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The Power of Being a Super Connector · The Expert Method

• speaker-0: Welcome back to Systems of Scale, I'm Ian Gatsky. Today I'm joined by Julia Hurley. Julia has built a career that spans real estate, politics, coaching, and athlete advocacy. But what's interesting is not the number of things that she's doing, it's how all of them connect together. Everything she builds seems to come from the same place. A deep relationship pipeline, strong systems, and a willingness to do the unglamorous work for a long time. In this conversation, we get into what it actually means to build relationships that lead somewhere, why most networking falls flat without clear intent, and how simple systems, when they're done right, become the foundation of everything else. We also talk about how she's applied that same thinking to working with athletes in the NIL world. The level of structure that she provides for athletes is pretty much non-existent outside of the work that she is doing. If you're new here and you get value from this conversation, hit subscribe and share it with a friend. And now here, is my conversation with Julia Hurley. Julia, thank you so much for being here. speaker-1: ⁓ my God, it's my pleasure. Thank you so much. speaker-0: quick Google search will show anybody that you have built quite the career that spans across several different areas. Real estate, coaching, media, athlete, advocacy, politics, impressive. But when I hear you describe it on other shows, it sounds like those things all feed into each other as opposed to being completely isolated or separate projects. So I know in my own experience, I have to feel like I have to hold myself back from going and pursuing other opportunities at times. But how do you think about building a career where the different things that you're working on work together instead of just pulling you into different directions? speaker-1: Big thing that a lot of billionaires, millionaires, multimillionaires, they talk about on stage is seven levels deep. And really what that means is they're not going this way, they're going this way. And I think that we mistake seven levels deep as, okay, well, I have to start this career and then I have to start another career that gives me money and then another career or another avenue. Really, they all need to work together. It's a linear seven or more. You start the first one, you get it up and off the ground. It becomes wildly successful. And you can be amazing at just one thing. A lot of people are. Did you know that Colgate has a food line? You know, it's dope, but they are known for one thing. And then they go this way. They're like, well, we're to take all the money here and all the clientele we have here. And then we're going to really do a deep dive in what they're interested in and how we can sell them something else. And how we can make that the new thing, we'll put it under a different entity while it's still housed under our original ideas. And that's what conglomeration really looks like. It's like, this is, this is what I need to do to get where we want to be. We want that financial freedom. We want to be able to give back to the community at such a level that our names, we leave a legacy, it means something. And to be able to do that, you have to keep moving across all avenues. bringing all of that into one circle while each circle is a dot. It's a bubble, you're in the bubble. You're in the line, you're in the bubble. But it's seven levels plus. And it's just building on top of your existing clientele, listening to what their needs are, people's needs change, and being able to pivot and say, ooh, I can do that too. I just have to hire an extra couple of people because I have all the people already doing this and then doing it. speaker-0: Yeah, that's the big part, right? You can have all the ideas in the world, but then you got to go out and actually make it happen. And a big part of that for you, sounds like is getting other people around you or delegating those responsibilities to other people who are extremely capable, right? Hiring, you mentioned there. ⁓ You start doing one thing and you get really good at doing that one thing, helping somebody with one specific problem. You provide a specific service, like one service or one product. And then once that becomes very successful, then you look at, okay, speaker-1: percent. speaker-0: with the clients that I already have, the clients that I've been serving with this first thing, what else can I help people with? What's the next thing that they need to do? After I help them with this, what's the next thing? Or what comes right before this? And then you of expand out horizontally, which I think is a good way to kind of think about it. It's like horizontally through the timeline that is your buyer's journey or experience of their problems and needs. Then you kind of work your way forward and backward down that kind of timeline. Is that right? speaker-1: 100%. 100%. speaker-0: Sweet, ⁓ building that team, right? Because if you were just doing this all yourself, it would be impossible. Or you'd just never sleep, or you'd be a superhuman. ⁓ you have a lot of- speaker-1: You you build a team and then you feed the bench, you build the bench. And that is one of the most important things. It's a lot, a lot of business owners say, okay, well I've got me in place. And then they make the mistake of adding the salesperson first instead of in a personal assistant, right? You got you, then you have someone who takes things off your plate. Then you bring in someone else to create another you. No one's ever a hundred percent you, but you can get close to like 75. percent, maybe 80 % of someone who will be as passionate, as invested, as driven as you are. And then you build that person up and then you get that person an assistant. So that person takes stuff off that person's plate and then they hire and they build. And then of course, at some point, maybe one of the assistants wants to be brought in. So you're constantly building the bench of people to pull from. And that takes years of your life. People think this stuff happens overnight. It does not. And then when you finally have enough stuff in place, you hire an HR director that now just does all of that for you. And then it runs itself. Is it perfect? No, absolutely not. Nothing's ever perfect. People come, people go, stuff happens. But then you can start to focus on something else. And once you've built that business, again, that clientele is already there. What else can you give them? And then you start again. speaker-0: Mm-hmm. bench. That's the first time I ever heard that. love it. It's very, very topical. Find the people you can kind of sub in to take responsibilities off of your plate, the other leaders on your team's plate. But yeah, your point about it doesn't happen overnight. It's a very nonlinear path. You're going to make mistakes and it doesn't come without, you know, an emotional whirlwind, emotional roller coaster of cycling between. You've got it all figured out to what the hell am I doing? speaker-1: I got it all figured out. built this rocket and then it blew up and I don't know what to do. You know, that's what it is. speaker-0: And then you gotta just get back up, wake up the next day, put the pieces back together again and get back to soaring. Another way that I think about building a team, it starts with self-awareness, right? Obviously there's the logical side of things where you just, I can't be spending my time working on this thing, but in the grand scheme, You kind of have this vision of these are my zones of genius, my zones of excellence. These are the things that I truly love doing and they are the highest leverage things for the business. So you kind of identify what those things are for you. as the business owner and then you hire people onto your team, you bring people onto your team to take everything else off your plate so that you can eventually get into the position where you're just focused on your zone of genius and the highest leverage things of working on the business, growing the business, whatever those look like for you. So for you, your zone of genius, your superpower is connecting people, right? And working with people in connection. So when did you first realize that connecting people was really your superpower? speaker-1: I everybody has the ability to be what I would consider a super connector. I think everybody has this inside of them. They just don't realize it's there. So I remember during college, I got a job as a server and I really listened to my customers. Every person that came in, I would ask them, well, what do you do for a living? Where do you work? What brings you in today? And they would actually tell me. And most people just think that small talk, chit chat, whatever. And I'd be like, interesting. Well, did you know blank, blank, and blank or the next time they were in, I would remember that I would write it down. I'd remember it. And then I would research their company and have somebody to contribute to that conversation. And they would be very impressed and they would keep coming back. And then I started making more money and then you sell upsell and you do better and your numbers look better. And the management's like, what are you doing on these Friday lunches with these people that keep coming and asking for you? ⁓ because I invested in them. I wanted to hear about them and I took business cards. And I would follow up with every single person that handed me their business card via email, by phone call and just let them know, Hey, thank you so much for coming in. Thank you for your tip. Thank you for this. Or, Hey, I remember you said your dog died or your kid's graduation. I mean, it was never ending the amount of effort I put into other people's stories. And then I would think, Hmm, somebody else would say something. And I'd be like, ⁓ I know somebody that sat in my section that would fit this conversation really well. Do you know this person? And I live in a very small town and they would go, well, yeah, I know this person. Now we went to college together or we were in the same fraternity or sorority or whatever. And I'd say, well, this person said this the last time they were in here and they were looking for this. And you just said that I think that you should connect. Do you mind if I reach out after my shift and let them know that you were here? No, no problem. It started so early of being able to put people in places together that already knew each other, but they didn't know they needed each other. So it started, you know, 25 years ago. speaker-0: Wow. For me, it feels kind of like a chore. Like I go to all these events, right? I meet all these people, right? But it's just like, it's something that I just have not done as good a job as I know I can in keeping up with, right? Like I explained this to somebody and they're like, ⁓ you made like the whole relationship building process sound so transactional. But I'm like, I feel like it's required to, in order to actually build meaningful relationships is that moment beyond the initial conversation, the first time you meet them, right? Like I go to these events, get all the business cards, get all the contact information, send the initial text message and then. Most of the time, 95 % of the time, it just never goes anywhere else from there. But it sounds like for you, you learned early on that you speaker-1: See how that would be. I can see that in a lot of people. think one of the biggest things that. It is a a hindrance, I would say. Two people succeeding in relationship building, OK, is knowing what you're looking for in a relationship. So if you don't know what you're looking for, it is going to be a transaction. It's like, hey, I got your card. We had some small chat, some small talk, and now I don't know what to do with you. Really and truly, it's not necessarily you don't know what to do with them. You don't know why you were talking with them at all. You're not exactly sure how you fit into their life. So therefore they can't fit into yours. Right? If you are very purposeful and who you are connecting with, that will never be a problem. There are times where someone is so sweet and you know, they are being so genuine and they are trying to get to know you and you know, it is not a good fit. You know that they have absolutely nothing in common with you that you will never see this person again. They are so excited to talk with you though. I did this in politics. You listen, you could stand there for 45 minutes and it doesn't matter if there's 200 people waiting to talk with you. You stand there and you make eye contact with that person and you listen because that person, even if they have no business with you, will be your biggest fan or your biggest enemy. you need fans. Creating those super fans is a purposeful engagement. Or you get very important to the point where you have a handler that will then take you away from that situation so you don't look like the bad guy. 99 % of the time, the rooms you're in are not purposeful. And a lot of people feel like they went there, they went to this event, they got something out of it, but they didn't leave with anything that would feel like a good relationship or want to do business with people or have those people want to do business with you. Then you were still in the wrong group. speaker-0: 100%. And I think it underlines the point that you can often come back to in a lot of different endeavors, whether it's trying to go out and build relationships or just going out and trying to achieve anything. But it starts with getting clear on what are you trying to do? Like what is being purposeful and clear in what you're trying to create and what you're trying to go do. Right? Like, so it starts by getting clear with what you're trying to achieve. And I think as you're saying that, I think I went into a lot of events, a lot of rooms without that clarity of like, okay, I knew that I wanted to go out and meet people and that was it. Cause I was new, I'm down in Arizona. I am new to the business scene out here. My first business that I was working with is up in Wisconsin. So I just like wanted to meet people. And that was kind of the extent of my purpose. I think that's what I got out of it, right? I met a lot of people. I didn't, I didn't. Right. Exactly. So. speaker-1: what you did. speaker-0: I had to clarify a purpose beyond just the meeting of people, but finding a specific. And then I guess that makes sense too, because now that I'm saying things out loud, which is the beauty of these conversations, is it forces you to kind of say things out loud and you learn things. But it's like if I went into it with a purpose, you could communicate that purpose to the people that you're meeting. Because people will always ask you like, ⁓ what brought you to this event? Or what brought you here? It's like, ⁓ well, I'm looking for somebody to help me do this or da da da da. Is that something that you would? encourage people to do like myself, right? Before you go out, like network, try to build relationships, get clear on what you actually want. speaker-1: When I started in the real estate industry, I went to all of the networking events for local agents, right? It was all of these real estate agents and they were networking with each other. And I thought to myself, these are my competitors. Why am I in this room? They're not my peers yet. I haven't even sold anything. Why am I networking with people who are, I'm standing in line also waiting to go to a listing appointment, a seller hire me versus them. Why am I in this room? So I'll stop going. Why would I be there? I'm going to earn that relationship when I'm on the other side of the table, either presenting an offer to them or taking an offer from them. And they will know what kind of person I am and my integrity and my work ethic when we do business together. Then they will become a peer and then we can have a relationship. But I don't need to be in the room with them. So I started looking for national events, big ones, huge ones. I want massive ones. And there's thousands of agents in the room. And what did I do? I ordered 10,000 business cards and I literally sat them in every single chair. I went to these events. If the doors open at 8 a.m., I got there at 6 a.m. and I put a business card in every single chair. It had my name, my location, my phone number and a picture. That was it. In big letters, Knoxville, Tennessee, hire me. Or I'm the only 10 you see, I think is what it was. It was super funny, right? Anyway, I started getting phone calls of this is clever, you're so funny, I got your card, I didn't get to meet you, I love that you did this, this was a lot of work, I saw your cards on rows of benches, I see how much work you put into this. And then I was like, if you have referrals, please send them my way, can I get your full contact information? And then I would set them on a drip campaign that I created. One text a month of hey, how's it going in your area? And I would have to put that area into each contact. A lot of effort went into these relationships. And then I started getting referrals from all over the country. Somebody's relocating in Knoxville. I met somebody, I've got her card. She sends me a text message every month. And this happened over the course of two and a half years. This wasn't overnight. And then I started selling a hundred plus houses a year. A hundred plus a year. And then I started going to the events. for the agents in my area that were producing. And I had one-on-one lunches with my peers. And then it was like, what are you seeing in the market? How are your listings going? How are your buyers? Then it became a conversation of value and not just a room full of people that I'm like, so what are you doing? Well, I don't know, what are you doing? speaker-0: that that story is amazing. think two big principles to kind of underline there is that it doesn't take some magical kind of strategy. There's no skip button, right? It's just doing the thing that maybe seems obvious like, okay, I want to be the go-to referee from everyone all over the country for anybody that wants to move to Knoxville, Tennessee. Okay, I'm to go to the biggest real estate agent events and I'm going to put a business card on every single chair in there. and I'm going to make people laugh and I'm going to set up just a simple drip campaign where they get a text message from me every single month. And everybody could go do that right now. Right? Everybody could get 10,000 business cards, go to an event, but how many people have done it? I don't know if you go to those events anymore, but I imagine not many people are actually doing that. then, yeah, but it's like, it works. It's going to work. It's just like real estate, right? Like real estate investing is the guaranteed way to be a millionaire in 30 years, right? It just takes time and you got to take patience and just doing those hard. speaker-1: doubt anyone is doing it. speaker-0: Things that maybe don't scale, aren't magical, don't sound super fancy and fun like digital marketing and getting the perfect ad and building a great funnel, right? But just going out and boots on the ground, making things happen and then having the patience to stick with it long enough for it to pay off. I think is another, one of those general business principles that you see and hear a lot of successful people like yourself and others that we've talked to on the show say, right? It's just do the hard things day in and day out and have patience and in the long run. speaker-1: It will pay off. Consistency will beat talent every day of week. Twice on Sundays. Yeah. speaker-0: Yeah, a great Right, twice on Sunday, I love it. There's a good line to kind of double click on that is the hard work beats talent when talent doesn't want to work hard. Another one, and especially if you just do that consistently over a long time. Are there any other obvious on paper, but things that you did? speaker-1: Get organized and stay organized. A lot of people just throw things out there and they think they have a system. I'll tell you if you know you have a system. This is something that I have done multiple times. People listening to this, you're going, oh my God, how many hats does this woman wear? I totally get it. I totally get it. But I do this with my athletes. I want you to take a legal pad of paper with you everywhere you go for 24 hours. You can do this, I can do this, anybody can do this. And I want you to write down Every single thing you do every single thing you do is a new line woke up tingled brushed my teeth wash my face Put my clothes on like dirty clothes and hamper. I literally want you to write down Every single thing you do as if you are talking to a toddler and then at the end of the day I'm gonna read through that list and if I can't replicate everything that you did you do not have a system For example, it says wake up. I wake up Well, I'm up. Did I get out of the bed? I don't know. You didn't write it down. So I guess I'm just in the bed now. You've literally missed that too. So I can't replicate what you did. You do not have a system. You can talk to your AI. You don't have to do the pad. You can literally talk to your AI chat bot and say, listen, I'm going to tell you what I'm doing all day. want you to put this in order of what I told you and create an FTT, a first this, then this for me. And then I'm to print it out and I'm going to look at it and say, well, I'm literally missed 80 steps throughout the day. I cannot replicate this if someone else were to tell me what to do. You do not have a system. Create a system. Then you can take that and turn it into a training manual. And then you can take that and then you can hire someone and say, You do this step by step by step. If this is not the end result that I expect, either you didn't read it right or I didn't write it right. One of us is wrong and I'm going to fix it. You may have a training problem or you may have a trainee problem. At the end of the day, it's your problem. Either way. So if your systems are not created and you do not get organized, you do not have any. speaker-0: And those systems are absolutely essential for effective delegation, right? In order to get this thing effectively off of your plate and into the hands of, or into the responsibility of somebody else on your team, that they can take it over and you don't have to think about it anymore. You need to have those systems, right? And systems, SOPs, these terms were things that I had heard before, but as a first time business owner, you know, four years ago, I had no idea what that actually looked like tactically, like tangibly, but it literally simply is. just a written step-by-step process about how to do this thing the way that the best way that we know how to get it done, right? In order to complete this task, this is the exact step-by-step process, the best way that we know how to do it. And then, you know, obviously from there, I've found a lot of success in when you own a process, when you own a task, like you're responsible for this task, you now own that system, you own that process and you're responsible for making it better, making us better at what we do. And I stole that from Amazon Jeff Bezos idea of it's always day one We never use the excuse of this is how he's always done it for why we do something where we're always looking for ways to reinvent How we do what we do. Yeah, I love that the that is another one of those just simple just it sounds so simple But it is a lot harder than it sounds one. It takes a lot of time and it's never fun building SOPs creating us It sucks speaker-1: It is never fun. That's the least fun part of a business. speaker-0: But it's absolutely essential. speaker-1: It's necessary. And if you don't do it, you will not succeed at a level that I believe you would want to. me personally, I don't want to have to sell real estate every single day for the rest of my life to retire. Right? So now I invest in real estate. I develop, I own multiplexes and multifamily and I have this athlete sports management company and we own part of a title company and our stock portfolio and... You know what saying? Just name it. go. Name something that's literally started with our real estate business into contract management, into daily management, into personal management, into coaching, into training. All revolving around systems and models that were created for one business. And they just have to be carried to a new one. speaker-0: Exactly. And to your point, if you want to grow to the level where you don't have to be involved, like beyond just financial growth, right? Obviously that comes when you hire and you delegate, you can take on more, you grow your capacity. But if you want to get to the point where you're no longer involved as the owner and you can get out of working in the business to working on the business, that's you have to delegate, right? In order to effectively delegate, you have to create these systems. A couple of years ago, I built this tool that I've continued to update over time, but I call it the systems assistant. ⁓ AI where it will guide you through that process and work with you to creating those systems for any task in your business. So I'll leave the free DIY build it yourself completely free link in the description. So if you want to set up a systems assistant that's trained to know everything about your business and then guide you through creating those systems for your company, just click the link. No opt in, no email, none of that. Just go get it. I you to be able to have that resource to help you out. with everything that you have going on, Do you feel like one of them feeds the greater machine more than others? Is it the one you started with? Is it the real estate business that speaker-1: It's always going to be real estate. I cannot recommend real estate enough to people. just cannot. And it is overwhelming and real estate is very difficult. Being a landlord is very difficult. Dealing with people's personalities is very difficult. Dealing with negative income sometimes is very challenging. You have to really want it to work for real estate to work. You have to work it. And 14 years of experience in selling, owning, brokeraging. Now I own the brokerage at the boutique firm, so now I have employees. I have other people, I have other agents, other people are doing this for me. It's exactly what everybody wants, is to build something that lasts, but it's 14 years later. Well, during this 14 years, we're about to see not a crash, but a downturn for the first time in my actual career. Now I experienced it in 2008. with my older wealthier friends who lost a lot during that. I don't anticipate it being like that. But if there was not a system in place in my life to guard against any potential downfalls like that, then somebody who had been working for a decade over the last decade and didn't plan for that possibility of the business cycle coming up and coming down could possibly lose everything right now. This isn't going to be that kind of year. And 2026 will be a very bad fiscal year for a lot of businesses and a lot of people. And the people that are smart, the businesses that are smart have prepped for that. When it is a success, that is when you dig in harder. You dig in hard. That's when you double your advertising spend. That's when you save the money. You don't go on luxury vacations and buy luxury things. When you're up, you save and you invest it. You invest it in more real estate. And then when you're down, That mailbox money will pay the bills when you're not selling and it will give you some time to recreate a conversation. And a down market, there's not as many clients or customers. So it gives you time to refocus on, okay, who's my target audience? Who are my best clients and customers? Who can I always rely on? Who can I always be with? Take them to lunch, take them to dinner. You could take a vacation. You saved for it. You worked for it. You can spend more time with your family. You're working less, but it's also more, you can create something new. So you have to guard your business, you have to guard your time, you have to guard your investments. But real estate is really what fuels financially everything that I love to do. So you have to inspect what you expect. I expect my investments to give me money. So I have to constantly inspect them, right? Are my renters doing well? Are we doing our check-ins? Is our rent coming on on time? Has anybody lost their job? You know, has the Internet gone out anywhere that we need to do, how are the utilities? You have to really stay on top of your organization. That organization makes money to feed my passion projects, which we then do on the side and now creating a whole separate business. speaker-0: Well, one other thing that I'd love to say is downturns. If you look at the trends of economic cycles over the last 40, 50 years, probably even beyond then, but that's when those downturns are when some of the largest companies were started. these downturns are really some of the best opportunities. In 2008, it created the best time ever to buy real estate. If you are prepared for it, it creates an ocean of opportunity. Like if you bought literally anything in 2010, you're up a lot. Like you're doing pretty well. speaker-1: You're up three to 500%. speaker-0: Yeah, incredible. These downturns are opportunities, right? It's the whole idea from Warren Buffett is be fearful when others are greedy and greedy when others are fearful, right? So these downturns opportunity. beyond what you've done over the last couple of years, right, of pressing the gas and building that, building up your organization, building up your conglomerate, setting yourself up to be prepared for this downturn, is there anything else that you're doing to prepare for this crash that other people could take away from this? speaker-1: think we're pretty set, right? We're very prepared for it. I've just got my eye on the real estate market. I am constantly talking to wholesale companies, real estate agents and brokers hate wholesalers. I love a good wholesaler. My goodness. I have so many wholesale companies that call me and say, I've got a deal. I've got a deal. If they really have a deal, I'm going to buy it. I bring business partners in. I bring other financial people in. I'm like, hey, do want to create an LLC together or do you want to go in with your LLC and get this done? We can afford to sit on it for a few years. I've earned that. So we can buy these things and sit on them for a while and watch them continue to gradually be worth something and they will. You have to know when to be in the right market. Is everything a zinger? No. We've all lost money. Nobody wants to hear about the losses. They only want to hear about the successes, but there are just as many losses as there are successes. The difference is the losses were minimal. The successes were magnificent. When that happens, you hoard that money. And then you do something with it. immediately put it into high yield stocks, high yield savings. You figure out a way to make your money work for you. And then you borrow against that and you go buy something else or start something else. Have a passion project. So we're okay as financials go, as far as the business goes, we're pretty safe. Knoxville, Tennessee. I mean, people want to be here. Tennessee in general is one of the top five relocation states. We're not hurting too bad for relocations. A lot of buyers are still buying. We're safe here. Safe enough here. for the economy to be just fine. ⁓ I do know a lot of real estate agents across the country are getting hit pretty hard in their markets. And it's just a shift. It's just a mindset shift. The money is out there. The business is out there. Go do something that you haven't done in a long time. Make a cold call. Go into a business and take business cards and make a business cold call. Actually cold call. Go door knock. Do something that you don't normally do to get you out of your, this is never gonna work for me. Funk, go out, get it done, feel good about it, and then get back to work. speaker-0: And how does the work with athletes and helping them to navigate this new NIL world, how did that come onto your radar? speaker-1: Through real estate. So I had a local collegiate athlete want to rent an actual single family residence instead of being in a dorm room or in an apartment complex. And a previous athlete that was a mentor to the athletes knew me through real estate and contacted me and said, do you do rentals? And of course I was like, no, I don't do rentals. What do you need though? Cause I'll find somebody that will. And he automatically says, Hey, this football player needs a place to live. This is where he wants to be. This is how much he can spend. And I was like, this kid's got some money. I didn't even know anything about the NIL. And this kid calls me up and he's like, ⁓ I'm on this contract. ⁓ this is how much money I have. This is where I want to be. I'm like, ⁓ well have a guy that owns a hundred houses in this area, a hundred doors. Let me call him, see he's got anything. No problem. You don't owe me anything. I don't do rentals, right? Like this is not going be going to become a thing. I'll just help you because you are a player who is a friend of a previous player. No problem. So I call my friend, you got to open it. He's all, yeah, I just finished a house today. Bring him by. Here we go. So I'm bringing the kid by. They hit it off. He ends up signing a lease with this guy. He ends up moving in there for two years. During that time, this kid called me for everything. Hey, do you know how to get my utilities turned on? Hey, do you know how to apply for internet? I don't know how to do any of these things. Hey, do you know how to get a credit card? I don't know how to do that. Hey, I need a new bank account. I don't know how to set that up. I'm like, wow. Okay. Awesome. I can do all of these things with you. Let me teach you this. This is an opportunity to teach a young person something that I also had to be taught. So pay it forward. had plenty of time on my hands. It was during COVID. We had so much time during COVID open to do new things. We could sell houses over the phone, over Zoom. Nobody cared. Nobody wanted me to actually work. They just wanted the contract. We're taking a phone call, write a contract. Okay, great. I had plenty of time. I helped this kid out quite a bit, taught him a lot. We worked together for years. This kid still comes to my birthday parties and he comes over for Christmas and locker room talks. So then he started telling all the other guys, hey, if you need any of this stuff, call Julia. She's the best. And they started calling. And I was like, well, I guess I could put a system together for this. I probably need to do that. Let me get an FTT together and a spreadsheet. And this is what I do. And this is kind of what the offering is. Then it started like, well, can you help my parents? My parents want to talk with you. And the parents would call me and the parents would talk to me. Well, my agent wants to talk to you. Well, it's then be your agent. So the agent starts calling. Well, I, you know, I don't typically do any of these things. I don't really want to do these things. I'm an attorney. I'm like, well, I'm not. So that works out great. You can do the contracts. I'll do the contract management. So then we just started a whole new company that started from real estate. Everything comes from real estate. speaker-0: Right? But I feel like the underlying tide underneath all of that is just your relentless love and force that you are as being like that super connector as you called it. Right? I think that is just what has driven everything. And as you were talking, like the idea kept bouncing around in my head of like, is there a more valuable skillset or valuable element in whatever it is that you want to do? than being just a super connected person and being that person that knows somebody that can connect two people together. Like I really don't think that there is, cause it's just another one of those things that you hear from so many successful people. It's just other people, right? Being able to connect other people or knowing other people is kind of a really good gateway to getting you whatever it is. speaker-1: It's on this you help people get what they want. People will help you get what you want. Now, caveat. You will eventually help someone who will help themselves to your stuff. This will always happen. It always happens. There are givers. There are takers. Be prepared for those people. For example, I had a wholesaler contact me about a lot of property that we ended up buying. We ended up buying. It great. It's in gated community. going to hold it for a little while, probably build a luxury, something on it later on down the road, lakefront, gorgeous, got it for pennies on the dollar. It was embarrassing how good of a deal we got. The situation became, I got the phone call from the wholesaler that had told him about me as a buyer, asking for a referral fee. And I said, I didn't even know you were the one that sent me to him or vice versa sent him to me. I said, is he not offering to pay you a referral fee on this? Because you told him I would buy from you, from him. And he said, no, he told me that he didn't owe me anything. So bought the lot. I paid the guy out who sent me the original information, right? And then the guy calls me and asks me to buy another lot from him. said, I can't, I really appreciate you calling me. But to my understanding, the original person that sent you my information, sent you my information, expecting a referral fee. And I shouldn't even have to bring this up to you. You have to do the right thing. Like I'm a great connection. I could have sold every piece of property that you had probably to some investor that I have somewhere in the United States, but I can't trust that you're going to do the right thing. So I can't do business with you anymore, but thank you for the call. So you're always going to have somebody that thinks they can undercut somebody overlook somebody. You have to stand up and say, I'm not going to be part of that. That opportunity for some people will come along and you can also be the person that says, I don't care. speaker-0: Wow. speaker-1: I'm going to take the deal anyway. You can be that person too, but I will say your relationships and your connections, whether they tell you to your face or not, they know what you do. People talk. People will talk. So when that gets back around to the wholesale community of I called Julia, she turned me down because I didn't pay a referral fee to another guy. I can't believe she did that. Or you know what I'm saying? Another wholesale company is going to say she has integrity. I want her to buy my stuff. She's actually going to connect me with people. She'll do what she says she's going to do. Your reputation is all you have. do what you say you're going to do and your relationships will follow. speaker-0: Absolutely. Doing what you say you're going to do and just doing the right thing is the only long-term strategy that will last. Because yeah, that reputation is absolutely everything. Could you kind of give us an outline of what it is the service that you provide to these athletes? speaker-1: 100%. Sure. It's called elite athletes management. What we do is we work alongside your agent. We don't want to argue with the coaches about your value. We don't want to argue with the coaching staff or the people that are trying to bring you into their new school. We don't want to argue about your value. You have a value and that is your agent's responsibility to determine with you. Once that contract is signed, what we like to do is take everything else away from the agent and allow them to concentrate on getting you brand deals. Because really and truly that's where they make their money and that's where you make more money. We'll do an NFL example. NFL agent makes 3%. Every NFL agent has a 20 % advertising contract. So if you get a brand deal, that agent would get 20 % of that deal. They will make money on that brand deal more than they would make on your 3 % contract. However, what we have seen over the course of NIL through NFL is athletes have a way of needing more processes and more systems created for them and with them than an agent can handle. And the expectation that, my agent's going to do my taxes for me. My agent's going to do my investing for me. My agent's going to handle my cell phone bill and my girlfriend and my parents or my housing. Agents are contract attorneys. There's their job to get you money. And if you get injured, obviously that's a contract conversation. There are some conversations agents have to have. We take all of that off their plate. We take it all. We set everything up from day one. Okay, here's your housing, here's your housing allowance, here's your contract, here's exactly what we know that you need to budget for. We set the budget. Here's your banking, here's your credit card, here's your utility. Here's what you're going to a lot for family travel. If you're in college and your family lives away, this is what we're allowed to do. We're to start the LLC. We're going to get this set up with an attorney. We set this every athlete up for total success. Top down. set them up as a CEO and plug everything in for them. They have access to see everything we are doing at all times. And so does the agent and so does the family. So everyone's included. No one's left out of the conversation. And we're the wall. We are the wall that people break themselves against to get to these kids because it's 24 seven. It will be, well, I used to do investments for some random football player 20 years ago and I sent you a private message and this kid gets more on Instagram and messages them back. And then all of a sudden they think they've got a cell phone number and have a reason to call or show up. No, no, no, no. You talk to me. You talk to me to get to them. And then I'll talk to the agent and we'll both decide if you need to get to them. Yeah. So I take all of that off of the plate and it has turned out to be one of the most incredible experiences of my life. I love it. We do mentorship programs. If the kids don't make it pro, we set them up ahead of time for scholarships. After the fact, three of our kids are homeowners and are still in college. One of them is buying investment properties. It's teaching real estate again, how to take care of generational wealth is very important, but speaker-0: Amazing. speaker-1: If they don't make it out, okay, well, let me set you up with a career then. This was your major. I know connections all over the country. Where do you want to be? I'll get you some interviews. I'll make some introductions. I'll help you prepare for that. We'll mock interview and make sure that you're ready to go. It is more than just management. It's mentorship. And we take all of that off of the agent because the agent's job is to make this kid money. And this could be the only time in their life they'll make this kind of money. It's a big possibility. So want the agent to be able to do the best they can for that situation while we make that money useful and growing. speaker-0: I mean, you're setting them up not only for the day to day and also being able to navigate the day to day experience, month to month experience with confidence, know, with the budget, just everything kind of taken care of, sorted, right? Being the wall that blocks any random distractions that come from them that could get them into trouble, but also just helping them set themselves up for their future, right? Because you kind of also think about, again, going back to the thing that you started with, where you just think down the line, like horizontally, like how else can we help these kids, not only where they are now, but how can we help set them up for their future with maybe an investment opportunity, helping them get into the world of real estate or helping them to secure a job and connecting them around the world. I think that's around the country, an incredible, incredible service. That's amazing. How many athletes do you have enrolled right now? speaker-1: 13. And we went from one kid, one kid who just needed somewhere to live to 13 kids in four years. And one is in the NFL. So we do have an NFL athlete. And that has been amazing. That's so cool. Amazing. I love it. So we learned so much about the processes. We learn about each school and how each school's player development teams operate and work and how the NFL works and each team is different. So. There's an opportunity to plug and play this system into larger entities. It's just, we've got to get the word out about it and get to know more agents and agencies and really partner with them. So they are like, okay, well, I don't have to do all these things now. I will let this company. speaker-0: 100%. mean, yeah, plug and play it into other organizations, but yeah, just like nationwide, right? Every NIL is everywhere, but like every high major division one program, I feel like should be offering these kinds of solutions and services to their student athletes. Whether it's the school kind of making that introduction or however you navigate that, but I think that sounds like an amazing service and it helps these student athletes take, like maximize their earnings that they're making off their athletic ability. which unfortunately you hear a lot of. It's like a common story that you hear a lot about this former professional athlete, you know, by 40 is ⁓ not doing too well, right? So helping to. speaker-1: You know, nobody, nobody regulates their spending. They don't know how to do it. They've never had to do it. And if this new way of spending money, I'm just a Zeniel in that age group where I still had to write a physical check or take money out of the bank and I would see my money and then I would pay for something and I would just sweat just handing that money over. I'm like, I don't want to see this money disappear, you know, but this new generation's never seen it. They don't have to actually. Make that connection in their brain of negativity. It's just a click and pay. They never actually see the money drain until it's gone. Right. So we set up a ticker every single time. Their bank account, we use their bank, whatever bank they want to use. That's fine. We set up a ticker every single day. It's like, here, this is what we're going to do. We're doing this. And we manage that. This is how much money you've spent this week. This is what you spend it on. We need to talk about this. How do you feel about this? And then I'll ask them. especially the DoorDash has been a fun conversation this last year. How much do think you spent this month on DoorDash? in their minds, a couple hundred bucks, like $3,000. So they're like, ⁓ my God, help me. So I'm like, okay, we got this. We're gonna get this under control. We're gonna delete the app. We're deleting the app from your phone. That's number one step is we're gonna delete the app and then we're gonna go grocery shopping. And we're probably gonna end up hiring a personal chef to cook meals in your home and pre-make some stuff for cheaper than what you're spending on DoorDash. speaker-0: So just. speaker-1: teaching that. Let's move you in this direction. One step at a time. speaker-0: That's so cool. And I mean, my brain's already flying with just how, like the ideas of what this could look like in the future. We're almost like former, like, I don't know if this is something you're doing already, but pairing them with a mentor of somebody who's gone through this process. NIL is super new, but 10 years down the line, you have athletes, the athletes that you're working with right now could be mentors to other athletes and helping to guide them. speaker-1: and help them navigate that process. wonderful. I hope that we have enough amazingly successful athletes that come through this with all the things that we are mentoring and teaching and that can happen. If they don't make it pro, they need to come into the fold. They can get their real estate license. They can come work at the agency. That would be great. speaker-0: Yeah, because I mean, student athletes are some of the hardest working people on the planet. They're the best people. ⁓ where's your focus at right now with how you grow that business? speaker-1: So we just set up our website. We just set up our social media accounts. It's only been four years and it is more than I ever expected. And I am taking, so each kid gets a notebook. I am a handwriting kind of person. I really like to hand write down everything, every piece of information, social security numbers, driver's license numbers, NCAA numbers, student IDs. I like to make sure that all of their information, insurance, all the things is in one place. So. bringing all of that into an FTT. So now we have an entire plug and play. This is the preset for all of the logins and passwords we're going to need. It's automatically set for any student. So we literally just pull that up and say, okay, new kid name at the top. This is what we need. Fill all this in. If you don't have any of it, leave it blank. That tells me what we need. So now I have that plug and play. It's like, okay, now I know what I need to work on. Now I know what we need to do together. This is the time we're going to meet. Here's a zoom or here's my address. If you're local, this is what we're going to do. And we start that process together. And then we get it done. And I've gotten that down from probably it took a year for the first kid because I was still building out what I think he needed versus what he really needed versus what he wanted down to, think the last kid that we just brought in from Colorado, we did it in two days. Right. We had everything ready to go for him in two days. speaker-0: Yeah, just dialing in the systems, right? Just refining that process, improving the product, which is, you know, the service that you provide, just thinking everything through. And obviously with every iteration, every kid that comes through knowing you in the 50 minutes that we spent talking, I know that you're going to continue to make it better with every single kid that comes through there. So yeah, obviously that, and then obviously the relationship piece of meeting other agents, other agencies, getting in contact with these other organizations like the schools, maybe finding a way to be like a referral from the school, from the athlete to you would be really cool. But I think that's absolutely genius. I think that service can do a lot of good in the world. And I think a lot of people need that help. that's super exciting. It's just one of the many things that you're working on that I think is amazing. Julia Hurley, if you had a giant billboard that everyone in the world could see for 10 seconds, what would it say and why? speaker-1: Did you do your best today? It doesn't have to be the best of everybody. It doesn't have to be the best of the best of the best, sir. It has to be your best. Did you do your best today? And I think that question is so important to ask ourselves because I think we compare ourselves to other people. We compare ourselves to other businesses. We compare ourselves to somebody else's social media account or the neighbor's new car or somebody got clothes that I wanted or I can't afford this. And you get so caught up in the comparison. that you forget that you are doing your best. Did you do your best today? And once you realize every day, if you did the best that you could do in every scenario, that's the best you could do today. And you should reward yourself for that. Take a rest, yourself on the back and be grateful because your best today is somebody else's worst or somebody else's wish they could be you. And one day your best today will be over here. And those people you were so envious of or so wanting to be like, well, look at you and be like, wow, I'm not doing my best. You do what's best for you. You do your best every day. speaker-0: Amazing. Your best is all you can do. Julia Hurley, thank you so much for your time. speaker-1: Thank you. It was wonderful being here. speaker-0: Thank you for listening. Here are my three main takeaways from my conversation with Julia. Number one, most relationships don't go anywhere because they're not intentional. Just meeting people isn't enough. If you're not intentional about who you're seeking out, paying attention to what people actually need or how you can be useful in that relationship, it's hard for anything to develop. The people who build real networks are usually much more deliberate about how they connect and who they stay in touch with. Number two, systems are what make growth transferable. At a certain point, Effort stops being the bottleneck and structure becomes the constraint to you growing, right? Or being able to delegate. And someone else can't step in and reliably do what you do following the system that you've created. You don't have a system. You just have a personal output or just kind of a random document that somebody should look at. The founders who scale are the ones who take the time to make their thinking and processes repeatable, even though it's one of the more tedious things that you can do. Again, in the episode, I shouted out the fact that you can build your own systems assistant GPT using the link in the description completely for free. I mean, this tool will help guide you through creating those systems. Number three, there is no cheat code, just doing the boring things long enough. What actually worked here for Julia was not complicated, right? Like putting business cards on thousands of chairs at a big conference. It was just consistently following up, doing the hard things, even though they were boring, simple outreach, staying organized and doing it over and over again until it compounds and starts to pay off. That pattern shows up everywhere, not just with Julia. The advantage usually isn't some hidden strategy or what works isn't some hidden strategy, how they got there isn't some hidden magical thing. It's just the willingness to do the obvious things longer than most people are willing to. If you want to get connected with Julia Hurley, you can find her links in the description of this episode. And if you run a coaching program course or mastermind and your clients aren't completing the work, download the free program execution system toolkit in the description. It shows you how to install what I call execution infrastructure into your program so clients actually follow through and get results. Thank you for listening and I'll see you in the next one.