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Wes Rowlands: How a $630M Investor Decides Which Goals Matter · Real Estate Investing with RealDealCrew

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Most people never hit their goals because they never actually decided they wanted
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them.
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Wes Rowlands manages over six hundred and thirty million dollars in assets
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and grew up broke.
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And in this episode, you'll learn the one question he asks before he'll even talk
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strategy with someone. Why joining a team beats handpicking five mentors,
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and why real estate, private business,
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and public companies are the only three assets he trusts in the long haul.
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West built three investment firms from nothing,
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and he's not holding anything back.
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Let's get into it. And if you want systems behind episodes like this,
0:39
check out RealDealCrew.com.
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Let's get started.
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Wes Rollins joins me here today and you can follow him on Instagram.
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It's Wes dot Rollins. I'm gonna have that as a clickable link.
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We're gonna be touching quite a few things here today,
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but I really appreciate your time here today,
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Wes.
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Hey, I am super honored and ready to rock and roll,
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sir.
1:05
Well, we're gonna start with the origin story,
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how you got into real estate investing,
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because you've kinda have kind of a unique path there.
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Can you start w like I even read that you started moving to California when
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you were fairly young, sleeping on somebody's floor to where you are today
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has got a I mean, everybody likes to hear th those type of stories.
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Yeah, so I mean depending on how far we want to go back,
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I can give the sort of cliff notes version.
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So I was raised by a single mom.
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My dad left when I was four years old,
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right on the cusp of my fifth birthday.
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And my mother was just the best human on the planet.
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She figured out a way to raise me on nine dollars an hour.
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I didn't know we were broke until I was eleven.
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and before then, you know, we moved around a ton.
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I I forget how many apartments we lived in prior to that age,
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but eventually I learned that we were broke.
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And went to work as a caddy and learned a ton of business lessons there.
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And it was an amazing experience.
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I learned that you don't make money just because you show up,
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but because as a caddy, they have to pick you.
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so the for the first few weeks I made zero dollars,
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but I had to stay there all day because my mother would drive across town
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to drop me off on the rich part of the city and then drive all the way back
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to the Philadelphia International Airport.
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And when nobody would pick me,
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I just had to sit there all day.
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So I got to learn about market forces.
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And it's like, well, just because you're human is there doesn't mean you get money.
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You have to produce value in exchange for those dollars.
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Well, then eventually it rained and all the caddies left and
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I couldn't leave because it was like a five hour walk back home.
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So I stayed there and out of necessity and then it stopped raining
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and all the golfers showed back up.
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So then I got to learn about the laws of supply and demand.
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all the golfers were there. There was no other caddies there.
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I was the only option. So they had to pick me.
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And and I made I made sixty dollars that day.
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And that day changed the rest of my life because even in that game,
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it taught me all the lessons, you know,
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I don't want to say all the lessons that I needed,
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but a lot of lessons that I needed to grow up.
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One of them was being, you know,
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do not speak unless spoken to.
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That was like the number one rule of caddying.
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So I got to absorb a lot of information.
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And then also I messed up a bunch of
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times that first game. And but I did it honestly.
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You know, there was no deceit going on.
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It's just I didn't have the skill.
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And I apologized after every error and I tried my best to fix it immediately.
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And then at the end of the game where I was positive I was going
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to make zero dollars, because we're always always harder on ourselves than,
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you know, than the market is. or at least typically that's the case.
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And that guy gave me sixty bucks and I was like,
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Right. As long as you try your best,
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you're gonna mess up. But if you do it honestly and you apologize and
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you try to course correct immediately,
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you can still make money. And then anyway,
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on and on, I learned more and more lessons through caddying.
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And then eventually, you know,
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I worked all throughout high school at different jobs.
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I owned my own landscaping business with my best friend.
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and then and then my mom made me go to college.
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I didn't want to, but she forced me to.
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I ended up going to school for finance and then went to Wall Street thereafter,
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and then reached a point where
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I said to myself, I actually had a conversation with a boss who was I don't want
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to say depressed, but he was feeling very heavy negative emotions because
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he was many he was several decades older than I was and he was making
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a ton of money, but he had no autonomy.
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and he was being forced to fly across the country.
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He lived at Denver in the time and we worked in New York City and
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we worked in Canada, be basically all over the country,
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and and including Canada. And I decided I was like,
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I always wanted to be an entrepreneur,
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so now's the time.
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I put a $10,000 bet down with my buddy and said,
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If I'm if I'm not on a path for business ownership,
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by the time I'm 26, then you can take this $10,000.
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I put it into an account, gave him access to it,
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and said, Just take it. Don't don't don't even let me give you you have
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you have the permission now. So that was enough of a forcing function for me.
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And then three months later, I was out in California.
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I got a call from a mentor who said,
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Hey, you know, I need some help growing and sustaining my business.
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And
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You can help me grow my clientele.
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And in exchange, you can grow your own clientele.
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And that was in the wealth management space.
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And I was already working in finance.
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So I said sure. and then long story short,
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fast forward, I became a partner and then we created another company.
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now there's three companies, all doing essentially the same thing:
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investment management in the field of private business,
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public companies, and real estate.
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And here we are today in securities alone.
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We manage about six hundred and thirty million dollars.
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and that does not count, you know,
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advising on real estate or my own personal real estate holdings
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and then private business holdings as well.
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So I hope hope that's enough or that's a long winded answer to your question,
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but I hope that's enough detail for you.
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No, that's that that was great.
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You know, w one of the things that stands out there,
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Wes, is that, you know, as a caddy,
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you're being you're let's just let's face it,
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you're kind of probably be surrounding yourself with kind of those those people
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where you kinda wanna be. You know,
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we're we're always told to surround yourself with those people where you know,
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the achievement level that you're trying to trying to hit.
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But
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What I think is really telling there is that you took that as an opportunity.
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You were you said you were absorbing this information and then actually applying it.
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I actually don't think a lot of people think of things that way or they they
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let all of this stuff just kinda happen around them without learning from
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the from the lessons that are just readily available around us.
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Does that make sense?
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Absolutely. If I had to give one upgrade to that that I've learned over time,
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is I'm familiar with the phrase of you become the top five people you hang
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out with the most. If I had one wish around that phrase is to actually edit it
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a s a small amount, which is instead of going and hanging out with five different
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people, go and join five different teams.
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And this might sound like you know like minutia,
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but it's not.
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When you go and insert yourself into a team,
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which is which has a natural hierarchy,
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you there's so many more social dynamics and persuasive psychological elements
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to a team than there would be just with like a one-on-one relationship.
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If I had one cheat code to tell my future son,
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that would be it. Go and find a team,
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insert yourself on it, and that takes care of 97% of the work because.
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The psychological forces will be so strong where you're either gonna quit
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the team or you're gonna do the freaking work that the team requires because
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the team is immovable. Assuming you join a solid team,
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right? The quality here is very important.
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So that would be the one upgrade that I would announce to to your audience.
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Yeah, that's especially important.
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I you know, this is one of the reasons why I'm involved in as many local networking
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groups as I am. Just because a lot of the people in that group,
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they're either they've been there or done that or they have a connection
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to somebody else. Like it's it's just a great way in which to scale your network
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and your ability, actually.
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Without a doubt. I mean it it sounds super weird,
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but I think persuasion has to do with proximity.
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That's why I tell my team constantly.
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People will are very likely to do the thing that is closest to them at the time.
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Now the problem becomes when there is a goal,
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most goals are often to the distance.
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So that's why very it's very hard to accomplish any sort of goal because it's
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not in close proximity to you.
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So then you just gotta, in my opinion,
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you have to use the the
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the psychological framework of the three R's remind routine reward.
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And then of course the strength of those things become very important.
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So when you go and join a team,
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let's say, let's say the goal is to,
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I don't know, lose weight, and you go and join a bodybuilding team,
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which I did. So I do what's called men's physique bodybuilding competing.
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And the only reason I'm saying that is because up until that time,
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I air quotes worked out for I don't know,
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15 years.
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straight and I would have told myself,
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in fact, I did tell myself, it's like,
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you know, I I've tried everything,
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but I still looked like I kind of worked out.
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If that makes sense. Like girl girls that I would date would be like,
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hey, do you do you work out? question mark.
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And I'd be like, yeah, like seven days a week.
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So when I finally joined a team,
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I realized that that gravity of the team was so strong.
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Actually, funny enough, the team is called Zero Gravity,
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but weirdly enough, but I then did the program to 100%,
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where I never did it 100% prior.
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And the funny thing was, I is I wasn't analyzing my actions because
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I'm I'm an analyst by hardwiring.
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I wasn't analyzing my actions when I was on the team.
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It's because the team inserted itself in a close proximity to me,
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as an example.
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If I wouldn't show up to a workout on time,
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I would get multiple text messages from the members of the team saying,
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we're waiting on you. Now that had nothing to do with,
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I'm trying to get a six-pack. It had everything to do with there's
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a proximity thing here and with other humans.
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And when you feel pressure from other humans,
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right, you are you are very likely to act or quit one or the other.
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But there's no real gray area.
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Again, depending on the quality of the team.
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Hmm. That's really interesting.
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I I especially think you're probably well,
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you have to be the first person that I've run into that incentivized themselves
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to the point of putting ten grand in an account and telling your buddy
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he can have it like that. Like what what what drove you to do that and
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did was that a y a unique idea or did you steal that from somebody?
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No, it was it you know, I didn't steal it from anybody,
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but that it's not a unique idea in the sense that Charlie Munger once said,
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Show me the incentive and I'll show you the outcome.
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And nine times out of ten, what we think as humans,
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what we think we need is not actually what is needed.
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So as an example, and sorry, I like to use fitness examples.
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So I was in a meeting, a boardroom meeting a a handful of months ago.
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And this guy comes up to me, he said,
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Hey, you know, I I heard that you're training for your next competition.
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And I was talking to Gary and he said,
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you know, for me to pick your brain on a few things.
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He said, you know, what diet would you recommend?
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And I said, time out, because this is typically what people think,
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right? They think it's the plan that's the problem.
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Like, I was just doing the wrong plan.
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Where I am actually questioning the doing,
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but the prerequisite to the doing is the meaning.
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So I said to him, hey, before we even get to that,
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on a scale of zero to 10, how important is this to you?
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Zero being it's not important at all,
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10 being you will die unless you get the result.
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And his answer was six.
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And I said, okay, great. That makes our conversation super easy.
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And I had enough rapport with him to kind of give it to him cold turkey here.
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I was like, there's no sense in us having a conversation about this because
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it doesn't matter what I tell you,
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you will not do it.
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Anything seven and below is might as well be zero.
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A lot of life is lost between one and seven because those
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one through seven items give the illusion of I'm motivated when you're not.
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Like life is too important to be operating on sevens through ones,
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if that makes sense. Like we're only gonna focus,
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whether we like it or not, we're only gonna focus on the eight through tens.
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But in our plans, we put a whole bunch of sevens and we're just never gonna
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get around to it. Why? Because the the next day when you walk into the office,
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you're gonna have fires that are that are already burning.
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And those are for sure eight through tens.
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So if you think your seven is going to replace the current nine on your desk
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at the office, that's delusional.
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So the only way you're going to accomplish big goals,
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in my opinion, is ideally you make them tens.
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I'm willing to go down to eight.
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But like if it's not a ten through eight,
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it's like you might as well take it off your list.
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Just putting in the parking lot saying,
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I'll get to it another time, I'll revisit another time.
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So if I've had any, you know, success at all,
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like that that would be a major reason why.
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Well, it it sounds like the the concept of team gravity is is really part
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of your culture. Like how have you been able to implement this into your
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day to day operations and the people that you surround yourself with
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in your business?
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So number one is I made the mistake of having a culture where it said,
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okay, we can work from home. That will never happen again.
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so I r reversed that of no, there's not going to be any more work from home.
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Now, certain employees are still on like two days work from home,
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but I will be in the process of even reducing that.
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I just believe that having a beehive.
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Sort of situation where everybody is local and you all ping off of each other.
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There's things that it doesn't even matter what you say.
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It's you see the other guy across the room and he's doing things,
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right? You see that people are dressed up.
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There's a certain presence, there's a certain energy that that that girl over there
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is bringing to the table. You lose all of that when you're working from home.
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And it's no disrespect to people who have that policy,
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but we're not we don't have that policy.
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Right? Like I I want this perpetual.
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Energy that is self-created even without words.
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And then once you add leadership and you add words to that,
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like hey, people like us do things like this,
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or we're gonna get to a billion under management,
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or hey, we stay on offense always.
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Now, in my opinion, you have a culture.
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So let's dive into the the assets that you have under management.
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Where did real estate specifically get pulled into that world?
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And quick timeout, I don't know if this is valuable to you,
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but for some reason on my end,
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your video and audio is is choppy.
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Is it the same thing for you in reverse?
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A little bit, but that's one of the reasons why I use Riverside.
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the the feeds are actually being uploaded independently,
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so when we're all said and done the the quality will be quite quite good.
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okay. I'm so sorry for interrupting.
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I just wanna make sure I didn't disappoint you if there was something off.
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No, I appreciate you calling that out.
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So I'm sorry, but would
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you mind repeating that question?
15:35
Yeah, I was gonna ask you, you you have over six hundred million dollars in assets.
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When did real estate become part of those that that
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Well, so the funny thing is is that that six hundred and thirty million doesn't even
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doesn't even count real estate.
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so I was lucky enough to get what I think is excellent training on Wall Street.
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I know a certain amount of people look at Wall Street as like,
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these evil villains. I don't look at it that way at all.
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I mean, it's just like the NBA of basketball,
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right? That Wall Street is is the NBA of finance.
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When you go there
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You have no choice. Talk about teams.
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They expect that this is the most important thing in your life by far.
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Right? You and if and if if you don't take it that seriously,
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you are filtered out honestly by the first interview.
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So that gave me a holistic sense
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and appreciation for finance. So every different type of asset class,
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we were.
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Held accountable to research and to study if it was relevant to our clients.
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And what I find found time and time again,
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just repeatedly, over my last 20 years of working in finance,
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is my favorite three assets on the planet for long-term assets:
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real estate, private business,
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public companies. Like I look at people's balance sheets all day long.
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So, and this might not be very surprising to you,
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but oftentimes.
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What we see on the internet or what we have in conversations with neighbors
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and friends, very rarely, in my experience,
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does it actually mirror reality.
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Because the internet obviously oftentimes can be used as just kind of like
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a big media machine. So there's like,
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you know, clickbait and headlines and all these types of things that
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can kind of skew perception. And then honestly,
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you're not really you're not going to talk to many people in your life,
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most likely.
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That are gonna give you a fair and honest overview of their balance sheet.
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And honestly, a lot of people don't even understand their balance sheet.
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And I say that respectfully. So
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When I was going through this,
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I was like, okay, I get to actually see the x-ray of everybody's financials.
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What are the things that I see as most effective,
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by the way, over a long duration of time?
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And I made a decision a long time ago for myself.
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This is not advice, just for myself,
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of I only want to play financial games and also any other types of life games that
18:01
I'm willing to essentially play for life.
18:03
Because what I noticed is.
18:06
At a certain age, I started to see people change course.
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And that just essentially meant that they had to stop whatever game they were
18:14
playing. And by the way, starting to get okay at,
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and then they would go back to the rookie level of a different game,
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whether it be a different career or a different investment strategy,
18:24
whatever that be. And then I got to see that the successful people that I admired,
18:29
they just played the same game.
18:32
And maybe same like three to five games since they were like in their teens.
18:36
I mean, Tiger Woods, right, you know,
18:40
was a phenom when I was growing up.
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And turns out, if you just read any books about him,
18:46
it's like, because by the time he was in his mid-20s,
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he was he's been playing golf for 23 years.
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Now, if you do something, right,
18:57
almost unidimensionally for 23 years.
19:01
And by the way, do it seriously and put a lot of density of hours into those
19:05
23 years. It turns out you can become really excellent at that thing.
19:10
Most people from my experience.
19:13
They rarely do 20 days of something.
19:15
Now they might string together two years of semi-trying something,
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but when you actually document it on an Excel table,
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it's like, you didn't even do 12 solid focused hours of that thing.
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I've been guilty of this too, by the way.
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So that's not me throwing stones.
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so I think there's something to say for that.
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So early on in my career, I recognize,
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like, like I really like these three assets because the people that I admire,
19:40
they have these three assets.
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There's not there's no hocus pocus around it.
19:44
They're not getting sold on some gold,
19:45
shiny object or or silver bullet.
19:48
They're not they're not riding the next trend.
19:51
They're just acquiring those three assets in perpetuity.
19:55
Now, full transparency, my favorite asset by five,
19:59
by far is private business. By far.
20:01
Right? You get the most, in my opinion,
20:03
you get the most tax advantages from it.
20:04
You can when you when you are focused on building and operating a private business.
20:09
And you focus on enterprise value.
20:10
So you're not just treating the business,
20:12
right? What I tell clients is like when you have a business,
20:14
you have to decide do you want to practice a business or an enterprise?
20:17
Right? So an enterprise is basically an asset,
20:21
and you build enterprise value.
20:22
And when you do that, it takes a long period of time,
20:25
but then you can sell that business off of what are called multiples.
20:28
And my caveat for this is that I only like or love private business
20:35
as my number one asset if.
20:37
I own and operate it. I'm unwilling to invest in any anybody else's private
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businesses. Why? Because they're so darn hard to grow.
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You're trying to find a unicorn.
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Well, I'd rather bet on myself in that case than try to find a unicorn that probably
20:52
is not as committed to me and my money as I am.
20:55
Now, for public companies, I'm totally willing to,
20:58
and I literally invest every single week in public companies,
21:01
literally. because those are essentially small businesses.
21:05
That were the unicorns that are the most excellent of their class of all time.
21:10
Now, again, these are not recommendations,
21:11
but think about Google, Apple,
21:13
Home Depot, Coca-Cola, Johnson and Johnson.
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I can go on and on down the list.
21:17
These are superior businesses.
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I mean, literally by mathematical definition.
21:22
And we now have such efficiencies in finance where we can purchase ownership
21:26
of these companies within 10 minutes of wanting to.
21:28
That's crazy.
21:31
And then the final one is real estate.
21:32
Now, real estate, like you know,
21:34
I'm not super stoked on real estate.
21:37
It's a good asset. But where my trouble comes with real estate
21:40
is like the acquisition duration is relatively extreme for the other compared
21:45
to the other methodologies. but I just bought a rental property recently,
21:49
and I'm it j almost done the process of rehabbing it.
21:54
And
21:55
You know, it's been it's been,
21:57
you know, as I'm sure you're aware,
21:58
it it can be a nightmare at times.
22:00
but totally worth it. Although one of the reasons I I really en why real estate
22:03
is on my list of three is because,
22:06
you know, basically you can keep it forever.
22:08
Like my plan with that particular piece of real estate is to keep it for
22:11
the rest of my life.
22:12
Just to remind everybody, we're we're talking to Wes Rollins and you
22:15
can follow him on Instagram. I'm gonna have that as a direct clickable link
22:19
in the show notes. If you found some value in what we're chatting about so far,
22:23
do us a favor, share this with one of your friends,
22:25
and if you're watching us on f YouTube,
22:27
give us a like and subscribe. So Wes,
22:31
I'd like to explore the the business aspect that you were talking about because
22:35
I did read like you you just mentioned that that business ownership is
22:40
is likely your best asset. Let's reframe that a little bit for real estate investors
22:47
because sometimes I think people make the mistake of getting into this business
22:52
and actually not treating it as a business on on at least initially.
22:57
Like it becomes a side hustle or a or what have you.
23:00
What is what is that reframing that could put potentially mean to them when
23:06
it when it comes to business ownership?
23:07
One of the best entrepreneurs I've ever worked closely with had
23:11
a real estate business. So he built what I would call a vertical stack.
23:15
absolute killer of a guy. So he started out as a broker for a bank.
23:19
So he would make a bunch of commissions off of real estate transactions
23:23
of finding them commercial space.
23:25
And then he developed his own class B and Class C apartment unit.
23:31
or apartment complex business where he would buy the assets.
23:36
He would also use investors' money.
23:38
So he'd put some of his own money,
23:39
he'd use primarily investors' money as well.
23:41
And then he owned the management company on top of it.
23:45
And then he also owned the brokerage company that would be responsible
23:50
for those transactions. So he made money all vertically throughout the stack.
23:56
And
23:57
Difference that I would say with him and other people that I've seen in real estate.
24:00
By the way, this guy owned two billion with a B,
24:03
two billion dollars worth of real estate.
24:05
Now, there's very few people in this world that own that amount of real estate.
24:11
And the density of cash flow that he created,
24:14
specifically because he treated it as a business and not just an asset class,
24:19
is what, in my opinion, made him very wealthy.
24:21
Now, that vertical stack.
24:25
Allowed him to have an ecosystem and he made money by bouncing around
24:31
in that ecosystem. And then also that ecosystem subsequently created
24:35
a culture for his employees and a culture for his tenants.
24:40
So, as an example, right, when you go to your to a management company,
24:45
if that management company has the same look,
24:47
feel, and vibe and communication style as
24:51
Right, the brokers that you worked with,
24:53
you start to feel more comfortable.
24:56
And then also when, shoot, they own,
24:59
I'm I'm about to move to St. Louis from Philadelphia.
25:02
this community has a property in St.
25:05
Louis. I am more likely to use this community,
25:09
right? Because that was the culture,
25:11
because I the devil I know is better than the devil I don't.
25:14
So this guy just did a brilliant job of bringing a sense
25:17
of professionalism and community to an otherwise segmented market.
25:22
And he did that through the vertical stacking I was referencing earlier.
25:25
You know, one of the things that I'd be curious to understand how you've solved this
25:30
problem and I'm gonna put this as as a a f problem.
25:33
I I when it comes to asset management,
25:37
financial advisors, and property managers,
25:40
I'd I'd put you know, and and there's a connection of thread here.
25:44
There's it's always been a struggle for me to find people where
25:48
our interests are aligned. Can you talk a little bit about how you've done that?
25:54
With the people you work with?
25:55
yeah, I mean, so we now have four generations of clients and the only
26:01
way that you can accomplish that is if you produce value for your clients.
26:07
So that that's that those are table stakes.
26:10
I mean, especially in the world when you're managing high net worth
26:14
and ultra high net worth families money,
26:17
they have a very limited tolerance for you not
26:22
doing well for them and protecting and growing their wealth.
26:26
You know, so the mar the market is is reinforcing right out of the gate.
26:29
and then if we do a good job, we also get paid.
26:33
So as long as there's that reciprocal determinism,
26:37
then you can build a phenomenal business.
26:39
Now if there's not and the day that there's not,
26:41
your business will start to decline.
26:43
Period. Now also
26:46
That's not to say like not everybody is a good fit for us.
26:50
And we are not we are also not ashamed to say,
26:52
and I don't say this in a gotistical way,
26:54
we will only take on clients that are a good fit,
26:58
which that's what I would say to a lot of entrepreneurs out there
27:00
is I understand that when you're first getting your business off the ground,
27:03
you kind of have to take whatever you can get because you got to put food
27:05
on the table. I was there also,
27:07
I totally get it. Like you said earlier,
27:09
I slept on a floor for many years,
27:12
like multiple slash many years.
27:14
'Cause I put so much money back into it into my business and getting clients.
27:18
So I know what it's like to have to take whatever business you can get.
27:20
But then at a certain point you have to have the maturity to say,
27:24
well, I don't want to build a golden jail cell.
27:27
Like I don't want to build a clientele where I don't want to talk to them.
27:32
I want to build a clientele where I love talking to them,
27:34
where even accountability discussions on either side are done with respect and
27:40
And an understanding that, hey,
27:42
we're in this together for life.
27:44
And if I'm not getting something I need,
27:46
I need to be able to tell you,
27:47
and if and vice versa. So, but in that case,
27:50
the championship is one in the draft.
27:52
You know, if you're not picking the right clients out of the gate,
27:55
then good luck. They're there's not gonna get better over time,
27:57
I promise you. So having a real discipline of saying,
28:02
hey, this is gonna be a mutually beneficial relationship.
28:05
And if it's ever not on either side.
28:08
then we have to respectfully part ways because neither of us can afford
28:12
to waste time.
28:13
Well let's dive into tech a little bit.
28:15
you know, AI has a been a big disruption in a lot of industries right now.
28:20
How has how have you adopted it?
28:23
How is it changing your landscape?
28:25
Any insight there?
28:27
So honestly, right now, it's been the bulk of the AI tools that I have seen have
28:34
been more sex appeal than pragmatic productivity tools.
28:40
But there's a minority of them that really help accelerate our our work output.
28:45
So as an example, something like at a very pragmatic level,
28:48
you know, I can take my notes that I keep every I literally
28:52
create a journal entry every single day,
28:53
take notes on finance, whatever I learned for that day,
28:56
mental models, et cetera. And I can put it into any of the AI models
29:01
or large language models. and it can output a presentation for me with our branding,
29:06
our look, feel, vibe, et cetera.
29:08
Now that's something that used to take me,
29:10
I don't know, four hours, and it now takes me 15 minutes maximum.
29:15
I do that all the time.
29:18
Yeah, br probably probably twice per week.
29:21
So that'd be a pragmatic exam pragmatic example of how it's accelerating
29:25
our business.
29:26
Yeah, it it's it's been interesting that you say that.
29:29
I've you know, I don't know if you've looked into what I do,
29:32
but this is where I come in. You know,
29:34
I help real estate investors implement some of these tools.
29:38
And sometimes it kind of surprises them because in in many situations we
29:44
can do a simple automation and completely bypass using AI at all.
29:48
It's it's almost
29:50
Some of the stuff is it's just adding a level of complexity that just isn't needed.
29:55
I totally agree. One of the greatest lines from Elon Musk
29:57
was essentially saying something like,
29:59
you know, the biggest sin of engineers is optimizing something that should have
30:04
never existed in the first place.
30:05
Well, is is there anything else that we didn't hit on Wes that we
30:08
we probably should try to?
30:10
No man, I think that was great.
30:11
I you know, I think if I had to add anything else is
30:15
Wealth takes work, and this sounds obvious,
30:19
but a lot of commentary around wealth building suggests the opposite,
30:25
you know, of this mentality of like,
30:27
you know, just build passive income,
30:29
bro. It's like, well, okay, but do you know how much work it takes to get
30:35
to a level of critical mass of passive income?
30:38
I mean, you have to have for most people.
30:42
The at least that I talk to when I say,
30:44
okay, like, hey, how much passive income do you need?
30:46
Just out of curiosity. What they don't realize,
30:49
and then we do the math, is like,
30:50
okay, so what you need is literally tens of millions of dollars of real estate,
30:55
right? To get the level of net passive income,
30:57
which is also a big thing, right?
30:59
Net passive income, you need tens of millions of dollars of real estate.
31:03
How do you think that happens?
31:05
And by the way, it's not their fault that they have fallen victim.
31:11
To that mental trap. It's because there's so much marketing around investing
31:17
and all of like all of these like quick get rich quick schemes.
31:21
And these marketers, by the way,
31:22
a lot of them, or at least a few of them,
31:24
are really good at what they do.
31:27
They're really good at selling you on this dream.
31:31
So if you believe that, it is not your fault.
31:35
It's
31:36
It's the they're they're throwing,
31:37
you know, hundreds of millions of dollars at convincing you otherwise,
31:40
right? outside of your intuition.
31:42
So just remember that wealth takes work,
31:44
it takes a lot of time. That's why I say like you only play the games that
31:47
you want to play forever or at minimum ten years.
31:49
So if you are thinking that like,
31:52
this investment vehicle is gonna get me retired in three years,
31:56
it's like, okay, show I don't know anybody who that's ever happened to.
32:00
And I know a lot of people, right,
32:02
within the world of wealth. I've been doing this for 20 years.
32:05
And I can tell you literally, I know zero people.
32:09
Me personally, I know zero people who've accomplished that goal.
32:15
But I know many people who've done it the other way,
32:18
who've built value off of initially their sweat and trial and error
32:24
and trying to figure out what is best for the marketplace and their end clients,
32:27
and offered it for a great price,
32:30
and they provided great value for that price,
32:32
and then they did it again.
32:34
And again and again and again.
32:36
And eventually they made so much money where they could afford to take
32:39
a piece of that money and invest it in other assets that also
32:43
had the same commitment to value contribution at a fair profit margin
32:49
by by contributing value to society.
32:52
So both of those things can go off into perpetuity and keep growing.
32:56
Well, Wes, this has just been fantastic.
32:58
We're gonna jump into the Rapid Fire and close out this episode.
33:01
But before we do, I wanna remind everybody one more time.
33:04
You can find Wes on Instagram.
33:07
Look for Wes dot Rolands. That's gonna be a clickable link in the show notes
33:12
to make it easy for everybody to find you,
33:14
Wes. But if you're ready, we'll jump into the Rapid Fire and close out this episode.
33:18
Let's do brother.
33:20
What lie do real estate investors often tell themselves?
33:23
That's gonna be easy.
33:24
If you could go back in time and give your younger self one piece of advice,
33:27
what would it be?
33:28
I was first an auditor for my first job directly out of college.
33:32
I should have gone in the sales instead.
33:34
That's interesting answer. You know,
33:36
this is one of those things that I've been telling my daughter a
33:39
lot lately because she she started her own business and I I I have
33:44
a hard time thinking of one skill that everybody should be working on sales
33:50
is is that number one skill.
33:52
Yeah, business is sales at the small,
33:55
medium-sized business level. It business is sales.
33:57
Business schools have confused the public because number one,
34:03
people don't like sales because sales involves rejection and humans don't like
34:07
rejection. So it has permeated our school system of where literally when
34:13
you go into any reasonable college,
34:15
basically they all look down on sales.
34:17
None of them have it in their standard curriculum,
34:19
at least from what from what I know.
34:21
You almost have to take it as an elective.
34:22
and then by the way, having a sales class is nowhere as good as actually going
34:27
and selling things. But because society looks down on it,
34:31
because all of society is scared of rejection,
34:33
that doesn't mean that you shouldn't do it.
34:35
The number one s skill in business,
34:37
by far, nothing is even relatively close.
34:40
The number one skill is sales.
34:42
And the fact that it's such an icky word for people.
34:46
That actually even makes it better for you because it keeps a whole
34:49
lot of people out. But if you can be the guy or girl who does sales
34:53
in an ethical and moral and like upright way,
34:57
you'll kill it. Now, ideally in a perfect world,
35:01
you probably want to do that when you're younger because when you first start out,
35:05
you're not good. And when you go into sales,
35:08
you're typically gonna get paid commissions.
35:10
So if when you're not good, that means you're not gonna sell many things,
35:13
which means you're not gonna make much money.
35:15
Which also means that the younger you are,
35:17
the easier you can absorb that non-making money portion of that equation.
35:21
If you wait till you're older and you have kids and you have a mortgage,
35:25
et cetera, it's just lower probability.
35:27
It doesn't mean it's not possible,
35:28
it's just lower probability you're gonna have the guts to make
35:30
the leap because there's just more stakes involved.
35:32
As you were scaling your business,
35:34
could you go back in time and tell me what was your first hire and what
35:39
was your most recent hire?
35:40
First hire was an assistant and I was scared as heck to make that hire because
35:45
again, it's the first time you go and you say,
35:47
well, shoot, I'm gonna be giving my money to somebody who doesn't have
35:53
a direct ROI. Like that person's not gonna be selling.
35:57
So I can't do the equation of like,
35:58
I'm gonna pay them this, but they're gonna make me back this.
36:00
So I just had to really wrap my mind around,
36:04
not that it's too complicated of an idea,
36:06
but I had to get emotionally okay with it.
36:08
Which was, but this will free me up to then go and make more sales to bring
36:13
in more business. And I still wasn't okay with it,
36:16
to be honest with you. I just trusted my business coach and he said,
36:19
No, you gotta do this. So I did it.
36:20
I never looked back. And then the most recent hire was
36:26
we just hired a what's called a power planner.
36:29
So somebody to build out our financial plans.
36:32
And
36:33
Similarly there, right? Like as you as you increase in skill set acquisition,
36:38
you increase the price of payroll.
36:41
So I remember when my payroll was just,
36:44
you know, it's it was $60,000 and then it was $100,000.
36:48
And then it was, you know, and now we're in the hundreds of thousands per month.
36:52
And I can tell you it never it it it is it has at least never gotten comfortable
36:56
for me. But every time I force myself to think of like,
37:02
We made a ton of progress because those people are awesome.
37:06
So I just have to kind of put my psychological financial trauma to the side and say,
37:11
trust the process. If you look at every company that you admire,
37:14
they all have more people than you do.
37:16
You know, there's probably a formula there.
37:18
So just follow it.
37:20
Th and the one of the this is that one's especially interesting,
37:23
Wes, because knowing where you started from and reali the realization that
37:29
you and your family were broke for lack of a better way of describing it,
37:34
did you find that especially hard to overcome?
37:37
That kind of moving into that I I don't want to call it an abundance mindset,
37:42
but kind of breaking from those change chains,
37:46
if you will, and and
37:48
directing your life in a different direction and in the financial
37:51
the fan fa financial mentality of things.
37:54
Yes. And I can tell you, I still have to fight the,
37:58
you know, poverty type of mindset.
38:01
One of the first air quote luxury items that I purchased when I was,
38:05
you know, in my early preteens
38:10
was optimum nutrition protein whey protein powder.
38:13
And it was $30. It was like $29.99 at the time.
38:17
And I can tell you still my default when I
38:21
When I go and I buy anything expensive,
38:23
is my my dumb limbic system,
38:26
my lizard brain says, dude, do you know how many protein tubs that is?
38:31
For some weird reason, that's the calculation that my brain does.
38:36
And it says, like, hey, you're about to give up a whole bunch of money,
38:39
aka protein tubs. Is it gonna be worth it?
38:41
It's probably not gonna be worth it.
38:43
I have to manually override that poverty type of mindset.
38:49
almost on every single big expense item I have.
38:52
I don't know how to get rid of it.
38:53
I just know how to politely say to it,
38:55
if not sometimes like in a frustrated way,
38:57
thank you for sharing, but I'm gonna trust the process and do it anyway.
39:01
The f last question is, what single tool or process have you implemented that
39:06
has had the biggest time saving impact?
39:07
Understanding the language of human decision making.
39:10
some people would call it persuasion,
39:11
but I know that's an icky word.
39:13
So again, getting back to sales,
39:15
but literally being committed to understanding how humans make decisions
39:21
so that you can help guide them to make a decision and whether or
39:25
not your product or service is a good fit for them.
39:28
If you do not study that,
39:31
Then it's like a basketball player not studying from great basketball players.
39:36
Like you're never gonna learn how to play basketball on your own.
39:39
It's just not possible. The game is too sophisticated now for you to have
39:42
any amount of competitive capabilities if you don't study from
39:48
the successful patterns that already work.
39:49
So, as an example, the amount of times where I've seen a presentation,
39:53
like I just gave a presentation to the top wealth managers in Orange County.
39:58
That's where I live in Orange County.
39:59
Top wealth managers in Orange County,
40:01
and they asked me to speak to the group.
40:04
And I said, Hey, one of my the biggest things that I've seen in this industry
40:08
is what many advisors are calling presentations.
40:12
It's like they're not presentations,
40:14
you know. And if you get like a presentation from like a big corporate headquarters,
40:18
you you're getting, you know, and I say this respectfully.
40:21
An intern is probably creating those with AI or something like that.
40:25
And it doesn't have any of the persuasive tactics that has minimal value.
40:29
So, as an example, you can immediately increase the persuasiveness of
40:34
a pitch just by doing two things.
40:37
These are easy: urgency and scarcity.
40:41
Now, again, you do those ethically.
40:43
So urgency is: hey, there's a limited amount of time.
40:46
Now, ideally,
40:47
Proximity, right? We bring that very close.
40:50
Hey, we need an answer by tomorrow at 5 p.m.
40:53
Now, scarcity is a limited number of units.
40:56
Hey, we need an answer by 5 p.m.
40:59
tomorrow, and we've already interviewed five other prospects,
41:03
and there's only one spot left.
41:04
Now, that has to be true. This is what drives me crazy about some marketers,
41:08
is they just lie about this and that's gross and it's immoral.
41:11
So build your business where those things can and are true.
41:16
So if you did nothing else to your presentation,
41:18
you just added those two things,
41:20
you would severely increase the probability of converting that prospect to a client.
41:27
Well, Wes, this was just fantastic.
41:29
I really appreciate you giving us the time here today.
41:31
Again, it is Wes. You can find him on Instagram.
41:35
Clickable link in the show notes.
41:36
But hope you consider coming back again sometime.
41:39
This was awesome.
41:40
Sir, thank you so much. That was great.
41:41
It was an honor and a pleasure.
41:42
Well Wes, just give it a moment.