Foreclosures, Short Sales, REOs
  • Non-Performing Notes and Performing Notes
  • Bulk Packages: Notes, Residential and Commercial Properties
  • Wholesaling Residential and Commercial Properties
  • Rehabs
  • Apartment Buildings
  • Income Producing Properties
  • Lease Options
  • Self-Storage Facilities

Jason has been married to his wonderful wife, Jamie, for 9 years, and they are proud parents to three children, Brady (age 9), Gavin (age 7), and Cordelia (age 2).

Good morning and welcome smart listeners. I'm Chris Prefontaine. My focus weekly is to bring you an expert that can help you make a quantum leap in your business, your finances and/or your life. Buckle in while we bring you the next master's class. Class is in session.

Now I'd like to welcome Jason Lucchesi from Indianapolis, Indiana. I'll give you a little bit of background on Jason. It's super interesting. I'm looking forward to diving into a conversation with him.

Jason founded a real estate investing company called Global Fortune Solutions back in 2008. I'm going to have a discussion about that, because 2008 was where I took off with a lovely debacle that we'll have a discussion about. He's been enjoying a successful career in real estate industry since 2002. He actually started back then as a loan officer for an Illinois brokerage. The company was called Bank Group Mortgage.

In 2004, Jason joined the management team over at Countrywide Home Loans. A lot of you guys listening, I'm sure if you were around before ‘08 like me, you did a whole bunch of business with them because at the time they were the nation's number one lender. In 2008, Jason actually established his own company to pursue his personal dream of being a full time entrepreneur and business owner, which will make this conversation again very interesting.

Over the past several years, as an investor Jason's interest are many. We'll dive into some of these as we go through our conversation. Those include coaching and mentoring, which I love, working directly with hedge funds, banks, private equity firms, private sellers, jumping into preforeclosures and foreclosures, HUD and government foreclosures, non-performing notes, bulk packages, meaning notes, residential and commercial properties, some wholesaling, rehabs, apartments, income producing properties and lease options, which is our specialty. Jason's also been married to his wonderful wife, Jamie, for about nine years now. They are proud parents of three children, ages nine, seven and two. So you've got your hands full. Welcome Jason.

Hey, thanks for having me Chris. I really appreciate it. I appreciate that warm welcome. It definitely is handful with three, for sure.

My kids, I call them kids but they're in my business now and they're in their late twenties. Now I have a third, which is my son in law. So I know how it is. Value those days because they go fast my friend.

No, I know what you mean. The nine year old, literally it's a blink of an eye. I remember the night we came home with him. I remember asking my wife, I'm like, “Uh, what are we supposed to do now?” Literally it felt like yesterday. I'm sure, a blink of an eye, he'll be 18 here soon. It's been flying by but we try and enjoy every moment we have.

Yeah. I appreciate that. You'll have a blast, more years to come.

Yeah.

Jason, do this for me. You have a lot of cool things you and I want to cram into this time together. Take us by the current and give us some context for the listeners as to how and why, especially given the date of 2008, you decided to get into real estate, when things were by most standards taking a sideways curve. In my book, I open it up with what I went through in the 2008 debacle. So I'd love to hear how you jumped into it right around then.

You know, I saw the end of the line coming when I was with Countrywide. I was trying so many different things at that time. My wife and I just got married the end of ‘07. We found out we were pregnant, well my wife was pregnant. I don't have a college degree so it was really tough for me to try and figure out what I wanted to do because I wasn't being offered any job. I didn't want to stay in the mortgage business anymore because it was driving me absolutely nuts.

I started investing in stock options and lost some money that way. Then I started watching these flipping shows on TV. I got involved with some of those training programs. It took me a long time, but I didn't really think about the doom and gloom of the economy, I started seeing trends from people becoming the most successful and making the most amount of money during cyclical times within our economy. It happened in the late eighties, late nineties, and it happened in ‘08.

Obviously ‘08 was something only a few people saw coming but it was very devastating for a lot of folks. I just went down the preforeclosure route, and I started finding folks that didn't really know of the options. They thought loan modification was going to work, but they didn't understand that you needed to have a job and you needed to be able to, when the loan mod would be approved that you could pay it. So a lot of the individuals that we ended up buying homes from, they were needing to do a short sale and they had no other options of knowing what to do.

I looked at it as a great time to get involved, to get my feet completely immersed in water and take it from there. It was definitely a great learning experience, for sure.

Yeah. You said some really cool things I want to go back in no particular order. One is just a comment really. I heard you say no college education, when you I look at my mentors over the years, just as you were saying, I'm thinking through it. This probably, I don't know if I want to say all of them, but a large majority of my mentors past and present did not go to college.

I find it quite interesting as you said that. I think, gosh, I don't know if it was a recent solocast I did or some other piece I was writing, but I did talk about the fact that unless you're going into a specialty. Like, my daughter wanted to go pre-vet. Unless you're going doctor, some specialty, I think that there's so many people that are having huge, huge success, especially in real estate, without that college. I don't know if you have any comments on, but just coincidental to what you said.

No. To be honest with you, I wanted to go to school. The only reason why I didn't is because I wasn't advised properly from the community college that I went to that I could apply for student loans. Literally, when I graduated high school, it was by the skin of my teeth. I was so badly wanting to just graduate and move on, so fast, so that I could get my career going because I was thinking real estate even back then.

My mom purchased Carleton Sheets’ course. I remember being like, “Wow, I want to be one of those people that Carlton's talking to, and the backdrop is like Maui and we're talking about deals that I'm doing.” I envisioned that at that age. I just wanted to get high school done. The lack of focus on the general academics that they make you go through and the stuff that you really don't implement in the real world. I knew I wasn't going to be using a lot of the stuff that I was having to go through for gen ed.

My parents didn't have any money. I didn't know about student loans, so I didn't go to school. I didn't research it because the internet back in 2001, 2002, really wasn't prevalent as it is today. So I didn't research it; I didn't really ask around. I literally dove head first into sales, and I never looked back to be honest with you.

Well, sales is by far, in my opinion, is one of the best trainings you can do. You talked about preforeclosures. My son, Nick, who's now been with me since, I don't know, 2007 or so, started technically in the real estate business, aside from hanging out with my wife and I, started doing preforeclosure doors as a junior high school. That would have been back in ‘07 or something. I think sales, especially door to door is the best training we can get.

You said something about the trends and just went for it. So to almost put blinders on my words back in 2008, it reminded me of the early nineties. I was listening to an Earl Nightingale tape while I was literally driving. We had a family company at the time. I wasn't on my own yet. He talked about talking to landowners during a recession. It gave me this thought, to go to landowners, secure their land with no money, build a home on their land. Have all the subcontractors do so and not take out any construction loans. We did this back in the early nineties.

I look back, thinking, “Man, if I even thought that out, I would have been afraid.” But we just put the blinders on and went for it, same as you said. You sparked some cool thoughts there.

Yeah.

You had a bunch of things I listed. I did that on purpose at the beginning, because I saw your background when you and I were scheduling this. Is there one particular, or one, two or three, areas, a niche or a specialty to give the listeners an idea, that you tend to focus on? And why? Is it preforeclosure still now, or what is it now? What are you up to?

I'm still focused on a lot with distressed assets, just because the trend right now is showing that the next cycle for the market correction is approaching. I don't have a crystal ball. I don't have a prediction on it, but I do feel like it's going to be approaching here soon. Especially with Warren Buffet's company, Berkshire Hathaway acquiring I think it was $337 million with STIR Capital. They're the highest stakeholder in their residential department.

A lot of people are seeing trends with big hedge funds pulling up assets and all that kind of stuff, to be ready to deploy assets on new residential and commercial opportunities. What I'm seeing right now, especially with our business, is we're focusing still on receiving direct off market deals from our sources at banks, hedge funds, private equity firms and private sellers. Most of my business right now, I'll break it down, it's really simple. 60% is wholesaling, 10% is rehab, and then the remainder 30% is buy and hold for building our own income producing portfolio.

That's awesome. Actually, nice mix. I also want the listeners to make a note of the date here. We're in summer of 2017. We'll see, Jason you said you didn't have a crystal ball but these guys are going to be calling you if hit that on the head, that's for sure. Good prediction.

Yeah, I don't have, like the guy from that movie that they came out with. I'm dropping a fog here in the head. It came out and it completely displayed everything correct that happened and how the 2008 recession. The Big Short, that's what it was called.

Yeah, yeah, very interesting.

The guy that Christian Bale played, that is the guy who predicted it five, six years in advance. I know he just came out with something like a year ago. He was talking about the next one, and how the scale might actually be larger. I don't think it's going be like 2008, because there's no adjustable rate mortgages, as prevalent as it was back then. Again, I don't have a crystal ball but I don't think it's going to be like it was in 2008.

Yeah, no, I would agree. Can you say that name again, the real life character from the movie so that the listeners can hear, because they may want to Google that and play around with that.

I don't know the real life name of that individual.

Oh, you don't.

He's from The Big Short, Christian Bale played his character. He was the guy that everybody thought was nuts, because he raised all this capital for this company, this tech company, and he couldn't get people to back him properly. It was amazing, how he really came through on it and ended up making a ton of money on what happened. I'm trying to … Okay, the guy name's was Michael Burry.

Awesome.

I Google it here real fast because I wanted to make sure the listeners could research it. He came out with something I think like a year ago, talking about the next wave.

Nice. Nice. That's a good share. You guys, Michael Burry.

Yep.

Jason, let's switch a little bit. I like to switch gears almost every question. What would you say comes natural to you in business in general? I mean, if you can pinpoint something.

I personally love talking to people. When I start sparking up conversations with them, we can start having a flow, really fast. I can find out reasons from folks on why they're wanting to sell, versus the people that are calling and just going right into the questions without getting to know people first. I really feel like I can get passed their wall pretty quickly, just by being a normal human being that can show that they care and it's not just all about the dollars that you make from the deal. I think people really like that.

That's something that I developed when I was watching my mom. She used to sell jewelry for a store called Jared's, the galleria of jewelry. I worked there temporarily in high school. I got to see how she was with people and that rubbed off on me quite a bit. It helped out a lot with my success. At Countrywide I as one of their top account executives for several years.

Also, right out of high school, I started selling knives. That also helped too because I had no idea how I was going to sell this knives without coming across as somebody, like, “Hey, I've got this big bag of knives. Let me show you my presentation.” I think that's one my traits…a lot of people have given me feedback on that. I just try and listen to people more than talk to them because a lot of people have a lot to say. I'm one of those types of people where I try and listen and take it all in so I can really give them the type of response that they're looking for.

Yeah. Let me ask you this, I have two things based on that to bounce back at what you just commented on. You must get this with your students, I do. What if someone listening says, “You know what, I hate talking to people,” or, “I'm not good at it,” or they don't have confidence. How important do you think that is in real estate? I mean, your answer kind of said it, but what if someone's listening, going, “I just … I can't do that. I can't talk to people.” Would you say they're kind of going to be in a tough spot? What do you think?

I think it's a mindset thing. Literally, everyone has the power to talk to other people. I got over that fear early on, because I knew my parents weren't going to be able to help me out from a financial standpoint going to school, so I needed to really set my own future up.

What I started doing when I got the position with selling knives for a company called Cutco, I started doing presentations to family members and friends, because I wanted to get past that hump of the stuttering and no confidence and not knowing what to say. I did it for like five presentations, and then after that I just started going all out. It was a all referral based business at that time, so even if somebody didn't buy, I would always walk out with 10 to 20 referrals that I could call to set up presentations.

I think it's a fear thing. To be honest with you, when I tell my students, “Hey, you just need to make the call.” Even if they want to hear me, how I am on calls. It's not rocket science. I just ask them questions. Like, “Tell me about this,” or, “Can you explain this to me.” Simple, simple questions that gets the individual engaged with really wanting to talk about their house, because people love talking about themselves.

If you can get them to just do that, you're set. Now, a lot of the things that I do with our students, is everything nowadays is moving more and more towards email and text messaging, but you're going to have to pick up the phone and have a conversation. If you're afraid to do that, you need to get over it as quickly as possible. There's no book. There's no audio CD out there to make you do it.

Source: freestocks.org on Unsplash

[bctt tweet=”“If you can get people to talk about themselves, you’re set.” – @jasonlucchesi”]

Chris has a phenomenal book, but Chris isn't reaching out through you from the book. He's not coming out of the book saying, “Hey, this is what you have to do.” You just have to do it. There's tool from Chris' book that you can use, but it's just something that you have to do. You just have to take the leap and know that you already posses the skills, you just to know that they're their and you just have to let them loose.

Yeah, absolutely. I want to make sure, just so listeners know, at the end of the interview here, they're going to figure out, or understand I should say, how to get hold of you. Because interestingly, the three areas you focus on, we don't. I want to make sure that they have nice well rounded coaching available to them. We'll make sure they know how to get in touch with you.

It was interesting, I think everything's about energy, and you're talking about the importance of asking questions and talking. It must have been about 18 minutes before I dialed you up for this interview, I wrote to the girl that runs our InfusionSoft and I said, “Hey, blast this out to all our members.”

It basically was a quote. I don't remember exactly but it was a few minutes ago. It had to do with, 82% of the success in structuring a deal, or helping your client, is understanding their problem or their challenge. You don't know that unless you ask questions. Just what you said is what I wrote in the broadcast, almost verbatim. That was pretty cool. Good share.

Nice.

I don't know if you get this from your clients Jason, you mentioned email and text. I have, not a lot, but I bet you once or twice a month, I'll get someone that says, “Look, I saw your video course,” or, “I saw your book,” or whatever. “Can I do this from my home?” Wholesaling, I know you can.” My area of the lease purchasing and sub to and some of these. I tell them, “You can get deals. I've done plenty with people out of state. Never met them, never left my office. But 98% of my deals, maybe 99, are I've got to get in there. I've got to meet them I've got to discuss things with them. I just think that the emailing and the texting is great. It's a tool but it definitely can't be relied on 100%. I don't know if you agree as strongly as me because you a little different as far your niches.

No, I agree with you wholeheartedly. I do think that a lot of communication can be done, especially if you're doing virtual wholesaling from an email and text messaging standpoint. If you're dealing with an asset manager or somebody at a hedge fund or a private equity firm, yeah it's going to be email, not text. But if you want to communicate with somebody that you have under contract and you don't want to give them a call, that's fine but to be honest with you, there's going to have to be a conversation made, either it be you or somebody from your team. There is going to have to be phone communication.

I'm really big on communication. I communicate with my team all the time. I don't micro-manage them. I don't have a big office or anything like that, everybody works remotely, but it is important that we have communication. If it's just me logging in and seeing on our CRM, and I use InfusionSoft too, just finding out what's going on. That's key. Especially, my whole thing is, and I can't take credit for this, but questions lead to confessions. You ask more questions, people are going to open up. You have to get out of the mind set, like a lot of people want to pitch benefit, benefit, benefit. They've been pitched that by everybody else.

You need to be a problem solver. Once you can become a problem solver, you're going to differentiate yourself from the other individuals out there that are just thinking they're doing it right by pitching benefit. You know, pitching, “Hey, I can close in three days. For sure, you're going to get that cash.” That's great but you need to be a problem solver. You need to explain why closing in three days is going to help them, and why having that cash at closing is going to help them. It's all about solving the problem for the individual that you're acquiring the property from.

I love it. I wrote down, “Your questions lead to confessions.” I'm going to share that on my private joint venture partners that we have around the country, the call we do Thursday night. When you say don't pitch benefits, I love it. I'll share the way you said that with them, because I always tell them, I'll hear their live calls, because we critique their live calls. I'll write back saying, “You didn't ask one question. You have no idea what their pain is. All you did is give them a mini seminar.”

Yeah.

It drives me crazy.

Same here.

Let's do this, I mentioned at the beginning that I went through the 2008 debacle, because I had been around longer that you have, unfortunately I'm aging myself here. We've all made mistakes. I've said this I bet you almost every interview and the people I've had on I've agreed. If you haven't made mistakes, or you say you haven't, it's tough to have anyone say they've never made a mistake in real estate.

One thing's clear, the successful people, certainly those that I've had on the podcast, they don't allow a mistake or a failure, even a big one, to define who they are. They jump back in. They don't stay down like a fetus and get kicked. They jump back in and they swing. Tell us about, if you have one failure that you experienced and you got out of it or achieve success because of it? Any other comments on that?

I would be completely lying if I said I had a perfect road to where I am now. Being in the business since 2008 full time, that just doesn't happen by being perfect. We live in an imperfect world. I know there's a lot of people that strive for perfection, and that's completely fine. Whatever they want to do, but I had several, several, probably hundreds of setbacks, mistakes that I made. That first year was the most difficult. Most people need to understand, yeah, it's going to be probably your most difficult year in business, but after that your skin is going to be completely thick. You're going to know how to do the business.

The only way that you make those mistakes or have set backs is by doing. That's the only way that's going to happen. It's great, I read tons of books, but if I read those books and didn't take action on what those authors were telling me in that book, then the book would be completely useless. In 2008, I got involved with a training program from one of these flipping TV shows. At that time they were still giving advice on how to do things from 2006. Here it is 2008, there's no more lenders out there that were doing 100% financing, and that's what they were teaching. I was being taught something from somebody that probably didn't do a deal since 2004, so they did it at the most opportune time where you can literally have a blood sample and a urinalysis and you could get 100% financing on a deal.

But now, flash forward to 2008, my credit was shot, I was living on unemployment check to unemployment check. I needed to do something that, like they stated, doesn't require cash or credit. So I tried doing the rehabbing thing, I tried raising private money, but being brand new, I let fear sip in and I made lots of mistakes. I showed deals to people. I didn't present them the right way. It definitely took a lot of time before I actually closed my first deal, and I made tons of mistakes. I got the deal under contract, I overpaid for it, I partnered up with somebody that brought a buyer and I barely made $1,800 on a deal I spent tens of hours on, maybe 40, 50 hours on a deal that probably only needed two hours of work. But I was so stressed out by I need to get my first deal closed.

It took months before it happened. It's all about getting with the right people, the right mentors. Like yourself Chris, you critique people's calls and you really give them the feedback that they need. I didn't have that when I was getting started. I had some coach that I was assigned that, like I said, probably he didn't do the business for a few years, but was assignment to me to help with my life. This was going to be my life, this is how I was going to provide for my family, and I was being led advice that was working in 2006.

I wrote down three things now I want to ask you. One is actually something I thought about, I'm looking at your son, Brady's nine year old. You started in 08, you went full time. Okay, so it had to be around when Brady was born, you took a leap and you went full time. You didn't close a deal right away. That took a lot of backbone to do that. I guess, first of all I applaud you but any comments for these that are trying to keep their foot first but move to home plate. They're hanging onto the past. It sounds like you didn't. You cut ties and went, if I'm understanding and hearing.

Well, my son was due in April, so I had four months to really try and make something happen. I didn't. I didn't have much money after Countrywide because our stock was at $42 one month, and then when everything hit the fan all at once, our stock went to 18 bucks.

Ouch.

At that time, Chris, I was putting 40% of my checks in our 401k, and that was all being guided towards Countrywide stocks. It was not a fun time, I literally lost six figures pretty quickly. Because I was doing what I was led to believe was what I was supposed to do, if that makes sense. Like, go to school, once you come out of school you get a 401k, you put money in there and hopefully you'll have enough to retire after 30, 40 years. That's what I thought was the normal. I was doing normal things. I needed to break free of the mediocrity mindset of, “Hey, this is what society has told us to do.” So I just went for it. My wife worked. I went back into the mortgage business for a little bit, but I ended up getting fired because I wasn't focused on it.

When I say I was done with the mortgage business, I was done with it. I was done having to try to explain somebody how I was saving them $300 a month and that they were going to shop me around. I was done with that. I went all in. I bet all on myself. If anybody has seen that Steve Harvey video that's been floating around now for a few years on, how he talks about taking that leap. Sometimes you'll get the bumps, you'll get the scrapes. You'll maybe even hit the wall. Sometimes your parachute won't open right away. That was me. I just jumped. I had no idea if the parachute was going to open but I wanted to break out of the mold. Everybody was zagging and I needed to zig and need to go down the path least traveled.

I love it. There's magical, call it energy, call it whatever you want, when you make that decision. Thank you, because that's exactly what I wanted you to nail down. I think the listeners, it's important for them to know, I didn't know that. We're just having a discussion here, so this is very, very cool takeaways. One more thing on that, two more actually. You talked about your first deal took more time, just a time frame. Again I'm thinking of some of my clients, whining if they don't get a deal in month one or two, or if they don't make a killing in month one or two. How long did it take to get your first deal month-wise or day-wise?

Took roughly six months.

Bingo. Alright, there you go.

I didn't have anybody helping me though. If I would have had somebody helping me, could I have done it in much less time? Absolutely. I made so many mistakes on that first deal. It helped me so much with doing the next deal, it was so much more different. Having somebody like yourself, Chris, giving somebody the mentorship and the guidance, can help speed that process up. But if you're not taking the action, then you're not going to be able to see the results that you want.

Yeah, it's a moot point, right?

Yeah, absolutely.

You mentioned about doing deals with someone that knows. One of our taglines is, “Real lessons from the field,” because unbeknownst to most mentors, some of the older ones frankly that I've had in the past actually get on me a bit and chide me a bit about being as blunt as I am. I've got a chapter in my book, Jason, that is title, “What can go wrong?” I lay it out because I don't want people to hit these roadblocks. How important do you think it is to have someone, in the trenches is the word I use, but as you said, hands on? In your world, how important is it the fact that you're doing rehabs and wholesaling still to be able to coach. In our world, same thing, how much importance do you place on that? What's your comment on that?

I think it's greatly undervalued, especially with how people really need somebody as a mentor there. We grew up with, well most of us, I don't know for the listeners. We grew up with a mother, a father, or you grew up with a mother or a father, but you had somebody there to see. What are they doing? How are they doing it? They'd give you feedback from what you're doing at school. Those were mentors. They're your parents.

But as we start to grow, we find mentors and teachers at high school, teachers, professors at college. Then once we get into the real world, we're just set free and then we have no idea what to do. I still have a business coach. I still have a fitness and nutrition coach. Because even though I know some of this stuff, it's still good to have that kick in the pants every once in a while. Like sometimes I'll have somebody be like, “Jason, dude, why are you doing that? You could be doing this and it could be helping your business grow so much more.” It's good to have that, especially to constantly have the mind moving in a forward direction, instead of being at a stalemate, in my opinion.

Yeah, love it. I love it, because there's a common thread. You just said you've got a coach, about two episodes ago I did a solocast, just me. Once in a while I do that. I talked about, I've never not had a coach that I can remember going back to like 1992 or so. That was probably when I couldn't afford to have one, but I had one. I think that's super important you shared that, for sure, for sure.

Yeah, because one of the things Chris, and I'm sorry to interrupt you. One of the things that I will say is, five years of trial and error to really get things dialed in. Instead of paying somebody to help me speed up the process, I tell this on some of my training classes, it took about five years or so, and that's also going back a little bit to my Countrywide days, to really refine what I really wanted to do as far as a purpose. Cost me about $2 million. Some the stuff that we do as coaches and mentors, could exponentially shorten that curve quite a bit. I believe if I would have hired the people that I would have back then, it would have went from five years to maybe six months. I wouldn't have lost multiple seven figures.

I couldn't agree more. When you start looking at the average profit per deal, you can help your students do. Same with us, it's a no brainer. But here's a thought, I used to say this in a different light when you said speak more. I tell people, “Look. Okay, you're a student, you're not sure if you have the money, you're not sure if you can get financing, you're not sure what you're going to do resource-wise to hire yourself or hire any mentor,” it doesn't have to be you or I. Here's a thought for you, if I was on stage and you were in the audience, and I had a $100 bill, and I said to you, “Look, someone pull out a $100 bill right, and I'll match it. I'll give you $100. I'll double your money right now just by you producing $100 bill.”

Now, there's not a whole bunch of people in the audience that might have $100 bill, but what if changed it and said, “Okay, I'll give you two hours. Two hours, whoever comes back, the first three people, the first 10, whatever. You come back $100, I'm going to hand you one. I'm going to double your money.” There's not a person in the room that wouldn't run out, find a way to get $100 bill and bring it back. In other words, it's predictable. It's, if A then B. So I think that our mentoring, and other great mentors, not just us, is the same way. It's predictable, it's profitable, once you decide you can do it. That's going back to taking your foot off first base I think. Makes sense to you?

It totally does. I've been reading, do you know who Mike Michalowicz is?

No, share that with me.

He's got three books that I've read. I normally don't read books, I just do audiobooks because we recently moved last September, and I've got five acres to mow. I actually really enjoy it because I could pound out all your books now. I've been reading his books. He's got Profit First, Toilet Paper Entrepreneur and The Pumpkin Plan. Those are phenomenal books. I put them to good use.

He said in there that he was talking one time, and I thought this was where you were going but it's almost the same exact thing. He whipped out $100. He asked the audience, he's like, “What is this?” They said, “$100.” He was like, “Who wants the $100?” Everybody had their hands still raised. Then he asked the question again, he's like, “Who wants the $100?” Everybody still had their hand raised. Then the third time he asked it, he said, “Who wants the $100?” Finally somebody came up and took it. That's all he was looking for. Sometimes it takes a little bit for people to really be like, they're kind of creeping along, like, “Is this going to be okay? Is this the way to go?”

It's kind of like the third Indiana Jones movie, before that fourth one came out and kind of almost destroyed the franchise. He was walking out and he couldn't see what was in front of him, until he put some rocks out there. There was a perfectly good walkway right in front him. I think a lot of us have that fear of, “Is this for real? Can this actually be done?” Absolutely it can be done. I've seen that before, where somebody put $100 up, and I was one of the people in the audience that didn't get up and go grab it. A lot of us sometimes need to get off the couch or get off our butts and really just make it happen.

Source: Pexels

[bctt tweet=”“Get off the couch and go make it happen.” – @jasonlucchesi”]

This story I'm going to tell you has absolutely nothing to do with our business but it has to do what we just said. I was at a seminar once. You'll get a kick out of this. The speaker, it was more for online relative to our business, but the speaker had a book and he said, “What is this?” Same thing, “Who wants it?” I forget what the book was. I bolted from the front row, my wife Kim was with me. Now, this thing was on video, which is even more funny. I was almost to the stage when this gigantic Chinese fellow just trampled me, got on stage and grabbed the booked. It was hilarious. Then the speaker sent me the video, because coincidentally he was filming it for promo videos and things like that, but I just got wiped out. I don't even know what the book was, but I wasn't quick enough I guess.

Man, yeah, I could see that happening, when somebody finally realizes like, “Hey, I'm going to lose the opportunity.” Because that's essentially what it was, he was holding up either it be a book or $100 bill. You start to see, the opportunity is right there and there's hundreds of people in the room but only one or two of you actually get up and go for it. That's an amazing story that you shared.

Yeah. Thanks for letting me relive that trampling I got.

That's funny.

Good stuff. Alright, I'm going to hit some high points on a positive note, because we talked about challenges. I wanted to hear that in coaching and all that good stuff. You've been at this for the better part of nine, going on 10 years now. You've obviously has some huge successes. If you could hone it in, what do you consider to be one of your biggest successes, biggest wins, could be a deal, could be a lesson, whatever, and why?

That's a great question. To be honest with you, some of the best things that I've really learned in this business is you don't have to wear every single hat in the business. I've shown this organizational chart, where it says, “You,” and then all of the other fields say, “You as well.” A lot of us do that as brand new entrepreneurs or investors, whatever you want to call it. We tend to wear the cap for everything in the business.

One of the things that I realized right off the bat, if I was going to have any kind of life outside of business, I need to eliminate myself from doing everything and release it to other individuals on the team. So if I were to leave for two, four weeks, to maybe do a vacation with the family, the business would still be operating. It would still be profitable. Maybe I may have to check in every once in a while, just to maybe do a call with somebody in a management position or a leadership role. That was the real realization that I had. I really needed to view the business as me being the CEO and running the business as a CEO. Most CEOs, they're not doing everything in the business. I know in the beginning it's that way, but it shouldn't be that way the whole time that you have your business.

Yeah, I love it. We're on the same page with so many of these things, you make me think each chance you give. I was in a mastermind group. I want to say this was 13 when I started doing more strictly 100% terms deals, like I'm doing now. One of the members said, “What the heck are you doing calls for? Why don't you get someone to do this, and someone to do that?” Of course my block was up because I came from the debacle and I said, “No, no, no. They can't do it. I've got to do this, I've got to do that.”

Now I look back at this point in my buying and selling side of my business, my son in law, my son and my daughter run it 100%. I don't do any of it now and they do a fantastic job, frankly a lot better than I was doing. I focus with the JV Partners. But if I look back to how crazy limited I was with my thinking, and just 13, it was four years ago for me. It's a great point, another great share.

Absolutely man. I always say this, get out of your own way because you're holding yourself back.

Source: Pexels

[bctt tweet=”“Get out of your own way because you're holding yourself back.”  – @jasonlucchesi”]

Yeah, sure. If they don't know how to do that, they just talk about it, then if you're in the wholesale and rehab world, then get ahold of Jason and me. If our personalities don't mesh for you then go find someone, for God's sakes, that you can relate with and get that done, because it is possible.

Absolutely.

Jason, kind of bullet points, what three productive things, I know it's not easy when you're as busy as you are, all of us. What three productive things do you do every day to be the best at what you do?

You know, I really try and find that balance within every day. First thing I always do before I get started is, I really try and sit down and enjoy breakfast with my kids, with my wife, and really talk about them and get them to talk about us. It's just us sitting there, talking. Phone is away, no laptop in front of me, really zoning in and really having that balance with the family, because it's not all about work. You need to have that balance.

Once I really get my focus on for work, I'll be honest, the thing that I do, and this is something that I've been doing ever since my Countrywide days, is I have a yellow legal pad that the night before, before I shut everything down, I put down my top things that I want to do for the next day. That's helped me out with staying organized quite a bit. Yeah, there's ton of softwares out there and that kind of stuff, but if it's not broken there's no reason to fix it. Yeah, we still use softwares and all this other gadgets and what-not. But I still like doing that because it's something I believe in, once you are starting to write and you see, it gets more ingrained in your head. I really like that.

Some other things I do is being able to work out, I go to the gym. I also, believe it or not, I am an instructor for a martial art called Krav Maga. It's a Israeli martial art. I've been doing that now since 2012. I absolutely love it because either at the beginning of a day or the end of a day, I can go there and start pounding away on the pads. It is a huge stress reliever. I believe that people need to get that stress out, because you let that build up and it's going to be something to where you're not going to have an enjoyable business. You need to do something. Either go for a walk, or just get the blood moving. Get the blood circulated, do something to get moving. Those are some of the things that I would recommend.

The other thing that I really like too is if you really want to stay on track, all of our smartphones nowadays, you can have timers going off on your phone. You can have calendar reminders but the cool thing that I found is, instead of just having an alarm clock that wakes you up, you can also have it set to where if you want specific things done throughout the day and you want them to remind you, just set the alarm. If you have something that you want to do at 11:00 AM or 1:00 PM or you have several things down there, put it in your phone. The alarm will go off and you'll be like, “Okay. I need to get this done.” You get it done and boom, you take it off, and then you move on to whatever's next.

Yeah. When I wrote down a couple of your takeaways, I hope everybody did, just in this order, the yellow pad simplicity. I found, not only does it organize, you hammer it home, but it also clears the brain, clears the squash, so when I go home at night I'm not … my kids are on their own now, but I'm not clouding any conversation with work stuff. I'm focused. The chamber door for work is closed. My mind's cleared and I'm ready for tomorrow. It's super, super simple and super effective.

Yeah, absolutely.

I can't pronounce that martial art but I have an old college buddy and we reconnected after 20 years. Now we hook up and we golf. He's been doing that for quite some time and absolutely loves it. That's cool up and coming thing. I shouldn't say up and coming because I know a lot of people doing it now.

Well no, it is more of an up and coming type of martial art.

Is it?

It was brought over from the creator of it. His name's Imi Lichtenfeld. He's a gentleman from Israel, a Jewish guy. They brought it over in the early eighties. The individual that had permission to start it here started it. We only have one Krav Maga worldwide in Indiana. That's the one I found in Indianapolis here. It's crazy, we talk about people that need to take action, I drove past this place for two years before I was like, “You know what, I'm just going to go in and do it,” and I regretted it because I loved it so much and I would have had two extra years under my belt if just would have gotten up the nerves to go in there.

I really took the leap, the plunge when they were at, it's called a fisher's freedom festival. They had a booth. It's where you go, there's carnival rides and all that kind of stuff. They had a booth and they were like, “Yeah, you should come in.” I saw how flexible the schedule was and I'm like, “Gosh, I've been driving past this place for two years.” They have morning and evening classes that are perfect for my schedule and I just kept putting it off.

I wonder if there's one local to me, another one of your main takeaways. I'll check it out and I'll probably be picking your brain in the future about that one. Thanks for that share.

Nice.

We talked about successful people, coaching, all kinds of things along the pathway. I haven't met a successful person, or been mentored by one, that stops learning. What's your next challenge you're looking master, if there is something on your plate right now?

Goodness. I'm looking at probably a few books here that I've recently read. I'm really continuing to be, like you said, a life learner. Until the day I pass and I leave my spot here, it's going to be constant learning. I don't claim to be something that I'm not. I'm constantly learning, just like everybody else. The next thing, I wrote my book, just like you. Os this your first book that you just wrote Chris?

It was. Yeah, it was. We came out a couple weeks ago. We hit the bestseller last week actually.

That's awesome. Congratulations. It's huge. Mine came out in early April. I'll tell you, that was a goal of mine I put in December. I started January and I got the book done, it took me about 45, 60 days. Then I had my editor go through and do it, because I'm not the best so I hired the best to help me out with editing it and making it more appealing to the masses. All I did was I transcribed it. I spoke into the mic, transcribe each chapter and gave it to the editor, and really made that happen.

Source: Pexels

[bctt tweet=”“I wrote my book by recording myself, transcribing the audio, and giving it to an editor.”  – @jasonlucchesi”]

One of the big things, I'm glad I talked about that, because I was able to revise the goals that I put down. One of the big things that I want to do, and we're actually getting it in motion as we speak, is start giving away houses to veterans. That's one of the big things that I want to do in life. We're constantly giving back to organizations that actually have the proceeds of the money that we donate go to the individual that are in need.

One of the things that I want to do is, just because it's real big with me, I have friends that have served, is some of these individuals, they're just not given the tools that are necessary from the VA. Some of these folks are out on the street, that served for us. They're doing amazing things still, even with their circumstances being in the dumps. They just need an opportunity and I would love to be the individual that provides them with that opportunity and rebuilds our community around giving back.

I don't want it to just be about me, I want people to learn, it's okay to give. It's just fine. You don't have to give a house, but even if it's like a meal, that's phenomenal too. You don't have to give away a house. If you find somebody and they're doing good in the community, they're just struggling on tough times, reach out a hand, pull them up. They may need you to do that. I needed that when I was getting started. I didn't have anybody but I kept watching that Rocky Balboa scene, where he kept talking about, “You're going to get knocked down over and over again.” I just had to get up. Some people they need you to extend that hand and help them get up. That's what I want to do. That's one of my big goals, one of my whys.

I love it. Great energy. We do similar. There's only two foundations or causes we support. One is Franciscan Children's Hospital. My son was in a coma from a snowboard accident back in 03.

Oh gosh.

He's in the business now, doing fantastic. He'll write the next book with us. My point is, we support them. Every single deal we close we send them a check. And then of course the veterans, because I couldn't agree with you more on that without repeating everything you just said. Great, great, great energy.

Here's my last question for you Jason, we'll wrap up with this thought and then I'll have some closing thoughts. Let's do that, kind of that visual idea with the book and the $100 bill thing you talked about.

Let's imagine for a moment that you are standing up on the stage in front of a group of let's say brand new investors. They're obviously battling with the same stuff you and I just talked about, the fear, the anxiety, the uncertainty, all that great stuff that's going to happen to people whether or not they made the right decision to be an investor, to be in that room with you. What would be two or three strategies that you'd recommend that they focus on to get them off to the right success path?

That's a great question, Chris. The first thing that anybody must do, put together a plan. If you don't put together a plan, how do you expect to know which foot goes where? It doesn't have to be a complicated plan. I always tell people, “Go in 90 day increments. There's no reason to make a one year, five, 10 year plan.” It's a complete … It's not a complete waste of time, but you're going to get much more done with the 90 day plan that I would encourage you to do.

Source: Pexels

[bctt tweet=”“If you don't put together a plan, how do you expect to know which foot goes where?”  – @jasonlucchesi”]

It doesn't need to be long. Maybe you have three things you want to accomplish. Maybe you want cash buyers, maybe you want deals, maybe you want to build a team. Perfect. Put those goals down. Maybe you want a list of 10 cash buyers that are going to buy your deals. Great, put that goal down. Then underneath the goal put your action steps. How are you planning on getting those cash buyers? It's important. It's great that we can put goals and all this kind of stuff, but without an action plan, you're not going to get those goals accomplished. That's step one. Step two is focusing on being that successful investor that you want to be, because everyone really can truly be great, they just need to believe it and unleash it because it doesn't take much to do this.

I'm not a rocket scientist. Chris has been doing this business for a while, but the things that are different between the people that are doing the business and the people that say they're doing the business is just the action in between. I would just recommend, once you have a plan in place, number two, execute it. Don't be afraid to change the plant. That's why I always recommend just 90 day increments, because the plans change. I'm sure you're well aware of that too Chris. You may put something down on day one, and it's completely different on day 90. Then you're like, “Man, I just spent time putting a one and five year plan into place, and now I have to change everything on that.” That's why I recommend not going that far ahead.

Yeah, I definitely agree. I definitely agree. I'm sorry to interrupt. Go ahead, keep rolling.

No, you're fine. Number three then … Number one we talked about business plan. Number two is making sure that you're putting that into good use and making the actionable steps needed in order to see the results and the goals that you want. One of the big things too that you can take away is, if you haven't seen the movie The Secret, the one key component that's missing from it is it's great to have positive thoughts and to imagine yourself driving a Lamborghini or whatever it is that you want. But the main thing that they failed on in the movie was how to actually take action, because it's not all about having these positive thoughts and radiating with what you want.

You have to go out there and do it. But I will tell you this, in 2008 I made a vision board based off of that movie. I'm looking at it now, when we moved, I found it. It was crazy. It was in our basement at our old house and I brought it with, just so I could see it every day as a reflection of what has accomplished. I put down stuff of being a better husband, being a better father. I had some material things on there, like a watch, a car, vacations that we wanted to do. 90% of what I put on the board came true. It was because I put together a small simple plan. I used my yellow pad every single day. It all came through. The only that didn't, and I just got caught up in so much being a father and a husband, that one of the big goals that I really wanted was to get a brand new Corvette. That's one of the big things that I really want.

I'm not a very big materialistic guy but I do like having nice stuff. I will tell you guys that because I know I said there's 90%, that was the remainder part, that was the 10% down there. If you want to have a vision board too, that could be number three from there, because if you're constantly seeing what you want, and you're constantly seeing what you need to do on your plan, you're going to put that all into action and you're going to start seeing the results you want. I always tell folks that we're working with, Chris, “Keep it simple. You don't need to over complicate this business.” Because once you do, you're going to probably say, “This isn't for me,” and you're not going to do it. Keep it simple and rock it out. You don't need to make this harder than it needs to be.

I love it, I love it, I love it. It was really awesome. Jason, I want to exchange books with you, so let's make sure we email each other and we'll get that done. It was really awesome, from the beginning to the end. I'd like you to share with these guys not just how to reach you, but also how to get hold of your book your referenced, any websites you want them to have. Go ahead and share that with them now before we wrap up.

Sure. The book right now that I wrote and released is on Amazon. If you want to go to Amazon and type in, “Right flipping now,” that's the book. Or, if you don't want to type that in you could go to www.getmyflippingbook.com. Love that URL by the way. That will take you to the Amazon page. If you want to find out about any of the trainings that we have, we have free training classes, you could go to getmyflippingtraining.com.

I know there's going to be some links below Chris from this class. But yeah, if people want to check that out, we've got tons of free content on my blog too, which is just www.JasonLucchesi.com. Again Chris, I want to say thanks for first of all having your team reach out to see if I would be interested in doing this with you. I'm really glad that I did. You are an amazing individual. You sound like an amazing husband, an amazing father, amazing mentor and coach. You're doing some awesome, awesome stuff. For those of you that are listening to Chris' podcast on a regular basis, you're definitely in some great hands here. This guy is legit. He's doing some awesome stuff. I'm extremely thankful to be a part of your podcast.

Thanks buddy, it was great to have you on. Let me wrap up with some thoughts for my smart listeners, as always my closing thoughts here. You can listen to this guys, and I hope you do, as Jason just alluded to, and other episodes, over and over and over. I hope you do that. But in order to experience that quantum leap that we alluded to at the very outset of the interview here, it is going to require that you take action. Jason hammered that home at the end here. So grab one, grab two, grab three of his action items he gave you. I wrote down four, five or six when he was talking, so I know you plenty there.

Literally, go take action. For goodness' sakes, go take action. Jason, again, I know we all have the same exact 168 hour week and those go by so fast and we all have families, so they're so valuable. Thanks for sharing one of those hours with us today.

Absolutely. Thank you Chris.

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