Latest / The Hannah Hammond Show / The $30M Entrepreneur’s Warning: Chasing Success Cost Me My Marriage and My Family

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The $30M Entrepreneur’s Warning: Chasing Success Cost Me My Marriage and My Family · The Hannah Hammond Show

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  I bet you any amount of money you could drop me in any niche,
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  any industry and I'll do 12 to 15,000,000 my first year in real
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  estate and in entrepreneurship. You never have a money problem.
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  You don't have a money problem. You have a creativity problem.
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  What was the biggest struggle in your first company that you
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  built like that missing link that you had to master and when
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  did you feel like, OK, now I have the strategy that I can
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  rinse and repeat and do this in any industry?
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  I believe that it's your obligation to be the loudest
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  voice in the room if you believe in what you're doing.
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  I can't shut the up about what I'm doing.
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  I'm so loud and obnoxious with it.
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  And I'm also I don't give a shit about what anybody thinks about
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  me and I hate it when people are like, work on your weaknesses.
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  If you suck at accounting, you should not be messing with
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  accounting. You should hire somebody that is
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  a badass at accounting and get out of your way.
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  What have you had to sacrifice to get what you've got?
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  What have you lost? Everything it took me losing my
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  marriage, my mom dying in my arms, my business hemorrhaging
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  for me to finally be like OK I surrender.
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  The biggest lesson I took was you cannot give what you do not
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  have. Welcome back to the Hannah
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  Hammond Show. I'm here today with my friend
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  Cody Swerber, serial entrepreneur, author, speaker,
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  digital marketer, real estate investor.
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  I mean you've just really done it all and we have a lot of
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  similarities on our paths and journeys, although different
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  journeys and just super excited to get into what you are
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  building today. And you're now the CEO and Co
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  founder of Floor Daddy, which is a new industry for you from your
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  traditional, you know, you built one of the largest real estate
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  education communities called Clever investor.
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  You sold that company twice. You were partners with, you
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  know, collaborated with Barbara Corcoran, and you've flipped
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  thousands of houses. You've got, you know, 200
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  million in development projects going on.
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  So you've just really done it all and came from nothing and
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  built everything and have had a lot of chaos in your life, too.
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  So welcome to the show. Excited to dive in?
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  Thank you for having me on. I sound like a badass.
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  When you say all that real fast. You kind of do.
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  That just means I'm old. I've been.
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  I've been doing this for a really long time.
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  But you're younger than you look.
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  Yeah, well, that's that's a good that you know what I hated in
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  high school? Yeah, Yeah.
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  It looked like it was 12. We always want to be older when
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  we're young well. And and no girls wanted to sleep
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  with me, you know, I mean if I'm being I was I was the friend.
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  But you know, it paid off as I got older now I got my dad was
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  the same way. My son is the same way, just
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  really young jeans. Babyface.
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  Yeah, very, very much babyface. But you know, the first time I
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  door knocked on a foreclosure, this is how I got into the real
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  estate space. First time I ever door knocked,
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  I was scared to death because I had never done any door knocking
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  in like I, I'm, I'm driving this piece of bit Nissan pickup
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  truck. I look like I'm 12 years old.
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  I have a bunch of credit card debt and a how to manual of how
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  to how to buy a foreclosure that I bought at a, you know, at some
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  seminar somewhere. And I remember one of the things
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  they would do is they would you'd have all these leave
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  behind because a lot of people wouldn't answer their door,
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  right. And I'm standing there.
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  I parked my car down the street because I was nervous if they
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  saw my piece of crap truck that I wouldn't take me serious.
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  And I was shaking the paper because I was so nervous to go
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  up to the door and I walk as I was walking up to the door.
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  I finally got the car. I sent my truck for like 20
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  minutes like pep talking myself, like you could do this.
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  Like it's, it's not going to be that hard.
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  It's going to go great. And as soon as I'm walking down
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  the little walkway up to the front door, I see the blinds and
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  I'm in like South Phoenix. I see the blinds open and this
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  lady's eyes are like piercing through the blinds and my
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  shaking is happening and before I could get up to the door, the
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  door swung open and she goes, hey kid, get off my F in line
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  and come back with your dad when you can really help me and slam
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  the door. I dropped those papers and I ran
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  back to my car. I sat in my car panicking
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  because my biggest number oneself limiting belief was that
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  I look too young and nobody was going to take me serious.
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  It took me two months to go back out and door knock again.
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  Yeah. And I just wanted to share that
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  story because wherever we take this podcast, there's there's
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  entrepreneurs out there that have these self limiting beliefs
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  that they they they feel are holding them back in mind,
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  popped up in the most in your face way.
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  And it turned out to be one of my biggest competitive
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  advantages. And it took a great mentor
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  coming in my life. His name was Lyle Wall.
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  And I was explaining to him just how much I was struggling with
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  this feeling I had inside of it was like, it's kind of imposter
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  syndrome, right? And he was like, and he's old
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  now. He's really old.
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  But then he was like in his early 70s.
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  And he's like, dude, what I wouldn't give to have youthful
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  energy like you again, what I could do, what I could dominate,
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  how I could roll through life. And I took that and I was like,
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  God, I do have a lot of youthful energy.
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  And I started spinning the story and next thing you know, door
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  knocking became one of my best skill sets.
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  So get out of your own way. That's the lesson in that little
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  story. Right.
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  And, and it's just a testament you have to make fear your
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  friend because you're going to feel it in everything that you
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  do. And, and I think so many people,
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  they just don't have the courage and they don't want to be
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  embarrassed. It's not even the failure so
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  much that I think people are afraid of.
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  It's the embarrassment, like being rejected, having the door
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  slammed on you, being told that you look super young and all
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  these things, but you somehow pushed through.
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  You still got out of the car, you did it scared.
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  You know, I'm nervous public speaking and I'm sorry to do
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  that. And you just do it scared,
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  right? And so many people just don't
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  have the courage and they think that fear means they should run
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  away. But really everything that you
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  want want is on the other side of it and you have to lean into
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  it. How did you lean into it and
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  have the courage to just do it, even though it was your biggest
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  fear? And then get yourself to go back
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  and do it Because most people, they won't go back and do it
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  again because they're like, the stories reconfirm the story in
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  my head that I'm not, I'm too young, I need to wait longer,
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  whatever. And but you, you, you reshape
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  that story and you just went back out and did it and it
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  became one of your greatest talents.
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  Like how did you get through that?
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  I mean pretty simple. I just, I was not satisfied with
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  where my life was. I believed that there, this real
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  estate vehicle, it was the first vehicle I ever got into where I
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  was running towards the, the concept, you know, like your
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  parents. My dad was really pushing me to
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  go in the military. I ended up going in the Navy.
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  Then I got out and I'm like, what do I do?
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  I go back to my dad. What do I do with my life?
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  I'm not quite sure still. And he said, well, go get your
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  degree, use the MGI bill, get your degree.
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  And so, you know, you're kind of following this plan that other
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  people have for you. Your parents are kind of
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  steering you. And I didn't really want to go
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  to college, to be honest with you.
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  I wasn't good at math. I, I, I, I hated study and I
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  hated school. But I was like, you know what?
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  I got this ability to go to college.
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  Nobody in my family had ever graduated college before.
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  I should take advantage of this moment.
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  And I listened to my dad and I enrolled at the WPK Carey School
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  of Business. And I was double majoring in
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  finance and accounting, which I was totally out of my league and
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  and I didn't want to really do that.
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  I didn't even know what I was going to do with those degrees.
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  And I got lucky and somebody that I knew flipped a house and
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  made a bunch of money and bought a dope car.
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  And I'm like, how'd you get the car?
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  And he's like, oh, this thing called creative real estate,
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  it's called wholesaling. And here's how it works.
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  And he pencils it out on a napkin.
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  And I'm like, first time in my life I lit up naturally of like,
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  wow, this exists. Like this is cool.
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  I want to get into this and on my own, I'm getting on a plane
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  and I'm, you know, back then, this is a long time ago, 23,
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  four years ago, there was no social media or a cool Hannah
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  podcast to get mentorship from. It was like I had to look in the
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  back of a classified section, find real estate seminar, Reno,
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  NV $500 and a phone number, call it, buy a ticket, get my butt on
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  a plane, go to some Hilton Airport Garden Inn and some
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  little town and, and go to a seminar by myself because none
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  of my friends were into this stuff, you know, but that's the
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  drive was like, I'm into this thing.
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  I don't need anybody to push me. I was being pulled forward.
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  And when you fail at something like that, even though it took
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  me a little while to bounce back, I just, I knew I had to.
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  I had to get back out there and get back on the horse and it
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  helped having AI had, like I said, I met Lyle and a couple
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  other good people in my life that encouraged me to keep
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  going. But really it just came down to
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  nobody in my family was had ever became a millionaire, multi
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  millionaire, got a college degree, broke through and I just
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  kind of felt like I was I had the potential to be the one kind
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  of like Ed Mylett's book The Power of 1.
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  And when you start to buy into that philosophy of like, I live
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  in America, greatest time period in the history of the world,
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  like I have everything in the world going for me, why would I
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  not go and try to be as successful as I possibly can?
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  And I started to believe that success was an obligation, not
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  an option, and that I could be the one to breakthrough and all
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  that stuff. And so being unsatisfied with
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  just staring at a Lamborghini poster on my wall versus being
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  able to go and create that Lamborghini for myself, I
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  couldn't sit well with this. So I think winners have a bounce
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  back spirit and I think people that want it bad enough, it
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  doesn't matter if your teachers lecture you or your parents
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  lecture you, when it's coming from inside, nothing can stop
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  you. Yeah, that's the pull motivation
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  Tony Robbins talks about. And when I think so many
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  entrepreneurs start with this deficiency as a child, they're
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  bullied, they don't feel seen, they don't feel heard, they
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  don't feel safe. They don't feel like they're
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  enough. And they let lights this fire
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  inside of them. And then it's this push
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  motivation, like, I'm going to grind, I'm going to do it.
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  I'm going to do whatever it takes.
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  Like I'm going to prove myself. I'm going to protect myself.
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  I'm going to show them, show the world.
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  And that pushes us. But at some point, it creates
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  chaos in our lives. And then we achieve this success
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  on paper. We get the Lamborghini, right?
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  But then we still have toxic relationships, failed
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  relationships, we're exhausted every single day.
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  We're trying to force ourselves and chase this next shiny thing
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  and this next object and resisting everything.
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  And that's when for me, I was able to explore like, OK, more
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  money isn't going to fix all this chaos that I'm creating in
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  my life. And I have to shift the
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  motivation to a pull motivation, which is what Tony Robbins talks
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  about. Because to be able to actually
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  reach your potential and actually create what you're
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  capable of creating, you have to be pulled every single day out
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  of bed instead of grinding and forcing.
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  Because then the energy never fades.
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  Like you have that energy, you have that momentum to be able to
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  keep going every single day and work the 100 hour weeks and
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  actually enjoy it and actually be healthy and not get sick and,
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  and run yourself into the grave. And you know, where did that
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  stem for you? Like where does your initial
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  drug? Because I know for me, it was
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  definitely a deficiency, like I was trying to get somewhere that
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  I wasn't and didn't feel good enough and didn't feel safe and
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  all those things. What was that moment for you
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  where something switched inside of you where you're like, I want
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  to go create this. I'm going to be successful.
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  I'm going to be that transformational character in my
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  family. Desire for control when you're a
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  little kid. And you know, my parents always
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  tried their hardest to do a great job.
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  We didn't have a lot of money. My dad got fired like every two
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  or three years and so we moved around a lot.
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  So I probably moved 10 times by the time I was 10 years old.
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  So every time I like got settled and make made friends, it was
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  like, oh, pack your stuff, we're moving again.
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  I was also really little. Like we were talking about, you
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  know, I, I, I looked really young.
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  I was really little, but I was very mature from a communication
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  standpoint, very immature from a maturity standpoint.
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  So my mouth got me in trouble. So I was always in fights,
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  always getting bullied, always getting picked on and I couldn't
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  back it up. I could just talk a big game,
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  you know, and then get my ass kicked.
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  So I always wanted control, and I didn't know a way to get it
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  until I discovered entrepreneurship.
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  And, like, business gave me that control where it's like, I can
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  be the conductor of this. Yeah, I fell in love with it.
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  I was always a hustler, you know, I always had a little
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  hustle in me, figured out creative ways to get what I want
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  out of life. And when you really strip away
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  all the layers, it's like, the money's cool, but the money to
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  me is just a scorecard and a tool to go further, faster.
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  I really don't give a shit about money.
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  I love making it. I want all of it.
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  You know, I kind of got that Steve Irwin energy where it's
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  like, give me all the money because I have these really
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  ambitious things I want to do with it.
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  He wanted to buy a ball of land and save animals and all that
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  stuff. And, and I have my own goals
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  with the money. So, you know, I'm very driven by
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  money, but I don't care about it.
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  What I love is the control it gave me, you know, and, and then
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  it becomes a game. You know, when you get good at
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  business and you develop certain skills and capabilities, it's
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  like you unlock this next level of being able to do the coolest
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  shit. It doesn't matter what industry
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  I'm in right now. I bet you any amount of money
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  you could drop me in any niche, any industry and I'll do 12 to
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  15,000,000 my first year because I have the skills and
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  capabilities to start and scale. The company doesn't really
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  matter and the resource, it doesn't matter the niche, I'm
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  just good. It took me 20 years to get good
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  at this skill, and it becomes so fun that you become a pipe
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  piper, a master of putting all these pieces together.
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  Yeah. And yeah, once you have the
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  strategy in the formula, then it becomes easier to rent and
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  repeat. You know, you have sales,
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  marketing and operations. You got to build a good team and
• 13:38
  be a good leader and have the resources to be profitable and
• 13:41
  and scale. And you really dove into each of
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  those areas. You know, you got into real
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  estate investing and flipping and making money that way.
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  And then you built one of the largest real estate education
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  companies. So you learn direct marketing
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  and you learn the power of influence and social media and
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  partnering with influencers who could bring you more revenue and
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  profit and built a massive newsletter and an e-mail list
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  and a social media brand and a big YouTube channel and all of
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  that. And so you're now rinsing and
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  repeating those same strategies into a new industry in home
• 14:13
  services because you see the opportunity in home services and
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  all of our friends are selling their companies for hundreds of
• 14:18
  millions of dollars in in this world.
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  And you're just a serial entrepreneur.
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  So but it wasn't successful for you in the beginning.
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  And it's, I think like it's so hard when you don't have money,
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  right? And that's, I love that you said
• 14:32
  that you don't care about money yet you want it all because it's
• 14:35
  so true, because money brings you freedom and power and
• 14:39
  control and like the ability to have the resources to put the
• 14:43
  right people in place and make the right investments to be able
• 14:46
  to build and scale faster. And it's challenging when you're
• 14:49
  getting, you know, getting to that first $1,000,000 is so
• 14:52
  hard. And now with inflation, even
• 14:55
  more than that. But it's so hard because you
• 14:58
  have to wear so many hats and you're trying to do all of these
• 15:00
  things and you can't just go hire AC Suite executive that's
• 15:03
  already built it and done it before or go, you know, hire all
• 15:06
  these employees. And so I've always been a
• 15:07
  scrappy startup founder, bootstrapped and never raised
• 15:10
  capital from anybody for my own ventures.
• 15:13
  What was the biggest struggle in your first company that you
• 15:15
  built like that missing link that you had to master?
• 15:18
  And when did you feel like, OK, now I have the strategy that I
• 15:21
  can rinse and repeat and do this in any industry?
• 15:24
  I think it's pretty simple. When you're new, you still have
• 15:27
  a lot of, you don't have a lot of certainty, you still are very
• 15:31
  unsure, you don't clarity on certain things.
• 15:34
  And I feel like as a a true business owner, you have to do 4
• 15:39
  things and you have to be able to communicate those four things
• 15:43
  to a team. Because ultimately your number
• 15:46
  one skill that you ever can have as an entrepreneur is the
• 15:52
  ability to enroll people into your vision.
• 15:55
  That influence and persuasion and rolling technique happens
• 16:00
  when you get 4 things really clear and you can communicate
• 16:03
  them. First I have to be able to tell
• 16:05
  you kind of like what we do, right?
• 16:08
  This is very clear, exactly what we do.
• 16:10
  And then it's, you know, how do we do it?
• 16:12
  This is that. Then you got the Simon Sinek
• 16:15
  edition, which is why do we do it right?
• 16:18
  And being able to clearly enroll them and say, This is why it's
• 16:21
  bigger than just making money. It's it's for community or it's
• 16:24
  for to help, you know, this niche and solve this problem or
• 16:27
  whatever. The hardest part for new
• 16:29
  entrepreneurs is explaining what's in it for other people if
• 16:32
  they do it with you. So I always feel feel like my
• 16:36
  superpower had to become here's my big grand vision.
• 16:40
  This this this crazy thought that I can be the number one
• 16:44
  education company in the real estate space in that old school
• 16:46
  gurus like you, you see on infomercials that that model is
• 16:50
  dead. And I want to bring it to social
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  media at the birth of social media and I want to bring
• 16:55
  everything online and and FC DS and books and tapes.
• 16:59
  I'm going to do all digital everything.
• 17:01
  People thought I was a little nuts, but I saw right when
• 17:05
  LinkedIn was coming out, before Facebook was really big, before
• 17:09
  Instagram existed, YouTube was just starting.
• 17:12
  I saw the future and I was like, OK, I need to I need to build
• 17:16
  out this team and I have to be able to clearly enroll people
• 17:20
  into it. But I was never good at the
• 17:21
  what's in it for you? Because I had this fear of
• 17:24
  giving away equity or understanding how to even say
• 17:29
  here's like your plan, your financial plan.
• 17:32
  If we do with because I have this big vision and I'm an
• 17:35
  entrepreneur and I'm trying to enroll you and you're also kind
• 17:39
  of entrepreneurish, but I'm trying to turn you into an
• 17:42
  entrepreneur. I'm trying to fit you inside my
• 17:44
  grand vision where your vision fits in my vision.
• 17:48
  And there's alignment because alignment is velocity.
• 17:50
  That's how you build a world class team and and go further
• 17:54
  faster. I know that this is a team sport
• 17:57
  and I have to enroll great humans to buy into this vision
• 18:01
  and then implement it because I'm only good at these things.
• 18:04
  And I hate it when people are like, work on your weaknesses.
• 18:07
  If you suck at accounting, you should not be messing with
• 18:09
  accounting. You should hire somebody that is
• 18:12
  a badass at accounting and get out of your way.
• 18:14
  But a lot of times we're so scrappy and we, we try to hold
• 18:17
  on to it all it because we're scared to let go that control or
• 18:21
  whatever. And all we do is end up in
• 18:23
  delaying our success and everything up.
• 18:25
  And so my hardest part for the first probably like four or five
• 18:29
  years was the what's in it for you conversation to get the
• 18:32
  right people in the right seats of the bus and keep them there.
• 18:35
  And as I started getting some success and then losing talented
• 18:40
  people and we call that regrettable turnover, right?
• 18:43
  It's OK when you want to push somebody out of the bus, but
• 18:45
  when they leave on their own and they're really talented and you,
• 18:48
  you're dependent on it. I've reset my business like 5 or
• 18:51
  6 times where I've lost almost all of it because I lost my keep
• 18:55
  people and I just wasn't a good, I just wasn't good energy to be
• 19:00
  around. There wasn't clarity.
• 19:02
  And every day you have to show up and fight to realign.
• 19:06
  That's, that's the other part that a lot of people don't
• 19:08
  understand. It's like, OK, now I've got you
• 19:09
  on board. My job's not done every day.
• 19:13
  I got to realign with you because everyday life is
• 19:16
  happening to you and I don't know what's going on.
• 19:20
  If I'm just the boss sitting in the boss's office, I have to go
• 19:23
  deep with you, with every one of my team members.
• 19:26
  And it takes effort and energy to get out of the business
• 19:31
  environment and go work out and go eat and drink and do life
• 19:36
  together and do barbecue and go see their family and see their
• 19:40
  kids and get involved in their lives to really even understand
• 19:43
  like, what's going on with you. Why?
• 19:45
  Why were you my best team member for three months in a row?
• 19:47
  And now for the last two months you've been a hot mess.
• 19:51
  Well, I didn't realize that your sister's battling cancer and
• 19:55
  that's really affecting your sleep and and everything else.
• 19:57
  But we don't have that kind of relationship.
• 19:59
  So therefore I'm out of alignment with you or I didn't
• 20:02
  realize that you're being recruited?
• 20:04
  By one of my competitors. And you're seriously
• 20:06
  contemplating that? So you're slowly distancing
• 20:08
  yourself from me. You get what I'm saying?
• 20:10
  Yeah. Well, this is so good.
• 20:12
  This is where I'm at right now is you're really trying to
• 20:14
  become a great leader and build an amazing team and have that
• 20:18
  alignment because you have to have everyone rowing the boat in
• 20:21
  the same direction. Otherwise you just aren't going
• 20:22
  to get anywhere, right? You have a couple people
• 20:24
  paddling backwards, a couple people sideways and a couple
• 20:27
  people forward. You're not going to move.
• 20:28
  And so I, I would love to deep dive into what it takes, what
• 20:33
  you learned to build a great team to how did you attract the
• 20:37
  talent? How did you keep them?
• 20:39
  How did you build? Because I think of myself, I'm
• 20:42
  like, I'm working 100 hours a week.
• 20:44
  I'm on a plane every day. I've got employees in different
• 20:46
  states, you know, or team members in different states.
• 20:48
  And then I got some here. And then I don't want to give
• 20:50
  too many attention to the ones here, but not enough attention
• 20:52
  here. And how do I fit it all in?
• 20:53
  And how do I stay close and, and connected and yet do it all and
• 20:56
  and yet keep bringing deals in and recruiting all these things
• 20:59
  like how did you become such a great leader and build such a
• 21:02
  great team? What are some of those skills
• 21:03
  and tactics that you would advise somebody who's in that
• 21:06
  process right now? Well, I think it's pretty simple
• 21:10
  because this is just a bunch of humans, right?
• 21:14
  And building a relationship with a team member or your
• 21:17
  significant other or your children, it all takes the same
• 21:20
  obsessive energy. It's step one is being present,
• 21:25
  right? Like if if we're hanging out and
• 21:29
  I'm on my phone like this as you're talking, do you feel
• 21:31
  heard? No, right away.
• 21:32
  You kind of feel disrespected and like you're like the time,
• 21:35
  like your your time's not being respected.
• 21:38
  And so it's one getting present to.
• 21:40
  I want to fight for this alignment every day.
• 21:43
  And I know that it's my job as the leader of this company to
• 21:47
  realign every day with every person.
• 21:50
  And that might seem overwhelming, especially as you
• 21:52
  scale, but it really isn't that hard.
• 21:54
  It could be as simple as having a great communication style like
• 21:58
  every every week I send group emails to the entire team.
• 22:02
  And throughout the week I have, you know, different emails going
• 22:05
  to the leadership team, different emails going to the
• 22:07
  my, you know, certain departments and people within
• 22:10
  the departments. Every single month I meet with
• 22:13
  every single person in the company individually.
• 22:17
  I sit down, I check in, even if it's for 30 seconds.
• 22:20
  I pop by their desk. Hey, how's things going?
• 22:22
  Where are you at? Are you empowered to do your job
• 22:25
  today? Is there anything that I need to
• 22:26
  know that you're seeing or experiencing that you haven't
• 22:29
  had a chance to tell me yet? Is there anybody here that's
• 22:32
  doesn't fit our culture? You know, is there anybody I
• 22:36
  should pay attention to that maybe isn't feeling the love?
• 22:40
  And then, you know, I call it the razzle dazzle, you know, and
• 22:45
  it razzle dazzle is a funny word because you know, when even
• 22:49
  saying it makes you feel a certain way, right?
• 22:52
  It's like kind of like a little kid word, right?
• 22:54
  It's like, I want to get razzle dazzle.
• 22:56
  Well, razzle dazzle is my company culture.
• 22:59
  It is the way we roll. It's ingrained in every e-mail,
• 23:03
  every phone call, every interaction.
• 23:05
  You know, I have to really obsess over creating an
• 23:08
  experience because I know ultimately, at the end of the
• 23:11
  day, you're choosing to be here. You're some people are only here
• 23:15
  for a paycheck. But I need to, I need to go to a
• 23:19
  place with you where you're not just here for that money.
• 23:22
  You're here because you believe in the bigger vision and you're
• 23:25
  bought into where this thing is going and the alignments there
• 23:28
  where you know what's in it for you.
• 23:29
  If we build this great thing together and through creating a,
• 23:34
  a pretty defined culture like our core, our core values and
• 23:37
  our mission statement. And I repeat things constantly
• 23:40
  in our communication style, in my standards.
• 23:43
  I repeat my standards to my team 10,000 times.
• 23:46
  I never shut up. Like very simple things like
• 23:50
  this happens all the time. Well, I forwarded that e-mail on
• 23:53
  to so and so and like, like, let me give you an example.
• 23:57
  I had a floor daddy. I had a lady.
• 23:59
  We didn't even know this happened.
• 24:01
  Her son wrote a bad review and said my mother bought was trying
• 24:05
  to buy floors from floor daddy. But then when they they sold her
• 24:08
  this tile and then when they went to go install it, they
• 24:11
  ripped up the floor and they realized the whole house has all
• 24:14
  this asbestos. So we had to stop dead, dead
• 24:17
  stop, because when there's asbestos, we cannot touch that
• 24:20
  house any longer. We have to bring in the proper
• 24:23
  asbestos handling team to clean it all up before we can finish.
• 24:27
  Will that cost a lot of money? Well, that's an unforeseen
• 24:29
  expense. She didn't want to pay it.
• 24:31
  So she said I'll find my own people, just sell me the tile.
• 24:34
  Well, we broke down the communication.
• 24:37
  The e-mail went from one person to another person to another
• 24:40
  person. And it was such a great moment
• 24:43
  for me because 12 days that Lady sat with her house torn up in
• 24:47
  asbestos and alls we had to do was sell her some freaking tile.
• 24:52
  But since it's not a common thing for us to just to sell
• 24:55
  tile, we don't do that. We sell the, the materials, the
• 24:59
  installation, the warranty and all that.
• 25:01
  So it's a it's a random thing for us.
• 25:03
  So our whole team broke down by just sending each other emails
• 25:07
  and then I get involved because this bad review hits my radar
• 25:09
  and I'm like, this is unacceptable.
• 25:11
  This ladies house is torn up. We knew that Well, I sent an
• 25:14
  e-mail to so and so and then she forwarded to so and so and it
• 25:17
  was no, if it touches your world, you have extreme
• 25:20
  ownership. And that's just one of our core
• 25:23
  values is taking extreme ownership.
• 25:26
  The other one is landing the plane.
• 25:27
  So it's very easy since I repeated it 10,000 times.
• 25:30
  It's all around my office for me to go to them and say, I hear
• 25:33
  how this happened, I understand it, but does that align with our
• 25:36
  core values here and this and that and that?
• 25:39
  And they're like, no, no, it doesn't.
• 25:43
  OK, So what could you have done better?
• 25:46
  I could have followed up on the e-mail and made sure that I
• 25:48
  landed the plane. That kind of repetition starts
• 25:52
  to build a culture to where if people won't buy into that, they
• 25:56
  opt themselves out, which I want.
• 25:58
  I want all the weak links to get the out of my company as fast as
• 26:02
  humanly possible. Because if you're not going to
• 26:04
  drink the razzle dazzle kool-aid, you don't belong here.
• 26:06
  And that's just what it is. And so I think for you, as
• 26:09
  you're building this, first of I, I noticed how you caught
• 26:12
  yourself, you started to say the word employee and then you said
• 26:16
  team member. And I love that because that
• 26:18
  self-awareness is leadership. Nobody wants to be an employee.
• 26:23
  Nobody wants to feel like an employee.
• 26:25
  The second the owner starts saying, Hey, you're one of my
• 26:28
  most valuable teammate team members, I'm so grateful you're
• 26:31
  here. They feel like, OK, it's a
• 26:34
  different energy, different relationship.
• 26:35
  So there's a lot of layers to it, But for me it starts with
• 26:40
  certainty. I am certain on where we're
• 26:44
  going. I am so certain that every cell
• 26:46
  in my body is vibrating. I know with all of me that I'm
• 26:50
  going to build a billion dollar flooring brand.
• 26:52
  There's nothing that's going to stop me.
• 26:53
  I don't care what hurdle comes in my way other than major
• 26:56
  health and me dying. It's happening.
• 26:59
  And when the owner has that kind of certainty, everybody else
• 27:02
  feels it. They can feel it in your
• 27:04
  conversations, in the way you smile through your eyes and see
• 27:07
  the future. And so everybody just, it's like
• 27:10
  Steve Jobs reality distortion filled people just start to
• 27:14
  believe that they could do more so far out of their comfort
• 27:18
  zone, they could do more. And if they, if they can't take
• 27:20
  the heat, they will go. And I'm cool with that because I
• 27:25
  never shut off my hiring machine.
• 27:28
  My ads are running for every department for every position
• 27:30
  100% of the time. And people go, I, I hate doing
• 27:34
  all these interviews. I'm sorry you feel that way.
• 27:37
  You need to change your attitude because we're never stopping
• 27:41
  ever. There's going to be a, you could
• 27:43
  be the, the lead manager of this company and you're going to be
• 27:46
  doing an interview with another lead manager.
• 27:48
  And if that person is significantly better than you,
• 27:50
  then I'm going to move you to a different seat.
• 27:53
  Or you're going to rise up and be like, there ain't no way this
• 27:56
  person's taking my job. And at first everybody
• 27:58
  complained about it and now it's just part of the company
• 28:00
  culture. They know Sperber never shuts
• 28:03
  off the hiring machine. It's no different than when I'm
• 28:07
  dating like my girl. I never am sure where I stand
• 28:13
  that day, that moment. So I'm always fighting for her.
• 28:18
  I like it. I like that she doesn't let me
• 28:20
  settle and give me a pass. I like that she's always
• 28:23
  checking me a little bit and being like I deserve more.
• 28:27
  I want more higher standards. So every day I I'm like, I got a
• 28:33
  step up. Right, Yeah.
• 28:35
  Are you running actual? Like are you running video ads
• 28:39
  for hiring? Or jobless.
• 28:41
  Well, even more than that, I filmed a whole entire TV
• 28:43
  commercial. So if you watch my TV commercial
• 28:45
  at Floor Daddy, I'm hiring installers right now.
• 28:48
  So every month I obsess over a department.
• 28:51
  Sometimes it lasts 2 months if I don't land the plane on what I'm
• 28:54
  trying to accomplish. But like maybe it's building out
• 28:57
  a world class sales team. Well, for a month or two or
• 28:59
  three months I'm building out a world class sales team.
• 29:01
  Every script, every word, every objection, handling, CHEAT
• 29:05
  SHEET, the vans, what they look like, what the customer
• 29:08
  experience is like. Today I was talking to my number
• 29:11
  one sales guy at our sales meeting and I said, what are you
• 29:15
  doing different than some of these other people?
• 29:17
  And he goes, well, you know, everybody else goes into the
• 29:20
  house and then builds a relationship and then goes
• 29:23
  around and measures and then goes out to the the van and gets
• 29:25
  the material and then shows the customer based on what they're
• 29:28
  looking for different material options.
• 29:30
  He goes, what I do is right when I get there, I build a
• 29:33
  relationship and then I say, hey, while I'm measuring, why
• 29:35
  don't you go out to my van and just start picking through some
• 29:38
  stuff. And if anything jumps out at
• 29:39
  you, pull it and we'll look at it in different lights.
• 29:43
  And while I'm measuring, you can like take it around.
• 29:45
  And he goes, so I have the, the, the homeowners bringing, you
• 29:50
  know, materials from my van on their own.
• 29:52
  And I go, I love this idea, but your van looks like the last
• 29:57
  thing I want is the first experiences to open up the back
• 30:00
  of, you know, a work van full of material with a wooden rack that
• 30:04
  I built with my business partner because we're being, you know,
• 30:09
  real scrappy. I'm like, we got to clean up the
• 30:13
  vans. If this is working, I want them
• 30:15
  to open up and have the razzle dazzle experience.
• 30:18
  So it's like through that process, I'm realizing, oh, I
• 30:21
  got a lot more work to do. If this works, if this process
• 30:23
  works. So I obsessed over that
• 30:26
  department and we're getting it dialed in.
• 30:27
  And then I moved to order entry and, and now this month and next
• 30:32
  month, I'm focusing on installation.
• 30:33
  So I was like, how do I get the best installers in the world?
• 30:37
  I was running Indeed ads and all these ads, a lot of my
• 30:40
  installers are Mexican. They're not on Indeed, they're
• 30:44
  not in certain places. You know, it's referral based.
• 30:47
  It's they see things. Somebody says, hey, did I saw
• 30:50
  this billboard or this commercial or this radio ad for
• 30:53
  floor daddy, go talk to them. They're hiring installers.
• 30:56
  So I just started running. I went and filmed a whole TV
• 30:59
  commercial instantly, you know, and we started getting hundreds
• 31:04
  of installer things and I'm building out our in house crews
• 31:07
  right now and obsessing over that.
• 31:09
  I don't know if that answered your question, but that's how
• 31:11
  that's how aggressive I am with the hiring and it does another
• 31:15
  thing through just as a byproduct.
• 31:18
  If I'm a potential customer and I'm like, dude, these dudes are
• 31:22
  running TV commercials trying to hire.
• 31:24
  Think about my messaging. I'm Cody Sperber Co and founder
• 31:29
  of floor daddy and my customers get razzle dazzle.
• 31:34
  It's the best flooring experience on the planet.
• 31:37
  We don't even sell floors at Floor Daddy.
• 31:39
  We sell an experience for homeowners and I'm looking to
• 31:42
  hire the best installers in the valley.
• 31:44
  I don't care what it costs. I want to enroll you to come
• 31:47
  work for Floor Daddy and build this amazing company and be
• 31:49
  proud to install and be proud to work and our customers deserve
• 31:53
  the best. They're sitting there going,
• 31:55
  hey, I want you to install my floors.
• 31:57
  We're getting a ton of business from my installer ads from
• 32:01
  homeowners going. If you're that obsessive over
• 32:03
  installation, I want you to install my floors.
• 32:05
  I love that so much and that's where I'm at right now is really
• 32:08
  hard because for me, I have to attract top talent that's
• 32:12
  sophisticated commercial mortgage brokers and real estate
• 32:15
  brokers and things like that, like they're not on an indeed,
• 32:18
  right. Sometimes someone may pull it up
• 32:20
  in here and there and I have the ads going and people apply and
• 32:23
  but usually the people that apply are not your A players.
• 32:27
  And so they're usually like struggling a little bit and they
• 32:30
  want that mentorship and development, which is go you
• 32:32
  have some good people there. But really to attract those A
• 32:34
  players, it's purely relationship base and all that.
• 32:37
  So I'm really trying to figure out at scale how to really
• 32:40
  attract those types of people. I want because I'm just like
• 32:44
  you, high values, high standards, don't want any C
• 32:47
  players at this company. Like we invite you to be a part
• 32:50
  of what we're building and we want to build this together.
• 32:52
  And we all own it. Like we all, every single person
• 32:55
  I believe has the most important role in the company.
• 32:57
  Because if you have one person that's not a line, one person
• 33:00
  that's running the boat in the wrong direction, 1 moldy apple
• 33:02
  that will spread like wildfire to the company.
• 33:04
  And so I want to protect that at all cost and rise together.
• 33:08
  Like I want to bring aboard entrepreneurs.
• 33:10
  I don't want order takers. I want people to have ownership
• 33:13
  in in the company and like what we're building and share that
• 33:15
  vision, just like you said, like how do we get their vision
• 33:18
  aligned with our vision and we execute on that vision together.
• 33:22
  So what is your you're, you're running actual ads, you're
• 33:26
  building that relationship. You're investing money into
• 33:28
  these these ads and billboards and things like that.
• 33:30
  You're attracting people. What is your interview process
• 33:33
  look like? Like how are you?
• 33:35
  I feel like I'm a really bad interviewer and I fall in love
• 33:38
  with the story or like they feel like their energy is good or
• 33:41
  they have good experience or things that I'm trying to.
• 33:44
  I've been very intentional, getting clearly aligned on
• 33:46
  values and trying to do these values screening interviews
• 33:49
  where I can understand their values through normal
• 33:51
  conversation. But I'm I feel like I'm still
• 33:53
  not great at it so I'd love to hear.
• 33:55
  Kind of your process. I'm pretty lucky I have a couple
• 33:58
  people filtering things and only putting the better potential
• 34:05
  prospects in front of me. So they're doing they're, you
• 34:08
  know, they're vetting all the resumes and then they might have
• 34:10
  a phone call and if they like the phone call, they'll go to a
• 34:12
  quick zoom, 10 minute zoom. Just tell me about yourself,
• 34:15
  pitch me. Why do you, what do you know
• 34:16
  about floor Daddy? Why do you want to work here?
• 34:18
  If they didn't even take the time to go to our website and
• 34:21
  research us and all, it's kind of like they get filtered out.
• 34:24
  But by the time they get to me, I'm normally actually the first
• 34:29
  in live interview that they do because I want to understand.
• 34:32
  I'm, I'm trying to read their mindset and energy more so than
• 34:38
  their skills and capabilities. Yes, they got a resume.
• 34:41
  Yes, everybody pretty much has the skill for the position if
• 34:45
  they're sitting in front of me. But I'm really looking for their
• 34:48
  attitude and their energy. And I ask weird questions like,
• 34:52
  you know, what kind of computer do you use?
• 34:54
  And they'll be like, I use them a Mac and I'll be like, OK, what
• 34:58
  Internet browser do you use on your Mac?
• 35:00
  And if they're like Safari, I'm like, OK, But if they're like,
• 35:04
  honestly, I have all of them. I have Chrome, I have Firefox, I
• 35:08
  have this, I have that. Just that question alone.
• 35:11
  I can compartmentalize them into like different boxes because I
• 35:15
  know if you just use the out-of-the-box stuff and right
• 35:18
  away your personality is not a exploratory, let me figure out
• 35:22
  the best solution type of attitude.
• 35:25
  It's more like, what's the problem?
• 35:27
  This works, it's good enough. I just do this, you know what
• 35:30
  I'm saying? But if and that works really
• 35:33
  good in certain departments, if I just want you to rinse and
• 35:37
  repeat a process and not ask questions, I'm going to put you
• 35:41
  more over into that box. But if it's more of a creative
• 35:44
  space where there's a lot of problem solving and out
• 35:48
  out-of-the-box thinking, I'm going to you know.
• 35:50
  That's like the value screening because if you just ask them,
• 35:53
  are you a problem solver or you resourceful?
• 35:55
  Like they're like, yeah, of course, you know.
• 35:57
  And so it's, it's a it's really an art I found to really figure
• 36:00
  out those right questions to uncover to get through the
• 36:03
  bullsh, right, because people will just feed you both.
• 36:06
  They're going to tell you they're aligned with the values
• 36:08
  and all these things and that there were like one that was a
• 36:10
  good one is my mentor taught me this.
• 36:13
  He said, tell me about your last big win.
• 36:16
  And if they say me, me, me, I I, I and they don't mention anybody
• 36:20
  about their team or their spouse.
• 36:23
  They're not a team player, right.
• 36:24
  And if, if that's an important value in your company, some
• 36:26
  companies it's not, you maybe need an independent people, but
• 36:30
  like those types of screening questions that are cool.
• 36:32
  And I'd like that you just said that as you were figuring out if
• 36:34
  they're a problem solver and resourceful just by asking about
• 36:37
  their browser. And I it's like, how do you come
• 36:40
  up with the creativity of knowing what questions to
• 36:42
  accurately screen? I mean, I think now Claude and
• 36:45
  Chad GBT will probably give you a bunch of good ones, but you
• 36:48
  know, I'm really just reading their energy and their attitude
• 36:51
  and their background. And then then I passed them on
• 36:54
  to the actual person running that department that has 40
• 36:59
  years of flooring experience. I don't know about flooring.
• 37:03
  I don't, I can own a company in any industry and not be a
• 37:07
  technician in that industry. And so I I leave the expertise
• 37:13
  to. Yeah, that's like me.
• 37:15
  I don't originate commercial finance loans like I have and I
• 37:18
  understand it, but I you want to talk to the expert that's going
• 37:20
  to be running that department. But how do you have time to
• 37:23
  dinner because I feel like I'm a bottleneck right now in recruit
• 37:26
  four months booked out. Like where do I it's?
• 37:29
  Like me talking to my, my, my 17 year old, you know, I just don't
• 37:34
  have time to go to the gym. I'm like, I didn't get the fuck
• 37:36
  out of here. You're 17 years old, bro.
• 37:39
  You can create 45 minutes. You don't, you just you, you,
• 37:43
  you choose to sleep in or you choose to eat, or you choose to
• 37:46
  this, you choose to that, or you choose to have your personal
• 37:49
  time. There is time.
• 37:51
  You just create it. I just make it a priority on a
• 37:54
  certain day of the week to have my interviews and go handle
• 37:59
  handle it. I just create the time.
• 38:02
  You know, I feel like if we took your life right now, which is
• 38:06
  obviously very busy and I did a week long activity audit on you
• 38:12
  and we just you just had to carry around a journal and every
• 38:15
  single thing you did, you wrote down.
• 38:17
  I ate at this time, I picked up dry cleaning, I cleaned my
• 38:22
  house, I went to the gym. I did by the end of the week
• 38:26
  that if we went back on the Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday,
• 38:29
  Thursday, Friday, Saturday and we just graded it from money
• 38:33
  making activities to non money making activities, you would
• 38:37
  realize that you do a lot of non money making activities in your
• 38:40
  life and those things don't. You shouldn't be doing them.
• 38:45
  You should automate them, delegate them, delete them,
• 38:47
  cancel them. Something has to happen with
• 38:50
  everything else except for the most important needle movers.
• 38:52
  Because your time is valuable and your skill should only be
• 38:55
  focused on the biggest exponential potential.
• 39:00
  And most people don't do that, especially new entrepreneurs.
• 39:04
  I've coached. I've had over 90,000 students
• 39:07
  come through my programs at Clever Investor.
• 39:09
  I've created thousands of millionaires, not always in real
• 39:12
  estate. A lot of people came to me,
• 39:14
  learned marketing, negotiations, sales, persuasion, influence,
• 39:18
  how to start a business, how to do accounting, you know, how to
• 39:21
  do basic marketing and lead generation.
• 39:23
  And then went off and started a landscaping business and then
• 39:26
  sold it five years later for $3,000,000.
• 39:29
  Right. It's like they try to do the
• 39:31
  real estate thing, realize it's not in their heart.
• 39:33
  A lot of people, more people quit the real estate business
• 39:36
  than you know, It's, it's, it sounds good, but it's, it's
• 39:41
  hard. It's a hard business to be in.
• 39:43
  There's a tremendous learning curve.
• 39:45
  It took me 14 months to do my first deal.
• 39:47
  I'm just dumb enough and hard headed enough to believe that
• 39:53
  it's going to happen at some point.
• 39:55
  I had one lady who paid me $30,000 to mentor her.
• 39:59
  This is 2014 said what do you want me to do?
• 40:04
  I said here's a script get your phone go to Craigslist call for
• 40:08
  Sale by owner leads. This is back when a lot of
• 40:10
  people posted on Craigslist and she lived on an island.
• 40:14
  She was like a not even from the United States and 1st phone
• 40:19
  call. First try ever in real estate
• 40:22
  gets a hold and she said what do you want me to do?
• 40:24
  I said just have a conversation, call a bunch of people for an
• 40:28
  hour then call me afterwards and we're going to talk about your
• 40:30
  experience. Just let's get the marbles out
• 40:32
  of your mouth and just get used to reading the script.
• 40:34
  Like no pressure, just practice in first phone call.
• 40:38
  First person. She gets a freaking deal and
• 40:41
  makes a tremendous, I forget how much money it might have been
• 40:43
  60K80K some big ass number we can have.
• 40:47
  Two weeks later, she closes the deal and makes all this money
• 40:50
  and she's calling me saying real estate's the easiest thing I've
• 40:52
  ever done. I can't believe I didn't do this
• 40:54
  my whole life. You changed my life.
• 40:56
  Thank you so much. And I was like, girl, you have
• 40:58
  no idea how lucky you got. This is not normal and it took
• 41:03
  her months to get her second deal whether it's me at 14
• 41:06
  months and finally getting a deal and I made 40,000 on my
• 41:10
  first deal or her first try first practice call bang out a
• 41:14
  deal. What really needs to happen is
• 41:16
  you need to put in such a long period of time to increase your
• 41:19
  skills and capabilities so you can collapse time so you can do
• 41:23
  consistent deals in a shorter time frame.
• 41:26
  It's not about getting lucky, just getting in the game.
• 41:29
  You can get lucky, you know what I'm saying?
• 41:31
  So all these students have come through my programs and I've
• 41:33
  just realized that one, don't judge a book by its cover.
• 41:38
  You never know who's going to stick in this business, who's
• 41:41
  going to win. And a lot of times it's it's not
• 41:45
  the American that had everything handed to them.
• 41:50
  It's the immigrant that speaks English as their third language
• 41:54
  that came to this country with $200 in their pocket in the
• 41:58
  right attitude and didn't allow small things to become big
• 42:02
  things and just leaned in on it and said, you know what?
• 42:05
  I know that planes fly. I know that this real estate
• 42:08
  thing works, or I know that this business, there's successful
• 42:10
  people in it. You can't tell me otherwise
• 42:12
  because I see it. You know, it's like, what is it?
• 42:15
  The Patel's own all the motels, You know, it's like they had the
• 42:20
  right attitude. They just were consistent and
• 42:23
  persistent and gritty. And in real estate and in
• 42:26
  entrepreneurship, you never have a money problem.
• 42:29
  You made that statement. It's like it's harder when you
• 42:30
  first start. I actually think it's easier.
• 42:33
  Money actually clouds your ability.
• 42:35
  You'd go a bunch of stupid directions and stuff up and you
• 42:38
  waste a bunch of money. In real estate, you don't have a
• 42:41
  money problem. You have a creativity problem
• 42:44
  and that's what takes a long time to understand.
• 42:46
  My mentor Lyle used to make me sit on the floor where I had
• 42:49
  this rickety whiteboard going over.
• 42:51
  This is how you take over somebody's mortgage.
• 42:54
  This is how you do a wrap around mortgage.
• 42:56
  This is how you do a contract for deed or an AITD.
• 42:58
  All these clever creative financings.
• 43:01
  Here's a lease option and a sandwich lease option.
• 43:04
  And to me, it was, I'm sitting in China trying to learn
• 43:08
  Chinese. I had no clue what he was
• 43:11
  saying. It was so foreign to me.
• 43:13
  But I was just taking notes and through repetition and osmosis
• 43:16
  many, many times, and then getting out of the classroom and
• 43:19
  getting into the real world and stumbling into an opportunity.
• 43:23
  And Lyle was a very Socratic mentor.
• 43:25
  He never told me what to do. He just asked me a series of
• 43:28
  great questions that led me to the me discovering my own
• 43:31
  answer. And so I would come to a lead
• 43:34
  that everybody else said was a dead deal.
• 43:36
  And he would say, what have you thought about this?
• 43:40
  And what would happen if you asked her this question?
• 43:43
  What do you think she would say? And it was like, Oh yeah, I did
• 43:48
  see something about, Oh yeah, you did tell me this like months
• 43:50
  ago. I remember this.
• 43:53
  How does that work again? You know, And next thing you
• 43:55
  know, I'm doing my first sub two deal or my first wrap around
• 43:57
  mortgage or whatever it is. And once you get out of the
• 44:00
  classroom and you do it one time, it's like Rodger Banister
• 44:03
  running the four minute mile. All the sudden all of that gels
• 44:07
  and it becomes real. And you're like, Oh my God, I
• 44:10
  have a superpower. I can turn dead deals into real
• 44:13
  deals. And none of my competition knows
• 44:14
  how to do this. I have creativity.
• 44:16
  That's why I called myself the Clever Investor, because I all I
• 44:21
  prided myself on being so clever with it that you know money is
• 44:26
  not your obstacle, your attitude is.
• 44:29
  Right, it's the skills that made this.
• 44:31
  Robert Kiyosaki always says it's skills that makes you rich, not
• 44:33
  money. Yeah.
• 44:35
  And you just develop those skills in that find a way.
• 44:37
  And I hate when people are like, oh, it's a dead deal.
• 44:39
  Or oh, it's been shopped or oh, I'm just like, that's where all
• 44:43
  the opportunity is. And if you have that creativity
• 44:46
  and you can be a visionary and be a problem solver and just go
• 44:50
  above and beyond what every other lazy ass person is going
• 44:54
  to do, then you will have all of the success in the world.
• 44:58
  And that was my very first deal was a $1.1 million commercial
• 45:01
  property. I was at a residential
• 45:02
  brokerage. I was a brand new agent licensed
• 45:04
  for like a week. They said I couldn't do the
• 45:07
  deal, they didn't do commercial and then it wasn't worth a penny
• 45:09
  over $400,000. And it's just like find a way
• 45:13
  you don't don't take, I mean, anybody else.
• 45:15
  I'm like, OK, sorry, can't do it.
• 45:17
  Let me, you know, tell the client no.
• 45:19
  And it's just going above and beyond and finding a way and
• 45:21
  having that, that grit to, to build it.
• 45:24
  What you know through what you're building.
• 45:29
  How, where are you at with Floor Daddy?
• 45:31
  How long have you been in? Business, I just I just hit my 2
• 45:33
  year mark right now. How's it going?
• 45:35
  Like, really? Yeah, yeah, yeah, we're, we're,
• 45:38
  we're a beautiful hot mess. Like entering a new industry.
• 45:41
  Yeah, no, I mean, we're killing it.
• 45:42
  From most people's standards, they would say you're absolutely
• 45:45
  murdering it. You know, I did 13 million my
• 45:48
  first 12 months. Amazing.
• 45:50
  You know, I'm so crystal clear on what we need to do.
• 45:55
  I just needed to allow any business you have to like the
• 45:59
  first period is like you're building this team, right?
• 46:02
  And so there's a lot of like people coming in and out and
• 46:04
  chair moving and all that. And then and I didn't build any
• 46:08
  culture for the first year. They they weren't ready for it.
• 46:13
  It it was too much right. The first like year, year and a
• 46:16
  half is just can you set it all up and get the foundation going
• 46:20
  and get the people and get some money in the door and focus on
• 46:22
  sales because sales is going to cure everything.
• 46:24
  That's the only thing that matters is can I get the
• 46:27
  branding on point, Can I get the sales on point?
• 46:30
  Can I get the basic systems on point?
• 46:32
  Not where we're at now, but just the basics.
• 46:35
  And we got there and we probably had two or three moments where
• 46:40
  we were like taking off like a rocket ship.
• 46:43
  And then I broke the machine because we had too many sales
• 46:45
  and not enough fulfillment in flooring.
• 46:49
  The Achilles heel of flooring is installations.
• 46:52
  So if you you could do everything right and say all the
• 46:54
  right things and get the sale and then get all up and they
• 46:57
  hate you and they leave bad reviews and you get a handful of
• 47:00
  bad reviews and your whole business is going to hemorrhage,
• 47:02
  right. And because we have to legally
• 47:06
  warranty their work, you know, it's construction, so we have to
• 47:09
  warranty their work for two years after we install those
• 47:12
  floors. While Arizona it heat and
• 47:15
  contracts. The the temperature fluctuates
• 47:17
  at night and the day significantly, which buckles and
• 47:21
  and up a lot of floors. So floor prep and floor
• 47:24
  insulation is the most important thing, But you can't afford to
• 47:29
  do that at a high quality if you don't have the sales.
• 47:32
  So it's like this like tug tug of war that's happening.
• 47:35
  And I probably almost went out of business twice my first 12
• 47:39
  months by pushing so hard. I had, you know, 1.4 people quit
• 47:45
  in one day. I only had a team of maybe 12,
• 47:48
  you know, third of my company or 1/4 of my company left in one
• 47:53
  day. Which then what?
• 47:55
  How do you think everybody else that's is sticking around feels
• 47:58
  absolutely defeated? You know, and it's like this is
• 48:00
  where the rubber meets the road. This is where the real
• 48:02
  entrepreneurs show up. And I've had this happen in all
• 48:07
  of my companies so many times. You know, the school of Hard
• 48:09
  Knocks interviewed me one time and he asked me, you know,
• 48:12
  what's the, what's like the biggest challenge that has ever
• 48:15
  happened to you that popped up and I was talking about one time
• 48:19
  a clever investor. We were doing, we, it was like
• 48:23
  2015, 2016, 20. No, it's 2016.
• 48:26
  Things started to break on the marketing side because Donald
• 48:30
  Trump got elected and the analytical scandal broke.
• 48:34
  And my Facebook ad panel at the time, I was spending $4 million
• 48:37
  a year on Facebook ads, one of the largest advertisers on
• 48:40
  Facebook. Everybody who was annoyed by my
• 48:43
  ads of me standing in front of the bank, you know, I was
• 48:46
  pumping out tons of ads and it was powering our business.
• 48:50
  And then Facebook started to break and they shut down my ads
• 48:53
  panel and everybody got fired from Facebook.
• 48:55
  And I started losing money on my ads for the first time in my
• 48:59
  company's history. And I was blowing through my
• 49:01
  savings. I had a little over 1,000,000 in
• 49:03
  cash. I blew through that real fast,
• 49:05
  then blew through our operating account trying to like figure
• 49:08
  out things. And there was a point where I'm
• 49:10
  sitting inside from optically from the outside, everybody
• 49:14
  thinks I'm the man. I have $2,000,000 worth of cars
• 49:18
  in my driveway, I have a 9000 square foot house on a lake.
• 49:22
  I married, kids, business, everything looks amazing.
• 49:27
  And I'm sitting in my theater room at 3:00 in the morning
• 49:31
  crying like a baby in my underwear because I knew
• 49:35
  tomorrow payroll was due and my $580,000 Amex bill was due and a
• 49:41
  couple other bills were due. And I only had like 300 grand in
• 49:44
  my bank account and I had like 900 grand worth of bills due the
• 49:48
  next day. And I literally thought, that's
• 49:50
  it, I'm going out of business tomorrow.
• 49:53
  Nobody's getting paid and everybody's going to quit.
• 49:56
  And this meteoric rise to fame is done in like 5 hours.
• 50:01
  Once people come to work and they realize there is no
• 50:03
  paycheck coming and the bills aren't getting paid.
• 50:06
  I'm that's normal entrepreneurship.
• 50:09
  There's going to be many times where you hit that wall where
• 50:11
  you're like, this is where the rubber meets the road.
• 50:15
  And like all things, I had to get creative and I was like, I
• 50:18
  came up with a game plan and by the morning I implemented the
• 50:21
  game plan and I was able to save my company just long enough to
• 50:26
  figure it out. Yes, my credit got yes, I
• 50:29
  bounced my Amex bill the next day, but I made payroll.
• 50:32
  You know, you just start triaging.
• 50:34
  You're like, what's the most important thing?
• 50:35
  Save the team. Well, one of my skills and
• 50:39
  capabilities is sales. So it's like I got this huge
• 50:43
  e-mail list. I have the ability to make
• 50:46
  sales. I'm, I've been so distracted for
• 50:47
  the last week and a half trying to save the company that I
• 50:51
  didn't focus my superpower on the one thing that was going to
• 50:53
  save the company, which is bringing money in the door.
• 50:56
  Cody, you're the rainmaker. I have this unique ability to
• 50:59
  like, just get me on camera. I'm making money.
• 51:00
  I might, we sold over 100 and 7000 and $80 million worth of
• 51:04
  courses, all self-taught, direct response marketing.
• 51:07
  Me just turning on a camera back in 2009 and talking to it,
• 51:11
  developing the skill. I'm like, why am I sitting in my
• 51:14
  theater room crying like a baby? Come up with an offer.
• 51:16
  That's what you do. Sell something, bring in a bunch
• 51:19
  of money and buy yourself some time.
• 51:22
  And that's what I did. I called Amex the next morning.
• 51:24
  I said I'm not making this payment.
• 51:25
  What are my options? And I don't believe they had a
• 51:28
  pay overtime option. They were like, we're going to
• 51:30
  shut your card off tomorrow if you bounce the payment.
• 51:34
  I said, well, if do it, I had a backup visa, it only had like my
• 51:38
  Amex had unlimited spend on it. My Visa only had like 90,000.
• 51:42
  I was like, well then instead of running $400,000 worth of ads a
• 51:46
  month or 500,000 of ads a month, I'm going to run 90,000.
• 51:49
  And I'm just as the money comes in, I'm going to pay it off and
• 51:51
  just whatever. But I'm going to keep get my
• 51:53
  core people paid and I'm going to live to fight another day.
• 51:56
  And if they my credit, which they did, they put that Amex
• 51:59
  bill on my credit. Even though business Amexes
• 52:02
  aren't supposed to hit your credit, if you bounce them, they
• 52:04
  will hit your credit. And yeah.
• 52:07
  And I bought time and I I immediately came up with an
• 52:09
  offer. I built a webinar in about 8
• 52:11
  hours, put all my marketing firepower into it, got a, you
• 52:15
  know, 1500 people on a webinar. And I sold $1000 course.
• 52:18
  And I started bringing in money and I just never shut that thing
• 52:20
  off for the next month until I brought in enough money to pay
• 52:23
  all my bills and dig myself out of the hole.
• 52:25
  And I still had a Facebook problem.
• 52:27
  You know, I still have challenges in the business.
• 52:29
  But you have floor daddy. You know, when I when everybody
• 52:32
  quit, I had a challenge. How do I pull everybody back
• 52:35
  together and get them realigned to get them moving forward?
• 52:38
  And thank God I had the hiring machine still going because I
• 52:41
  was able to bring new blood in there and fresh faces.
• 52:44
  And you live to fight another day.
• 52:46
  Winners have a bounce back spirit.
• 52:48
  Yeah. That's it, you know, and it's
• 52:51
  I've been blessed enough to speak on stages with your
• 52:53
  favorite author, your favorite entrepreneur.
• 52:56
  They've all spoken on my stages or I've done favors for help
• 52:59
  them out behind the scenes. Like I know everybody.
• 53:03
  We're all duct taped hot messes, every single one of them.
• 53:10
  You know, it's like I'm sitting backstage and I think this
• 53:12
  person's like all perfect because they're social.
• 53:14
  And then I'm like, oh, you're divorced twice too, and you got
• 53:16
  all these baby Mamas and kid problems next, you know, 3 hours
• 53:19
  later we're talking about those things, you know?
• 53:22
  And I'm like, just like me. I was like nervous to meet you
• 53:26
  at first, but you know, yeah, you're no different.
• 53:29
  Nope, they're no nobody's any different.
• 53:32
  We're all human and entrepreneurs are so cut from
• 53:35
  the same cloth. And so let's talk about that.
• 53:38
  I do want to get into the marketing built how you built
• 53:42
  that brand. But since we just started this
• 53:43
  topic, you know, what have you had to sacrifice to get what
• 53:47
  you've got? What have you lost?
• 53:48
  Everything. That's a deep question because I
• 53:52
  have two, two older kids and I was with my ex for 18 years,
• 53:56
  married for 14. I don't want to say that I
• 53:59
  sacrifice my marriage for my business, but I definitely put
• 54:02
  the business ahead of the marriage for many, many years.
• 54:06
  It's not what ultimately broke us apart, but it was the IT was
• 54:10
  the lead factor of why we friend zoned each other.
• 54:13
  When you become obsessed with winning, it's almost impossible
• 54:19
  to find balance. I think it's a myth.
• 54:21
  I don't think it exists. I think presence is possible,
• 54:25
  but balance is impossible. And what I mean by that is by
• 54:30
  the time I matured enough to realize that I didn't need to
• 54:37
  please everybody, I was actually pleasing nobody by trying to
• 54:41
  please everybody. And that's the game I played for
• 54:44
  the 1st 10 years, was just bouncing around trying to please
• 54:47
  everybody. And I think that's what a lot of
• 54:49
  entrepreneurs do. When I finally figured it out
• 54:52
  was what is this person's real love language?
• 54:56
  How do I go deeper with this person to understand that she
• 54:59
  doesn't need all of me, she really just needs certain things
• 55:03
  to happen. And then she relaxes and
• 55:05
  actually becomes one of my biggest cheerleaders and
• 55:07
  supporters. But I just wasn't good at that
• 55:09
  in the beginning for a really long time.
• 55:11
  And and that caused us to friendzone each other and kind
• 55:13
  of separate over a decade. That's a long time where she
• 55:17
  just became like the house, like like dealing with the house.
• 55:20
  And I just was just like mythical Rainmaker that made all
• 55:24
  her Amazon packages magically show up, you know, And by the
• 55:29
  time I started to figure it out, I had already lost interest.
• 55:34
  And I think so did she. And so, you know, if I can go
• 55:39
  back and do it again, I would have done a couple things for
• 55:43
  First off, I would have went to therapy way sooner, way sooner.
• 55:49
  It took me losing my marriage, my mom dying in my arms, my
• 55:55
  business hemorrhaging for me to finally be like, OK, I
• 55:59
  surrender. I'm going to go get help real
• 56:02
  and really put in the work. I'm not talking about talk
• 56:05
  therapy. I'm talking about intensive
• 56:08
  where you check yourself into a facility.
• 56:10
  You shut down the real world for at least a week, maybe longer.
• 56:15
  You put in the time to unpack your childhood and and go deep
• 56:21
  with all those memories that you've compartmentalized and
• 56:23
  buried. Do the EMDR, do the breath work,
• 56:27
  do the real deep stuff that's experiential, not just talk, you
• 56:32
  know, where you just talking to somebody and heal your inner
• 56:35
  child because as a man, we don't do that.
• 56:39
  You know, it's not normal. It takes you either implode like
• 56:43
  some men need slapped or flicked, some need punched.
• 56:47
  I need ran the over. I'm gunning so fast and I'm I'm
• 56:50
  like the ultimate firefighter and I'm problem solving for
• 56:52
  everybody else that I never take the time to to work on me.
• 56:55
  You know, I'm too on for everybody else.
• 56:58
  So if I could go back in time, I think if I would have worked on
• 57:01
  myself a lot sooner, because what came out of that experience
• 57:06
  was the biggest lesson I took was you cannot give what you do
• 57:10
  not have. And I couldn't give my family
• 57:12
  unconditional love because I didn't unconditionally love me.
• 57:16
  And when I discovered that truth, it was like, no wonder I
• 57:21
  feel like I'm always on this Ferris wheel running or this
• 57:24
  wheel running and, but going nowhere because I can't please
• 57:27
  everybody because I'm not even happy with me, you know?
• 57:30
  And so by healing and doing all that stuff, I started showing up
• 57:36
  way more emotionally controlled, very way, way less reactive.
• 57:44
  And I was always good at being stoic in my business, but I was
• 57:47
  never good at being stoic in my relationships, you know what I'm
• 57:50
  saying? And so that was one of the best
• 57:54
  things that came out of that. The other the other thing I wish
• 57:57
  I can go back and do is go deeper with my significant other
• 58:01
  and realize that if you want your marriage to be successful,
• 58:04
  you can't put your business before your marriage.
• 58:07
  You just can't. You want to, it sounds good on
• 58:10
  an Instagram post like we're going to go dominate, make a
• 58:12
  bajillion dollars. That's you putting your making
• 58:15
  your business the priority and that's what's going to be
• 58:17
  successful. And I believe that with the
• 58:19
  right partner and the right buy in and mastering their love
• 58:23
  language, they will become your biggest catalyst for making your
• 58:27
  business the best it can possibly be.
• 58:30
  And that we see some great examples of that.
• 58:33
  Maybe one of the most loudest is like Grant and Elena.
• 58:37
  They figured out a way to support each other at a very
• 58:40
  high level, you know, Which is pretty admirable because it's
• 58:43
  hard to do. Yeah, that's all we talked about
• 58:46
  on our podcast last week was, was their relationship in that
• 58:50
  dynamic and how they were able to build that and really support
• 58:53
  each other. And you know, I think everyone
• 58:56
  in your life is either an anchor or a sale and they're either
• 58:59
  going to pull you forward or they're going to drag you down.
• 59:02
  And it's tough. I I mean, it's something that I
• 59:04
  still struggle with. Obviously I'm single and work
• 59:07
  obsessed, workaholic and on a plane every week and all these
• 59:10
  things. So it is tough because you
• 59:11
  wonder like why? You know what, what is it all
• 59:14
  for? And for me, it's in.
• 59:17
  But we make these stories, right?
• 59:18
  Like I want to help the world. I want to save lives.
• 59:20
  I want to help people inspire. Like that's what brings me the
• 59:23
  most fulfillment. But then it's always, it's also,
• 59:27
  well, what if I never see the forest through the trees?
• 59:29
  And what if I'm sacrificing A deeper connection with somebody
• 59:34
  that could be beautiful or, you know, I'm like, I don't want
• 59:37
  kids and I don't want to get married.
• 59:38
  I don't want to like all these walls and all these modes that
• 59:40
  we built around herself. And so I'm always on that
• 59:42
  journey of personal development of asking the questions and
• 59:45
  staying curious of why do I think this way or feel this way
• 59:48
  and or recreate the story. You know, I have never had a,
• 59:52
  I've had long term relationships in my life with, with people,
• 59:55
  but never a man. You know, it's always I, I end
• 1:00:00
  up recreating the story of ours, like not going to find the
• 1:00:03
  person, the person that I want isn't out there or whatever.
• 1:00:06
  Or it's, it takes my freedom or there's always something right.
• 1:00:10
  But have you figured it out? I think way more so than ever
• 1:00:14
  before. Yeah, You know, it's like now
• 1:00:17
  I'm so present to what's in front of me and I'm I've built
• 1:00:22
  the ability to shut the rest of the world off.
• 1:00:24
  You know, like back in the day, I used to bring my work home
• 1:00:28
  with me. You know, you'd walk in to the
• 1:00:31
  house and, you know, my ex would go, how was your day?
• 1:00:34
  Well, so and so did this and that and this happened.
• 1:00:36
  And it was kind of like I'm feeling in a friend.
• 1:00:40
  You need to park that in the garage.
• 1:00:43
  I don't care if it takes you 10 minutes to sit in the garage and
• 1:00:46
  just decompress. Do not bring that home.
• 1:00:49
  Home needs to be protected. You know, home is a different
• 1:00:52
  environment. There is a moment where you can
• 1:00:54
  talk about your day and all that stuff, but at the end of the
• 1:00:58
  day, she just wants to make sure I'm OK.
• 1:01:02
  She doesn't give up my money or what happened, you know, with so
• 1:01:06
  and so in a business transaction.
• 1:01:08
  What I've realized, at least from a man's perspective, is
• 1:01:14
  when I'm at the office, I could be the president of the company,
• 1:01:17
  the Ceoi could be the king of my world.
• 1:01:20
  But when I come home, I'm the joker.
• 1:01:23
  I'm not the king any longer. I need to humble myself and get
• 1:01:28
  out of my own way and realize that that is a different dynamic
• 1:01:30
  in a different relationship, and it's going to take different
• 1:01:34
  energy. And that alignment we're talking
• 1:01:37
  about. Like it's just you have to, you
• 1:01:40
  have to fight for that harder than anything else.
• 1:01:43
  And I wasn't doing any of that. I was just so on trying to make
• 1:01:48
  money and dominate and win. And I used to justify it by
• 1:01:52
  saying I'm doing this all for you guys.
• 1:01:55
  See all this I did, I'm doing all this.
• 1:01:57
  You don't understand, You know, if you had to go earn, when's
• 1:02:01
  the last time you earned $50,000 in a day?
• 1:02:04
  Never. So I had like this ego complex,
• 1:02:07
  like this narcissistic ego energy where it's like you can't
• 1:02:10
  do what I do you, you love the Amazon packages showing up.
• 1:02:15
  So why are you complaining? It's because I wasn't present.
• 1:02:19
  Yes, we all want the nice stuff, but not at the expense of
• 1:02:24
  feeling unsafe or feeling not appreciated or respected.
• 1:02:29
  And I failed miserably at all that.
• 1:02:31
  And I think that I've come a long way through the loss and
• 1:02:34
  the pain and losing when you lose your family, that it takes
• 1:02:39
  a man at least three to five years to rebound from a divorce,
• 1:02:44
  even if it's your choice. It was my choice to leave and it
• 1:02:49
  still was the hardest, heaviest thing I ever went through, the
• 1:02:52
  biggest loss of my life, not because I want to go back to
• 1:02:56
  that relationship, but because it is the biggest loss of your
• 1:03:00
  life. You're losing your presence with
• 1:03:01
  your kids and all. You know, there's a, there's a
• 1:03:04
  vibration that happens after a divorce that heavily effects a
• 1:03:09
  lot of people, you know, Plus it cost me millions and millions
• 1:03:13
  and millions of dollars. I had to reset financially a lot
• 1:03:18
  and it was all avoidable. And I still remember the day I
• 1:03:22
  sat down with her very early on in our relationship within the
• 1:03:25
  first couple months and I literally said to her, do not
• 1:03:28
  get in the way of my dreams because if you do, you're gone.
• 1:03:34
  You will always be behind my goals.
• 1:03:38
  I want to, I want to be wealthy. I want to be this, I want to be
• 1:03:40
  that. And I told her basically you get
• 1:03:45
  in the way of that. I'm ditching you.
• 1:03:46
  Who wants to hear that? She believed it.
• 1:03:49
  She believed it and she stuck around and she experienced it.
• 1:03:52
  But I basically just manifested an end, right?
• 1:03:56
  That we're going to. We're going to fail.
• 1:03:58
  How did you, I don't know your your stories with your business
• 1:04:01
  partnerships, but you have multiple business partners now.
• 1:04:04
  I mean, you got clever fun and green elephant and floor daddy
• 1:04:06
  and you still are a part owner and clever investor and all
• 1:04:10
  these things going on and relationships and partnerships
• 1:04:13
  are such a key P and we're talking about team like it's
• 1:04:15
  everything. You can't build anything with,
• 1:04:18
  with no one that you have to have partnerships in your life.
• 1:04:21
  And for me personally, I've been burned before or made bad
• 1:04:25
  decisions. Like I take full accountability
• 1:04:27
  for everything in my life. And I recognize the pattern of,
• 1:04:29
  OK, this has happened this time and it happened again and
• 1:04:32
  whatnot. But in personal relationships or
• 1:04:34
  business relationships, we start to develop these walls and we
• 1:04:37
  build this Moat around ourselves.
• 1:04:38
  And it's a way to protect from chaos happening again.
• 1:04:43
  But then also it can prevent us from being able to experience
• 1:04:46
  love again or experience a business relationship where we
• 1:04:49
  could really be sales for each other and grow.
• 1:04:51
  And so how have you navigated partnerships in your?
• 1:04:57
  For me, I'm afraid of partnering.
• 1:04:59
  I'm afraid of having an equity partner ever again because it
• 1:05:04
  didn't work out before and I don't want to be married to
• 1:05:07
  somebody that isn't going to end up pulling their weight or we
• 1:05:10
  end up being misaligned or I end up having to do, you know, I was
• 1:05:13
  always the one in class. I had to do the work for the
• 1:05:15
  whole team and all the things right?
• 1:05:17
  Or they screw you over or you like all these things.
• 1:05:19
  So how have you navigated your business relationships now and
• 1:05:22
  your, your purse wish if, if you want to get into it also
• 1:05:26
  differently than you did before? And like, what did you learn
• 1:05:29
  from those failed relationships and how did you, how did you
• 1:05:31
  shift that? I think on its core foundation,
• 1:05:34
  you got a partner for the right reasons.
• 1:05:36
  You know, 2 salespeople can't go off and build a business
• 1:05:38
  together because operation is going to fail significantly.
• 1:05:42
  Because you got 2 visionary dreamers that are going to go
• 1:05:45
  sell the dream and make money come in the door.
• 1:05:47
  But they don't know how to operationally pull it together,
• 1:05:51
  right. So you have to have
• 1:05:53
  complementary partnerships, right?
• 1:05:56
  And so for me, I'm very strategic with my partnerships.
• 1:05:59
  It's like at 4 Daddy, I fight. There's five of us in total.
• 1:06:04
  So you know, it was, it's like, you know, a lot of big
• 1:06:07
  personalities. They're all my best friends.
• 1:06:11
  Well, three of them are my best friends.
• 1:06:14
  And I've had failed partnerships, cleaned out my
• 1:06:16
  bank account, stole everything from me, left me high and dry.
• 1:06:20
  I've had partnerships where we, we spent a bunch of money on
• 1:06:25
  stuff and, and one of them said, you know, I'm going to go do
• 1:06:28
  something else. And it's like, OK, well, let's
• 1:06:31
  just you pay your half the credit card bill.
• 1:06:32
  I'll pay my half and we'll wind this thing down.
• 1:06:34
  I don't, I'm not paying that. And they just you out of like
• 1:06:37
  203040 grand real quick. And you're just like, why would
• 1:06:40
  you do that? You know, it's like, it does
• 1:06:42
  make you feel like I can't trust anybody.
• 1:06:45
  But the reality is, if you pick the right partner, that's
• 1:06:49
  complimentary, if you approach it in a very savvy business
• 1:06:54
  approach with good documentation and paperwork, most people just
• 1:06:58
  do this, do partnership. And I it's like, no, grow up,
• 1:07:04
  learn from it. Document the divorce ahead of
• 1:07:06
  time. This is the, this is how we're
• 1:07:09
  going to work together. And this is how we're going to
• 1:07:11
  split this thing up if it doesn't work out right?
• 1:07:14
  Because it's some, you know, a lot of times it doesn't.
• 1:07:17
  And then the other part of it is daily alignment, fighting for
• 1:07:21
  that daily alignment, right? Going deeper, being more than
• 1:07:24
  just business partners leverages power.
• 1:07:27
  You have to figure that part out.
• 1:07:29
  I'm able to run 4 companies at scale because I have great
• 1:07:33
  partners and I trust them. And it's the only way to scale
• 1:07:38
  you. You'll stay small if you don't
• 1:07:40
  figure out how to form great partnerships.
• 1:07:42
  And it took me just a couple times having that regrettable
• 1:07:45
  turnover where I lost my key person and my business really
• 1:07:48
  got hurt for you to wake up and realize that equity is a tool.
• 1:07:52
  It's, it's not valuable until it's valuable at the very end.
• 1:07:57
  So a lot of times we hold on to it really tight as if there's,
• 1:08:00
  there's some magic value to it right now.
• 1:08:02
  There's not the right partnership will 50X the value
• 1:08:05
  of your equity. So create that alignment and
• 1:08:09
  then it's goes back to the what's in it for you.
• 1:08:11
  If we do this together, talk, get clear and use your equity as
• 1:08:15
  a tool and lock them in, you know, and then check in
• 1:08:19
  constantly, are we good? Where are you at?
• 1:08:22
  What do we need? You know, what can I do better?
• 1:08:26
  Most of my leadership style is just asking a ton of questions.
• 1:08:31
  In most rooms, I have the answers.
• 1:08:35
  My ideas are always the best. It's very rare for one of my
• 1:08:40
  team members to have a better idea than me.
• 1:08:42
  But if you run around like that, you're, you're going to be
• 1:08:45
  limited by yourself. So it's like I already, it's
• 1:08:48
  kind of like Lyle and Socratic mentorship.
• 1:08:52
  I know the answer. Lyle knew the answer.
• 1:08:54
  But I need you to get there. You know, in Floor Daddy, my 5th
• 1:08:58
  partner is a guy named Tommy Mello.
• 1:09:00
  Tommy Mello owns A1 Garage doors, the largest garage
• 1:09:04
  service in sales and repair company in the country.
• 1:09:07
  There's nobody even close. He's massive, doing like 100 +
• 1:09:11
  1,000,000 in EBITDA. Crazy, crazy numbers.
• 1:09:16
  Very successful when Tommy called me about 5 months into
• 1:09:20
  floor daddy's existence. Berber, what are you doing?
• 1:09:22
  Said floor daddy. He goes, you're playing in my
• 1:09:24
  space now. Home improvement, home services,
• 1:09:26
  like what are you doing over here?
• 1:09:27
  I said, I love the space. I want to scale it.
• 1:09:29
  I want to build a billion dollar flooring brand.
• 1:09:32
  And he's like, I want to end. And I was like, I've had ten
• 1:09:38
  other people call me and say I'll throw money at you names.
• 1:09:41
  You know, you said one of them on this podcast and I told
• 1:09:46
  everybody, no, because I don't need money.
• 1:09:47
  I got lots of money, but Tommy's done something that I, I want to
• 1:09:51
  do, which is scale it to a billion dollar brand and sell
• 1:09:55
  it. And he was like, look, bro, I'm,
• 1:09:58
  I'm going to, I want to partner with you, but I'm, I'm going to
• 1:10:00
  stay out of your way for the first two years because you're
• 1:10:03
  already good enough to get to a certain milestone.
• 1:10:05
  But at the two year mark, I'm going to bring in my venture
• 1:10:08
  capital team and we're going to have weekly check insurance with
• 1:10:11
  the CFO. We're going to have weekly
• 1:10:13
  marketing cadence. We're going to have this and
• 1:10:14
  then that. And then once we ensure that you
• 1:10:18
  have all the bugs worked out and then a period of time of my team
• 1:10:23
  being in yours, course correcting you, I'll take you to
• 1:10:26
  the promised land, show how to get institutional money, scale
• 1:10:28
  this thing to the moon and dominate in that scenario.
• 1:10:32
  Tommy is so spot on. He never tells me what to do.
• 1:10:36
  He just asked me a bunch of questions and allows me to
• 1:10:39
  course correct to get me. He already knows where to go.
• 1:10:41
  He already knows the answer. And as good as I am, I need, I
• 1:10:45
  need to go through this process. I've never done $100 million a
• 1:10:48
  year. I've done 30, but never 100, you
• 1:10:53
  know, And so that's the right partnership.
• 1:10:54
  And you have to have that Hannah, if if you want to really
• 1:10:58
  scale this to be a really valuable brand.
• 1:11:00
  Yeah, yeah. I want to find the right the
• 1:11:03
  right partner for sure. That's the goal, that's the
• 1:11:06
  mission. I actually just talked about it
• 1:11:08
  on the podcast right before here I was on Burn Offs, Michael,
• 1:11:13
  burn Offs podcast and we're talking about that.
• 1:11:15
  But no, So switching gears to clever investor because I'm
• 1:11:19
  fascinated by this and what you built in the digital marketing
• 1:11:23
  space and became a huge real estate coaching company.
• 1:11:27
  How did you build that company? So when I first got into real
• 1:11:31
  estate, I told you I became obsessed with it.
• 1:11:33
  I fell in love. It was the greatest gay.
• 1:11:35
  I couldn't believe how lucky I was.
• 1:11:37
  I floated into work every single day wholesaling houses 1 turned
• 1:11:41
  to 10 turned 100 turned 1000 turned 2000.
• 1:11:44
  I then I started cherry picking out and rehabbing and then I
• 1:11:47
  started keeping rentals and I just was working my way out the
• 1:11:50
  real estate food chain. And I got pretty good at the
• 1:11:55
  marketing and the systems and I could see the future before most
• 1:12:01
  other people could. And Arizona's such a great
• 1:12:04
  market and we're like Ground Zero.
• 1:12:06
  Florida and Arizona are like Ground Zero for all the cool
• 1:12:08
  real estate, creative finance types, creative real estate
• 1:12:12
  stuff. And so I was at the right place
• 1:12:15
  at the right time, doing the right activity.
• 1:12:17
  And back in like 2000 and maybe 4567, I used to, I used to drive
• 1:12:27
  around and get like go to the real estate brokerages and like
• 1:12:31
  they used to have like, oh, a thing by the door that had every
• 1:12:34
  Realtor's business card in it. And I would just walk in and the
• 1:12:37
  receptionist, I'd say hi to them and I'd grab all the business
• 1:12:39
  cards and I'd go and I'd call all the Realtors and try to
• 1:12:41
  network with them and maybe send an e-mail one at a time to them.
• 1:12:45
  And one day I was playing golf and I was talking to the guy
• 1:12:51
  checking me in and he's like coding something.
• 1:12:53
  It's like 2006 and I said what are you doing?
• 1:12:56
  He goes oh it's a mass emailing software I'm building so I can
• 1:13:01
  send out coupons to all the golfers that work here.
• 1:13:05
  And I'm like, what do you mean? And he goes, well you know it's
• 1:13:07
  like you click 1 button and the e-mail goes to everybody and I'm
• 1:13:11
  like you could do that. I've been doing one at a time.
• 1:13:13
  Like this is freaking amazing. This did not exist.
• 1:13:17
  This technology was like some kid on a computer building it.
• 1:13:21
  I said, what do you call it? He goes, I call it C to C and
• 1:13:23
  I'm like, I could use that my real estate business.
• 1:13:27
  And so I was telling him what I was doing with wholesaling
• 1:13:29
  houses. I was like, I got all these cash
• 1:13:30
  buyers, but I don't know how to like advertise to all of them at
• 1:13:32
  once. And he's like, well, this might
• 1:13:35
  help you. And I was like, can I buy it
• 1:13:36
  from you? And he's like, you would want to
• 1:13:37
  buy this from me? I'm like, yeah.
• 1:13:39
  He goes, what do? What do you want to pay me for
• 1:13:41
  it? I said, I don't know.
• 1:13:42
  I'll give you 200 bucks. He's like, you give me $200 for
• 1:13:44
  this, Let's go. I gave him 200 bucks.
• 1:13:47
  I brought my after golf. I went and got my big thick
• 1:13:50
  Toshiba laptop and handed it to him and he uploaded it.
• 1:13:54
  Nick, I'm the first wholesaler in the country doing mass e-mail
• 1:13:57
  marketing at scale. I did that with text message
• 1:14:00
  marketing, ringless voicemail, e-mail.
• 1:14:02
  I was the 1st at all of them because once I discovered a
• 1:14:05
  competitive advantage that gave me that unfair competitive
• 1:14:08
  advantage, I started selling properties like crazy.
• 1:14:12
  And So what happened is just through dominating my local
• 1:14:15
  market and selling more than everybody else and doing cool
• 1:14:17
  tech, people would come to me and be like, how do you do this?
• 1:14:20
  I'll pay you to show me how to do this.
• 1:14:22
  And I couldn't shut the up about real estate because it changed
• 1:14:25
  my life and my family's life. I was able to retire my parents
• 1:14:28
  my first after 14 months, no deal.
• 1:14:33
  I did my first deal 12 months later, made 1.3 million, first
• 1:14:38
  millionaire in my family, retired my parents that same
• 1:14:41
  year. Now people are coming to me
• 1:14:44
  saying will you teach me? And I, I if you would have asked
• 1:14:47
  me as a kid, what do I want to be?
• 1:14:49
  I would have said the 9th grade history teacher or a marine
• 1:14:51
  biologist. I want to be one of those two
• 1:14:53
  things. So now I'm good at real estate.
• 1:14:56
  People are asking me to teach them.
• 1:14:57
  I'm like, this feels natural, like I want to do this.
• 1:15:00
  So I was like, what do you want to pay me?
• 1:15:04
  And one guy said I'll give you $10,000 to let you me shadow you
• 1:15:07
  for a day if you give me the systems and give me the tech and
• 1:15:10
  show me how you're doing it. I said done.
• 1:15:12
  I paid $200 for this, let's go and showed him.
• 1:15:17
  And he paid me 10 grand. And then he lived in another
• 1:15:20
  state. So he went home and that was
• 1:15:22
  that. And maybe 2-3 months later I get
• 1:15:26
  a phone call from him saying I have a friend, he wants to do
• 1:15:29
  it. Now.
• 1:15:30
  What you did for me radically changed my business.
• 1:15:32
  I'm printing money over here. Can you do it for my buddy?
• 1:15:36
  I said sure. So 1 turned to 2 turned to
• 1:15:38
  three. Next thing you know, I had all
• 1:15:39
  these people paying me to, to teach them and I, I was buying
• 1:15:45
  maybe 4 houses a day, three houses a day at the foreclosure
• 1:15:49
  auction at the time. And I was like, maybe I can make
• 1:15:55
  a side hustle business out of this.
• 1:15:56
  So I was thinking about, everybody called me clever
• 1:15:59
  investor. My business was clever with AK,
• 1:16:02
  not with AC because the one with the C was taken and I was like,
• 1:16:05
  maybe I can start an education brand called Clever Ambassador.
• 1:16:08
  I wonder if I could get the domain And I bought the domain
• 1:16:12
  for $5000 off a guy and I popped up a little website and I, my
• 1:16:17
  very, very first product was me filming myself down at the
• 1:16:22
  foreclosure auction, buying a short sale that I had been
• 1:16:27
  working as a short sale that failed as a, the bank would not
• 1:16:32
  accept the short sale offer. And it went to auction and I
• 1:16:35
  just bought it at auction. And then I flipped it to the
• 1:16:38
  same buyer that was trying to buy it as a short sale.
• 1:16:40
  I called it a reverse short sale and I just documented the
• 1:16:43
  process of what I was doing. And I filmed myself my little
• 1:16:47
  sales pitch and I put it out there and I charged 97 bucks a
• 1:16:50
  month. It was my very first product
• 1:16:52
  called the reverse short sale system.
• 1:16:54
  And I probably sold, I don't know, maybe to a point where I
• 1:17:01
  was making 50,000 a month. Were you running ads behind it
• 1:17:05
  or were you? No, there was no ads back then.
• 1:17:07
  This was through a just posting, just me, me, me talking about
• 1:17:12
  it. It kind of going naturally viral
• 1:17:15
  Facebook posts and stuff like that.
• 1:17:17
  I was, I had a couple people that I met at some seminars that
• 1:17:22
  had emails of people that wanted to learn real estate investing.
• 1:17:26
  I didn't know they were called affiliates back, you know, so I
• 1:17:29
  start plugging in and they were like, oh, I'll do some marketing
• 1:17:31
  for you. Will you give me half?
• 1:17:32
  And I'm like, yeah, here's a link, Send it out to your
• 1:17:35
  people. And then I then I caught on real
• 1:17:37
  fast. Oh, if I build an e-mail list
• 1:17:40
  like I'm doing with my cash buyer list, I can sell my stuff.
• 1:17:43
  I could sell other people stuff. Then I started going to seminars
• 1:17:46
  for marketing, trying to figure out what is direct response.
• 1:17:50
  Mark, what is this? How do I sell more of this?
• 1:17:52
  And I just my first year at Clever Investor, I maybe made a,
• 1:17:57
  I don't know, 350 grand. My second year I probably made
• 1:18:00
  3,000,000. My third year I made 5 million,
• 1:18:02
  my 4th year, 8 million and it just built, bill built.
• 1:18:07
  I got up to 25,000,000 a year. You know, by 2016, I was, I was
• 1:18:10
  doing big numbers, the largest online education.
• 1:18:14
  Almost all the people nowadays from that time period came
• 1:18:19
  through my program. A lot of your favorite gurus
• 1:18:24
  came through the clever world or they worked for me and I I
• 1:18:29
  taught them what I knew about marketing and business and then
• 1:18:32
  then they went off and started. That's another thing is a big
• 1:18:36
  fear for people is, oh, what if they take my best stuff and go
• 1:18:39
  and create a competing business? I know a lot of people that fear
• 1:18:42
  that. I never gave.
• 1:18:43
  A Yeah. I always looked at it like
• 1:18:46
  you're going to get on my bus, we're going to have this
• 1:18:48
  magnificent ride together, and when you opt to get out, I'm
• 1:18:52
  going to drop you off at a better place than I found.
• 1:18:54
  You right, that's abundance. It's abundance, and some of it
• 1:18:57
  did hurt. There was one group in
• 1:19:00
  particular that left and they formed a partnership.
• 1:19:02
  They all came out of my camp and they went off to do hundreds of
• 1:19:06
  millions of dollars and I had to sit on the sidelines and watch.
• 1:19:09
  But that forced me to be a better entrepreneur because then
• 1:19:13
  I had to go backwards and go, how did I lose them?
• 1:19:16
  What did I? That's where the all these
• 1:19:18
  things we talked about on this podcast came from is the loss of
• 1:19:22
  some very talented human beings that I just, I, I didn't get out
• 1:19:27
  of my own way fast enough. How would you build such a big
• 1:19:30
  e-mail? Looks?
• 1:19:30
  Didn't you have like millions? I have a million, million
• 1:19:33
  people, yeah. How did you do that?
• 1:19:35
  I believe that it's your obligation to be the loudest
• 1:19:39
  voice in the room if you believe in what you're doing.
• 1:19:42
  And so from a marketing perspective, I never, you know,
• 1:19:45
  some people fear sales. I can't shut up about what I'm
• 1:19:49
  doing. I'm so loud and obnoxious with
• 1:19:51
  it. And I'm also, I don't give a
• 1:19:53
  shit about what anybody thinks about me.
• 1:19:56
  I will dress up like Barbie and wear a dress.
• 1:20:00
  I will wear a Moon Man outfit. I will be the Monopoly guy.
• 1:20:04
  One day. I will stand in front of the
• 1:20:06
  bank and park all my luxury vehicles in front of the bank
• 1:20:09
  and hold up deal checks. And me and my son are holding up
• 1:20:12
  checks. And you know, I got $1,000,000
• 1:20:14
  worth of checks. And I'm like, hey, kid, where
• 1:20:15
  you want to go? And he's like Disneyland.
• 1:20:17
  I'm like, let's go to Disneyland.
• 1:20:19
  We just closed all these deals. Let's go.
• 1:20:20
  I was so loud and obnoxious with it.
• 1:20:22
  And then the other thing is. I was I have marketing stamina.
• 1:20:26
  I will spend money so fast to figure out marketing.
• 1:20:31
  A lot of people like take somebody trying to learn how to
• 1:20:35
  generate leads in the real estate business.
• 1:20:37
  What should I do, Cody? OK, go send out this ugly
• 1:20:40
  postcard to these 3000 people and do it every three weeks
• 1:20:45
  until I tell you to stop. They send out two postcards, get
• 1:20:49
  no phone calls and they panic and they're like, this is too
• 1:20:51
  expensive. This I'm not doing it, postcards
• 1:20:53
  don't work. I'm like bro you're trying to
• 1:20:57
  tell me planes don't fly. You know how dumb you sound.
• 1:21:01
  I sent out millions of postcards and I've made 10s of millions of
• 1:21:06
  dollars. You are so wrong about this.
• 1:21:10
  You just don't realize that you have to drop 30 postcards before
• 1:21:14
  you get this crazy lift. But when it happened your whole
• 1:21:17
  world changes. Same with PPC, same with TV
• 1:21:20
  commercials. You know, right now at Floor
• 1:21:22
  Daddy, everybody says do Facebook and paper click and
• 1:21:26
  like, you know, build networks and all that stuff and do TV
• 1:21:30
  when you can. But you know, TV's down the
• 1:21:33
  road. I started my TV month 5 spending
• 1:21:38
  30 grand a month. My first thirteen months, I
• 1:21:43
  spent 30 to 60 grand a month and lost all of it.
• 1:21:48
  I did not make a return on any of it.
• 1:21:51
  Around the 15th month, I'm making a million and a half
• 1:21:55
  dollars a month. My TV has raised every other
• 1:21:59
  marketing channel through the roof.
• 1:22:01
  Everybody knows my name. The brand finally took hold and
• 1:22:05
  everybody's looking at me like I'm a genius and I'm like, dude,
• 1:22:08
  I just have marketing stamina. I'm willing to light 200 grand
• 1:22:12
  on fire in front of you because I don't care about the money.
• 1:22:15
  I care about the brand and the end result.
• 1:22:17
  I will get there because it's noisy.
• 1:22:21
  And if you don't breakthrough the noise and have the
• 1:22:24
  consistency and the creativity, nobody's going to come to you.
• 1:22:28
  It's this is not the Field of Dreams where you build it and
• 1:22:31
  they come. You have to cut through the
• 1:22:34
  noise and get the oxygen to you that the the attention needs to
• 1:22:39
  come to you. And somebody, I learned a lot
• 1:22:42
  from just watching them was like Grant Cardone, because we all
• 1:22:46
  kind of started the social media game around the same time.
• 1:22:49
  We at the time he was doing sales, I'm doing real estate.
• 1:22:52
  But we're both kind of going like this.
• 1:22:54
  And then I like go like this and he just goes to billions and I'm
• 1:22:58
  like, mother, what? He's not smarter than me, better
• 1:23:02
  than me, dude, anything. We're both playing this game.
• 1:23:04
  He just realized at a deeper level how important it was to be
• 1:23:09
  omnipresent in these people's lives and be the loudest noise
• 1:23:12
  in the room and to just hijack every story and conversation
• 1:23:16
  back to himself. And I was like, yeah, I need to
• 1:23:19
  do that better. Yeah.
• 1:23:21
  How do you get connected with Barbara Corcoran and use that to
• 1:23:25
  make you a ton of money in coaching?
• 1:23:28
  That's a fun story. So Barbara, what I was, I did
• 1:23:31
  the reverse short sale and then I was doing some other little
• 1:23:34
  products and I was like, God, nobody really knows me.
• 1:23:39
  I'm still just this little real estate guy.
• 1:23:42
  And I wish I had a celebrity or somebody that I can align with
• 1:23:46
  and kind of ride their coattails because I'm a really good
• 1:23:49
  operator. I know real estate better than
• 1:23:51
  anybody. I'm a technician in the, in the
• 1:23:53
  game of real estate. I could teach it better than
• 1:23:56
  everybody because I I love teaching and I obsess over how
• 1:23:58
  to take a complicated concept and simplify it.
• 1:24:02
  But I'm not a brand yet. And so I was trying to think
• 1:24:07
  like, who's a real estate mogul back then, back in 2013, 2020,
• 1:24:11
  12/20/13, Robert Kiyosaki and Trump.
• 1:24:15
  I couldn't think of another one that actually had a brand.
• 1:24:19
  And so I happen to be watching Shark Tank.
• 1:24:22
  It was season 1. And they just was like, I don't
• 1:24:23
  even remember. It might have been the pilot,
• 1:24:25
  but this thing came and they said real estate mogul Barbara
• 1:24:28
  Corcoran. And I was like, Oh my God,
• 1:24:30
  there's a female real estate mogul.
• 1:24:32
  This is amazing. I went to Google and I literally
• 1:24:36
  Googled her. I said Barbara Corcoran's phone
• 1:24:38
  number and her phone number came up and I was like, oh, that's
• 1:24:42
  right. She was a real estate agent.
• 1:24:45
  It's there. What happens if I call it?
• 1:24:48
  I had no plan. I just called the number on the
• 1:24:51
  fly, like I and, and her assistant answered and I was
• 1:24:56
  like, oh, like, I was not prepared for somebody actually
• 1:25:00
  answering. And just on the fly, I just spit
• 1:25:04
  out. My name is Cody Sperber.
• 1:25:05
  I run an online education company.
• 1:25:07
  I want to pay Barbara Corcoran more money per minute that she's
• 1:25:09
  ever earned in her life. And I just stopped talking.
• 1:25:12
  And after a pause, the lady started laughing.
• 1:25:16
  And I hear her go, hey, Barbara, Some young kids on the phone
• 1:25:20
  saying he's going to pay you more money per minute than
• 1:25:22
  you've ever earned in your life. And then Barbara's laughing in
• 1:25:24
  the background and next thing you know, I'm being connected
• 1:25:27
  with Barbara and she's like, talk to me, kid.
• 1:25:30
  And I was like winging it. I was like, First off, great to
• 1:25:34
  meet you. I I'm going to fly to New York.
• 1:25:37
  I'm going to bring a microphone and a computer.
• 1:25:40
  I'm going to I'm going to, I want you to tell your story at
• 1:25:44
  the beginning of a web webinar. Do you know what a webinar is?
• 1:25:47
  And she goes, what's that? I said it's like a what?
• 1:25:49
  It's like a online class. She's like, OK, And I'm like,
• 1:25:53
  you don't have to sell anything. You don't have to pitch
• 1:25:55
  anything. You don't nothing.
• 1:25:56
  You just have to tell your story at the beginning of this thing
• 1:25:59
  and team me up, like basically pass credibility on to me.
• 1:26:03
  After that, you're done. You don't have to do anything
• 1:26:05
  else. She's like, well, how much you
• 1:26:07
  going to pay me? I said 1000 bucks per minute.
• 1:26:10
  She's like, if you get your ass to New York, I'll do it.
• 1:26:14
  And she gave me a shot. And next thing you know, I
• 1:26:16
  literally got on a plane the next day, got my ass to New
• 1:26:19
  York, brought a script, she read it, vetted it changed a little
• 1:26:24
  bit. But the story arc was so perfect
• 1:26:26
  because, you know, Barbara's story was she borrowed $1000 to
• 1:26:31
  start her real estate brokerage, which she later scaled and sold
• 1:26:34
  and became this big real estate mogul.
• 1:26:36
  Well, my course, the fast track profit system at the time, it
• 1:26:38
  was $1000. So the, the psychological anchor
• 1:26:42
  was if you invest your $1000 into your business, what can you
• 1:26:45
  do? And, and when I was leaving
• 1:26:49
  there, I didn't think Barbara really understood the blessing
• 1:26:53
  that she gave me. I thought, God, I got lucky.
• 1:26:57
  I kind of got in right before she became really famous.
• 1:27:01
  And I just kind of took advantage of a moment just being
• 1:27:04
  a little like hustler. And as I was leaving, we spent
• 1:27:08
  the whole day together. I thought I was only going to be
• 1:27:10
  there for like an hour. We broed out and had this
• 1:27:13
  amazing time and took all these pictures and ate food together.
• 1:27:16
  And she was just an amazing human.
• 1:27:18
  And as I was leaving, she goes, Cody, Cody, Cody, I got
• 1:27:20
  something for you, but don't open it until you get in the
• 1:27:22
  plane. And it was her book, Shark
• 1:27:24
  Tales. And I got to the plane, I was
• 1:27:26
  like, oh, yeah, she wrote something in there.
• 1:27:29
  And so I opened it up. And she knew.
• 1:27:33
  She knew the whole time what she was doing for me because in
• 1:27:37
  there, she said to Cody Sperber, the clever investor hustler
• 1:27:40
  extraordinaire, you have an uncanny ability to get millions
• 1:27:43
  of dollars worth of marketing for pennies on the dollar.
• 1:27:46
  You keep doing this, you're going to be big someday, kid.
• 1:27:49
  She knew what I was about to go do and it was the best it was.
• 1:27:54
  She is. I owe her a lot.
• 1:27:57
  And it turned me on to the power of celebrity endorsements
• 1:28:00
  because just her saying I want to introduce you to my friend
• 1:28:04
  Cody, the clever investor, one of the best marketers in the
• 1:28:07
  world. He's great at lead generation.
• 1:28:09
  In fact, I would call him the king of lead generation.
• 1:28:12
  She said all these amazing things on on this recording.
• 1:28:17
  And I went and I sold probably 3 to $5,000,000 worth of that
• 1:28:22
  course over the next 12 months. That's insane.
• 1:28:26
  And that wild all from a just having the courage to pick up
• 1:28:29
  the phone and call. And so many times people come to
• 1:28:33
  me and go, Cody, I don't know what to do.
• 1:28:35
  Did you Google it, bro? Have you even tried?
• 1:28:39
  And most people won't even take that stuff to just try to solve
• 1:28:44
  their own problem real quick. I need a real estate mogul.
• 1:28:46
  Let's go to Google. And then after that I where my
• 1:28:50
  big breakthrough actually happened was Josh Altman.
• 1:28:54
  So I did the little thing with Barbara, made a bunch of money
• 1:28:56
  and I was like, this thing really works.
• 1:28:58
  So I called Josh Altman and then I did this the exact same thing
• 1:29:01
  to him. I pitched him and he said, all
• 1:29:04
  right, I'm interested in talking.
• 1:29:05
  Next thing you know, I signed A5 year licensing agreement with
• 1:29:07
  him. I built his entire brand, all
• 1:29:11
  the mechanics of his brand blew him up on social media.
• 1:29:14
  He was already super famous from the TV show but I took him
• 1:29:17
  digital and we sold 10's and 10's and 10s of millions of
• 1:29:22
  dollars of worth of Josh Altman courses together.
• 1:29:25
  Highly recommend celebrity endorsements.
• 1:29:28
  Yeah, that's amazing. I love it.
• 1:29:29
  It's so cool. I mean, that's, you know, Robert
• 1:29:32
  Kiyosaki is how I was able to kind of get a a big start right
• 1:29:36
  away with my pod. He was my first guest on my
• 1:29:38
  podcast. He got 300,000 views.
• 1:29:39
  It was my first YouTube video with 0 followers, you know, and
• 1:29:43
  so when you can align, when you have these relationships and
• 1:29:46
  it's so cool because I just happened to have him as a friend
• 1:29:48
  and mentor in my life. But you were so intentional
• 1:29:50
  about who is the person, who is The Who to accomplish the how
• 1:29:54
  that I want to accomplish. How do I make it win for them
• 1:29:56
  and a win for me? And you just went out and you
• 1:29:58
  just found a way. People think that these people
• 1:30:00
  are unaccessible but accessible, but they are, they really are
• 1:30:05
  like you can access people. I mean, you could go into pretty
• 1:30:07
  much anybody's direct messages on Instagram, like everybody's
• 1:30:11
  on Instagram, right? And even if they have their
• 1:30:13
  assistant, like I have my assistants in there or whatever,
• 1:30:15
  but if there's something important, the assistant brings
• 1:30:17
  it to you and you see it and so. And show up with value.
• 1:30:21
  Yeah, not just an ask. Right, start with the give.
• 1:30:24
  With the give, you know, that's where a lot of people, people
• 1:30:25
  screw up. I get, I'm sure you do too.
• 1:30:27
  So many stupid DMS and you're just like, next, next.
• 1:30:30
  I'm not even responding, you know, But if you show up with
• 1:30:33
  the right pitch, right, you can open that door.
• 1:30:35
  Like I'm going to pay you more permit than you've ever made in
• 1:30:37
  your life. I don't.
• 1:30:38
  Yeah. Like if someone sent that in my
• 1:30:41
  DM, I'm like, OK, I'm listening, right?
• 1:30:43
  Like I had somebody that that said, what did he say?
• 1:30:45
  He's like, I'll pay you 5. I think it was like, I'll pay
• 1:30:47
  you $500.00 for three minutes and I was like.
• 1:30:51
  OK. 3 minutes. Yeah.
• 1:30:53
  What's the real host? Yeah.
• 1:30:54
  You're curious, right? It's like, it's something,
• 1:30:56
  right? It's better.
• 1:30:57
  But most people are like, can you help me?
• 1:30:59
  Can you do this? Can you do that?
• 1:31:00
  Can you do that? And of course, like, I'm never
• 1:31:02
  going to, my assistant's never going to bring it to me or
• 1:31:04
  whatever. But start with a give.
• 1:31:06
  And most people, they just, they want, you can't get interest on
• 1:31:08
  your deposit until you deposit in the bank, right?
• 1:31:11
  And people just want interest without making the investment,
• 1:31:14
  maybe the deposit. And, and if you deposit one time
• 1:31:18
  and you don't get the result you want, you keep depositing.
• 1:31:21
  That's the other part people do like a little fake like, oh, I
• 1:31:24
  gave you a follow. It's like I don't give a support
• 1:31:28
  me for the next 6 months, you know, share all my content, go
• 1:31:32
  deeper, leave comments, get involved in the charities that
• 1:31:35
  I'm into, you know, like get involved, like really show up.
• 1:31:39
  Yeah, I we can go. We got to end up here, but I
• 1:31:43
  could go a whole we get to have a whole another conversation
• 1:31:45
  about that. But anyway, rapid fire school of
• 1:31:49
  hard knock style. OK, how old were you?
• 1:31:51
  And became a millionaire. I was 26.
• 1:31:54
  What line of business are you in?
• 1:31:56
  Flooring. What's the biggest failure that
• 1:31:59
  you've ever had? I don't think I've had it yet,
• 1:32:01
  but I would probably say my marriage.
• 1:32:05
  What's the best advice you ever heard or received?
• 1:32:07
  Probably the advice I just gave, which is you cannot give what
• 1:32:11
  you do not have, and you can give unconditional love to the
• 1:32:14
  people around you if you don't have it for yourself first.
• 1:32:16
  What's the most amount of money you've made in a single year?
• 1:32:18
  10 million personally, 30 million in a single year.
• 1:32:21
  If you could send one text to your younger self, what would it
• 1:32:23
  say? What would it say?
• 1:32:25
  It would say and go for. It if you could leave one
• 1:32:28
  message with the younger generation, what would it be?
• 1:32:30
  You have all the potential in the world right now.
• 1:32:33
  Everything is in your favor. It is your obligation to be
• 1:32:37
  successful in every level. It's not an option and if you
• 1:32:41
  squander that opportunity, that's 1000% on you and you
• 1:32:46
  can't blame anybody else. You have some amazing advice.
• 1:32:50
  Thanks for coming on the show, Cody.
• 1:32:52
  You're awesome. Yes, thank you.
• 1:32:53
  This has been a long time coming, so let's.
• 1:32:55
  Go. It's been a while.
• 1:32:56
  I'm glad we finally did it. Thanks, Cody.