Perspective on Why Investors Often Live Deal to Deal with Mike HambrighPerspective on Why Investors Often Live Deal to Deal with

Episode 134: Perspective on Why  Investors Often Live Deal to Deal with Mike Hambrigh

The Profit First REI Podcast

December 1, 2022

David Richter

Summary:

Joining us for today’s episode is Mike Hambright, the CEO of Investor Machine, a real estate investor, mentor, and coach. He is also the Founder of the Real Estate Investor VIP Show and Investor Fuel, the top Real Estate Investor Mastermind in the country.

Mike is a prominent figure in the real estate investing world due to his passion for using his platform to provide value to the real estate investing community, dedicated to helping every investor find personal success. He joins us in this discussion to do exactly that.

Catch the full discussion on this episode of the Profit First for REI podcast!

Key Takeaways:

[00:42] Mike Hambright and Real Estate Investing

[05:25] Mike’s Money Struggles

[08:14] Why Should You Set Up a Financial Management System?

[11:47] Why Should You Have Someone Who Knows Your Business’s Numbers on Your Team?

[12:48] Mike’s Perspective on Why  Investors Often Live Deal to Deal

[15:57] Advice for the Next Generation of Real Estate Investors

[18:30] On Tenacity and Confidence: Mike Hambright’s One Key to Success

[23:47] On Giving Up Control: The Lesson Mike Learned the Hardest

[26:51] Surround Yourself With the Right People: Mike’s Advice

[28:26] Connect With Mike

Quotes:

[19:19] “Failure needs to be a stepping stone.

[27:02] “Surrounding yourself with the right people.”

[27:57] “You can invest your way up that learning curve.”

Connect with Mike: 

Investor Fuel Website: https://www.theinvestormachine.com/front

Investor Machine: https://investorfuel.com/

Mike’s Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/mlhambright

Tired of living deal to deal? 

If you are a real estate investor or business owner who is tired of living deal to deal, and want to double your profits, head over here to book your no-obligation discovery call with me. Either myself or someone from my team will hop on a short call with you to get clear on your business goals, remove any obstacles holding you back, and map out a game plan to help you finally start keeping more of the money you work so hard to make. – David 

Transcription: 

Mike Hambright :

Surrounding yourself with the right people and the right knowledge. You can buy your way, you can invest your way up that learning curve. And I think a lot of people back to the frugality of the average real estate investor, a lot of people don’t quite understand that yet.

Outro:

If you’re a real estate investor who’s sick and tired of living deal to deal, then welcome home. Hear from everyday real estate investors just like you, and discover how they’ve completely transformed their business by taking a profit First approach. This is the Profit first for REI podcast, where we believe revenue is vanity, profit is sanity. It’s time to start making profit a habit in your business. So here’s your host, David Richter.

David Richter:

Hey everyone. Welcome back to the Profit First r I podcast. I’m your host, David Richter. Have another great guest today who’s a personal friend of mine, Mike Hambright, which he has investor fuel investor machine. And in this episode he talks about some of pretty awesome stuff, like why he thinks a lot of people would deal to deal, what about some of his keys to success, which I believe Mike has had a lot of great success in helping a lot of other people. And it kind of talks about his background and some of the things that have helped him along his journey. Make sure that he’s paying himself, make sure that he’s doing the things that he needs to do in order to not go out of business and the one key to being a real business owner. So I’m really excited about this episode. So let’s dive in.

Mike, here we are again. So I know that we’ve done several podcasts together over the years and it’s always a pleasure to have you on. And I’m a part of Investor Fuel and Love Investor Machine as well too, and how that’s providing quite a few of our clients use Investor Machine already. So I know that they love that and love that service. So I wanted to first ask you right outta the gate, what excites you the most about real estate investing, number one and number two, what you’re working on right now that excites you the most.

Mike Hambright :

So what real estate investing specifically? It, it’s about the, the freedom that it provides, right? And it, it’s that, that’s changed for me. I’ve been a real estate investor for 14 years now, so that the details behind what I just said there have changed a little bit over 14 years, but it’s effectively kind of paved the way for me to do other things that I want. Like, you know, our buddy Matt Andrews once said this quote that I’ve used, I’ve used it so much that people are quoting me saying it. I’m like, no, that’s Matt Andrews. Like you gotta give him credit for it. It’s that real estate investing isn’t the thing, it’s the thing that gets you the thing. Mm. And for me it’s gotten me the thing. And it still continues to get me the thing. But it’s, I think for, for most people, and I’ve talked to several, you know, I obviously have podcasts and talked to a lot of professional investors and I, and I hear this pretty commonly, that they’re not excited about real estate anymore, but they’re not as excited about what it does for them as they are about the widget. Right?

David Richter:

Yeah.

Mike Hambright :

And there’s nothing wrong with this. Sometimes people say it with a little bit of, and the concern in their voice that you’re gonna think differently about them. And I think, you know, I think we would agree it’s if it’s a means to an end, then there’s nothing wrong with that. Right?

David Richter:

Right. Exactly. Yeah, I’m, that’s so good cuz it’s a thing that gets you to the thing and not necessarily where you are right now. And I think that’s, a lot of investors come to that realization at one point or the other. Yeah,

Mike Hambright :

It’s sexy for a while. Yeah.

David Richter:

Yeah.

Mike Hambright :

But then it’s just, it’s getting you the thing that you want. And I think people fall out of love ultimately with the, a lot of the transactional nature of it. The fact that every time you sell a house, you’re dealing with a different seller, that you’re never a buyer that you’re never gonna work with again, most likely unless you’re a wholesaler, maybe some repeat customers. And so it’s very much a very transactional business and it’s been a great business for me and it’s great for a lot of people, but I don’t do it for the real estate. I do it for the freedom that it provides, ultimately the stability, the financial freedom, I guess.

David Richter:

Yeah. So what excites you about what else you’ve got going on now too? Because I know you do real estate investing, you do multi-family, you’ve got investor machine, you’ve got a lot of things going on.

Mike Hambright :

Yeah. Yeah. I would say that it’s the ability to take on new challenges. Like I like to solve problems.

David Richter:

Yeah.

Mike Hambright :

And the businesses that I have now and, and the things that I kind of do are challenges for me to see if I can create something that adds value for the community, our customers, the industry type thing. And so for me it’s, it’s a point now where I have I have a re I have rental portfolios to single a family, a multi-family. And the real estate gives me that flexibility to go kind of play a little bit with other things that you know, maybe some of these things didn’t start off as like a, as a core business or maybe not even a profitable business, something I’m trying to build. But it gives me the flexibility to do what I enjoy, which is actually help other people and try to, you know, for me, sometimes starting a new business or some of the businesses I have or like, that’s like my Sudoku puzzle. Like I don’t do class crosswords, I don’t do Sudoku puzzles, but I like to build businesses or try to fix businesses.

David Richter:

Yeah. No, that’s awesome. And I think a lot of businesses need that as well too and need that help and people that have been there before and I’ve seen it at different levels. So I love that. Let’s go into the profit first part here and talk about money. Let’s talk about money. And maybe the first question I usually like to ask around this is, have you ever had money struggles in your life or business and you know, like are you one of the ones that just have never had, you know, the ups and downs of money?

Mike Hambright :

No, for sure. I mean, I don’t know how far back you want to go, but I grew up in very much a very blue collar working-class family. And there were a lot of struggles over the years just from being like my dad being laid off of a job or my mom being between jobs. I mean, my mom, I remember my mom, my parents got divorced when I was about nine or 10. And I remember my mom, you know, getting her first job because she had me when she was very young. And at some point working, you know, two, three jobs and going to school to try to better herself. And so there were lots of early struggles for sure, early in my childhood. Now when I look back in hindsight, at the time it didn’t feel like a struggle cuz everybody was happy. We never, you know, every, I’m sure it was a struggle for my parents, but as kids we didn’t really see it. Okay. And I didn’t have anything to compare it to, right. So I didn’t know that things were a struggle, but they were, in hindsight, I look back now, I’m like, holy cow. You know, how did how did they, how did my mom pull this off, for example? But and then for sure I even in when I started as a real estate investor after leaving corporate America in that, you know, there are definitely early times really for the first several years where I, I would even say like real estate investing is not only an emotional rollercoaster, but a financial rollercoaster. You have these like months that are like, you just absolutely crush it and then the next month you don’t even do a deal. You know? And so there’s always kind of ups and downs like that along the way. And so, and truthfully, even after people, I know people that have tons of money, like what ends up happening is a lot of us are real estate rich and cash poor, right? So

David Richter:

Mm-Hmm. <Affirmative>,

Mike Hambright :

Like I’m way wealthier on paper than I am if you look at my bank account. And I think most real estate investors will resonate with that, right? To some extent. In fact, you probably don’t really want a lot of money sitting in a bank account that’s just sitting there doing nothing. But, you know there’s all sorts of struggles to different levels and the seriousness of them are, have changed over time. But I think it’s always a struggle because a lot of us are not, like, my intention isn’t to get to some point and then quote, retire and I just have this pile of cash that I have to work through. It’s to set things up in a way to where I have businesses that will cash flow forever even after I’m gone, right? Yeah. And so those things aren’t easy. It might mean, you know, we’re not living on a van in a van down by the river

David Richter:

<Laugh>.

 And no, and no real concern for that happening, you know, anymore. But there are always struggles of how to structure things properly and kind of optimize your cash and cash flow.

So then along the years with those struggles or whatnot, did you ever, once you started creating businesses, did you ever struggle to pay yourself in those businesses or have tough times around, you know, bringing home what you needed?

Mike Hambright :

Yeah, I would say, you know, up until you know because you know, my wife as well, we kind of used in early version before, way before profit first came along and we always had three bank accounts. We had like an operating account, a property account where we borrow money for properties or whatever, and we never co-mingled that with our other funds, right? Yeah. And then we had like a reserve account, so whatever we don’t need that’s not like, you know, gonna cover our expenses for the next like 90 days or so, kind of plow it into this reserve account. So she was, you know wise enough to kind of create early versions of that. But I would say all the way up until just a few years ago, we would pay ourselves a very low salary and whatever happens, to be left at the end of the year, we would pay ourselves bonuses and put money into self-directed accounts. And so we, we, we’ve only since gotten to the point to where we pay ourselves a little bit nicer salaries and stuff like that. Cuz we, we kind of know that well we can afford to do that now. Yeah. Yeah.

David Richter:

No, that’s awesome. But I love that your wife set that up because at the beginning a lot of people don’t even have that clarity. Yeah. Like it’s just what we have. Can I take some money out or can’t I, you know, and it’s like they don’t even separate it out at that large.

Mike Hambright :

Yeah. I remember early on very vividly I had a conversation with a guy and this was our first six months in business and I was talking to another investor, this is like way back 2008 how old were you in 2008, David?

David Richter:

I was 17.

Mike Hambright :

Yeah. <laugh>. So dating myself a little bit there, but, and we were talking about advertising and he said, I can’t advertise this month cuz I need the money to finish a rehab. And it just, even then I knew like, that’s stupid. Like why is that even a thing? You know? 

David Richter:

Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> 

Mike Hambright :

And, but he could, he clearly had all of his money co-mingled, right?

David Richter:

Yeah. <laugh> as so many real estate investors do and business owners in general. You know, it’s just like that’s where that’s where I wanna get this message out here of I know

Mike Hambright :

Making

David Richter:

Sure what you got right. That you set it up like Mike did and his wife did, which your wife is awesome and she’s got that financial background. So it was like that definitely saved your bacon. I think probably a few more than a few times over the years of, you know, like having her on

Mike Hambright :

The team as well too. Yeah. You know, I don’t know if I told you this, but my, so my wife used to be an investment banker in New York. 

David Richter:

Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>

Mike Hambright :

On Wall Street. And, and then her last kind of professional job was as she worked for a consulting firm and she was kind of referred to as a bankruptcy and turnaround consultant that went into businesses that were failing. The truth is I think 99% of the time they helped liquidate the companies. So it really, there was very few turning around, but that left such a scar on her of like lots of family businesses that had grown to like huge businesses and it was always cash and financial mismanagement that was the end of all these businesses is it was complete mismanagement of, of resources and capital. And those lessons learned from seeing other family businesses or sometimes large retailers, whatever, seeing what happened there.

David Richter:

Yeah.

Mike Hambright:

Had such an impact on her that she has always been our guardian, you know, to say this is, this will never happen to us. And those were some of the early influences that kind of impacted us in the early years in our business and still today.

David Richter:

Oh wow. So <laugh>, would you say that it’s pretty important then to have someone on your team that understands?

Mike Hambright:

Oh, there’s No doubt, no doubt. We’ve talked and we’ve talked about this before, like you have to have that person on your team. And, you know, one of the great things about obviously what you do is you don’t necessarily have to be married to one or even related to one because you don’t necessarily, most people that are listening to this show or that are in our industry don’t even necessarily need a full-time person. They need

David Richter:

Mm-Hmm. <Affirmative>,

Mike Hambright :

You know, somebody that can do this a quarter of the time or maybe not even that. Right. And some, some, a fraction of a person. Right. Which obviously is the service that you provide.

David Richter:

Yep. No, I, that’s what we’ve seen obviously with the people that we’re working with. And then I think you’re a testament there with, you know, with your wife send some of that stuff up early on and seen with her background of like, we have to protect this at all costs. Cuz I know it sounds like she, she was scared and she had a lot of those horror stories of, you know, why when people didn’t manage the money correctly. So Yeah, no doubt. I don’t even imagine. Okay. So, let’s talk then about if you were able to, you know, like even out to pay yourself and you were able to get through some of those money struggles, what do you think is the most prevalent reason that a real estate investor lives deal to deal? Why do they live deal to deal?

Mike Hambright :

So I think some, some of it is just not running their business like a business, right? It’s a job. And I think if they’re if you’re going deal to deal, this is, so I have, as you know, I have a ton of experience coaching new investors and now I really don’t work with new investors. I work with highly experienced investors, but still to this day I see people that, a lot of people that operate in the, doing a couple deals here and there, or even a couple deals a month. And in this business, until you get over, it depends on the market, right? But kind of two to three deals a month, it’s a job at that level because you don’t, you don’t have the resources to hire an acquisitions person and a office manager and an admin of some sort and a finance person or bookkeeper to help you with the finance side of the business. You have to do it all because there’s just not enough in your gross profit to allow you to offset those expenses. So until you get above that, say two to three deal a year, mark, at best it’s a business at best it’s a job, not a business, right? And so it’s, it’s like, it’s almost the equivalent of if you see somebody that’s living somebody, it’s the equivalent of I guess a W2 person trying to string it together with a minimum wage job, right? You just, there’s nothing left over to pay for something better. You’re just getting by at best, right? And you might have a good deal in there, it gives you some hope, but the truth is, is your business gets better when you start to scale it up above, let’s say kind of two or three deals a month. Because a lot of your fixed costs, like some of the people you have on your team your marketing to some extent some of the, you know, core marketing that you have, at least if you have an office and things like that, those are fixed costs. You’re paying that, whether you do zero deals a month or, or whether you’re doing 10 deals a month, right?

David Richter:

Yeah.

Mike Hambright :

And so there’s, there’s a little bit in there, like if you’re doing 10 deals a month, you might need two admins instead of one. But it’s basically to try to sweat those fixed assets, those fixed expenses as much as possible. And the profit that you bring home or that you’re able to keep will be bigger and bigger as your business grows from each deal.

David Richter:

That is, I love that what you said there. It’s treating it like a business, you know, at the end of the day it is treating it like a business and if you’re wanting to be that business owner. So I think that’ll resonate with a lot of people because that’s what I see on a lot of the calls that we have is people are tired of not feeling like a business owner, you know, they want that clarity, they want that. Yeah, exactly. It’s a job. They, they don’t, they’re feeling burned out cuz they don’t see the light at the end of the tunnel. So now that’s, that’s really, really good. Okay. So that helps me with the cash flow side and like why people live deal to deal. Let’s dive in just a little bit with you on the, you know, early you talked about some of the money lessons you’ve learned just from osmosis or learning and seeing what your family was doing there. What lessons do you wanna pass on to your kids, you know, like to the next generation of either real estate investor or your actual children?

Mike Hambright :

Yeah, I think it’s along the same lines to that there’s a lot of ways to make money. I feel like entrepreneurs are, are what this country needs right now. Like, we’re gonna solve our government’s not solving problems like it’s entrepreneurs and business owners that are solving problems and first and foremost to solve our own problems, right? Like I, it’s so easy to get kind of downtrodden from what’s going on in the country these days are watching the news like you think the world’s coming to an end, but part of it is just turning that off and focusing on what you can control. And you know, you can, if you’re not to take anything away from anybody, but the average person has a W2 has no control over their financial future, it’s tied to the company and, you know, you can go ask for raises and stuff, but with entrepreneurs we can find other levers to increase our compensation, right? So kind of teaching those messages of the power of financial freedom. I don’t know how you could have financial freedom in America these days without being a business owner because I’m, I’m perfect, I’m a perfect case of that. I had a couple of two jobs that I loved. One of ’em I got fired from because my boss got fired and I was part of the package. And then the other one was a company that was flying high and then filed for bankruptcy. And I just realized I had no control. And so, you know, as an entrepreneur there’s a lot of things that feel like they’re out of our control sometimes, but I can promise you we’re way more in control than if you’re if your check is coming from somebody else,

David Richter:

Oh yeah, that’s good stuff because most people that have that mindset, putting that into practice, then how do I actually make this a prior you know, I can be that business owner and Right. Think we’ve think we’ve covered that for sure. Cuz I love getting that message out is you wanna be a business owner, time to act like a business owner, that you’re gonna actually, that you’re gonna actually be the leader. And honestly, that’s a different set of skills than the jobs that they’ve ever had. You know, like most people have had that W2 in the past or they’ve had that mindset or school bakes in that mindset into us, you know, like conform and whatnot. And it’s like, as an entrepreneur, you’re pulling back all those onion layers, you know, of like, here I am, that’s who I’m supposed to be, that’s how I’m supposed to help. You know, and it’s like getting past a lot of what’s built into us when we step out away from that. It’s like you have to, you have to break down some of those mental barriers and rebuild, you know, Yoda on learn what you have learned there, you know, and like move forward. So, okay. I’ve got some more questions here. Another question is, I would, I would classify you as a success, you know, like you’ve built some awesome businesses, you’ve had a great run, you’ve got lots of people that you influence and you help them as well too with your masterminds and with investor machine up to this point. Can you give me like one bullet point, like what’s a key to your success so far? What would you, if you could, can you boil it down to one, you know, one action or what, what is that one thing?

Mike Hambright :

Yeah, I’d say tenacity. Like tenacity because you say that I, you viewed me as a success then. And I’m not saying that to brag. We’ve had some successes, but what you don’t see is all the failures. We’ve had a ton of failures and I do talk about this a fair bit on social media or other areas of failure needs to be a stepping stone. And I think there’s a lot of people that try to get started as an entrepreneur or certainly a real estate investor and they have an early failure and they quit. And so I like to say that, you know, failure isn’t final unless you quit it. And so if you use it as a lesson to say, that sucks, don’t do that again, that sucks. Don’t do that again. Oops, that was a mistake. Why did he ever think that would work? And you kind of pile these things up, you get this knowledge that kind of makes you more and more confident, more and more, you know, not invincible, but I’ll just kind of lean on confidence that

David Richter:

Yeah,

Mike Hambright :

Whatever challenge comes my way, I can figure out a solution to and move forward. So, you know, there’s, there’s, I think I have it out on a canvas out in my office. It’s like, don’t, don’t wish you were, don’t wish it was easier, wish you were better. And, and, and I think, I don’t know, I don’t know who the quote is there, I’m quoting somebody that other than myself, but for sure I think what happens as an entrepreneur if you get enough failures under your belt, you just have a high level of confidence that like things aren’t gonna get easier. I just am. It’s easier for me to deal with the problems. I can solve problems faster than I used to. I used to have to sit around and it’s like, what should we do this or that? And I was like, that one sounds a little better, let’s go. You know, and just, I might fail, but I’m gonna pivot again. And we just are, we just make decisions faster. We’re confident that if I get hit with a failure, it’s not gonna, it’s not gonna blow me outta the water and I can just keep moving forward.

David Richter:

There is nothing like that confidence to Yeah. Because even if you’re wrong, at least you’re confidently moving forward to say, okay, I was wrong. And then being humble enough to be able to say, okay, we gotta pivot now, you know, and go a different direction. That’s a big, I think that’s a that’s another big part of what you’re talking about right there. And it just makes me think of like, I don’t know if you’re an office watcher or if you’re listening to this and you’ve ever watched the office and like Andy who’s one of the just, he’s, he’s just a silly guy on the office where he says it’s really something stupid and small. Like someone took something of his and he’s like, this is the hardest thing I’ve ever had to go through in my life. I haven’t had a very hard life. You know, like just that, that concept of the harder, the things that you’ve gone through and those failures, it builds that confidence in yourself to be able to go out and be that leader that you need to be. I think about in college, like I was doing, like doing college during the day, working 10 or 12 hours at night, getting four hours of sleep at the end of that I’m like, I could do anything. Like there’s what, what can’t I do now that I survived? You know, this death trap for the last four years of like this grueling hell torture of doing that. And I was doing like things on the weekend too. So it’s like I totally get that confidence boost. It’s like, if I did that, what else? Throw it at me, bring it my way. Yeah, right. Yeah, exactly. So, no, I love that. That’s a great answer. And I think that’s something that, that you don’t have, that’s not a skill, that is something that is learned through failure. Like you have to go through it with experience and you know, like the only way you get it as a skill is as you go through failure and you go to that next level. So it’s like that’s where, so I absolutely love that cuz anyone, you don’t have to,

Mike Hambright :

It takes time, right? Like I’ve been an investor for 14 years now. I didn’t feel that way when I first started. Like I was scared to death.

David Richter:

Yeah,

Mike Hambright :

Right? And, and then over time you start to realize like, this decision I have to make isn’t like life changing. Like should I convert the garage or should I on convert the garage or should I leave it as a conversion? It’s like, and you would ask people, 50% of ’em would say one or the other. It ultimately doesn’t matter, like what color should I use in a house? I just got to the point where I used to like pick ’em all out, right? And then I would just ask my contractor, what do you want to do? What do you like, oh I like this and this, cool, let’s do that. Like, I literally don’t care. It’s not gonna impact anything. Like things that I used to think were a big deal are not even an issue. Right,

David Richter:

<Laugh>. Exactly. Yeah, that’s good stuff. It’s just keep it rolling. Things aren’t as big of a deal as you think they are. That’s until, you know, like then you get in those situations and you’re able to keep your cool. So yeah,

Mike Hambright :

You make it, if you make a failure, you just like, okay, that was a bad, I clearly have made lots of bad decisions too, so, but you just deal with it. It’s like, okay, I shouldn’t have done that or we shouldn’t have said that, or we shouldn’t have taken on this project, whatever. Here’s how we’re gonna unwind it and let’s just move on to the next one tomorrow. You know?

David Richter:

Yeah. That’s so good. So kind of around that same thing, so that was like one of the keys to your success. What’s the hardest lesson you’ve learned over the years of being a business owner?

Mike Hambright :

You know, I think, and I still struggle with this, is just giving up control cuz I think a lot of us as real estate investors, you know, early on especially, we’re very frugal, right? We’re doing everything ourselves, rolling up our sleeves. If it’s gonna happen, it’s, it’s because I made it happen. Yeah. And you know, we’re trying to find cheap contractors, cheap materials and just doing everything ourselves. So I think inevitably a lot of real estate investors get this kind of frugal mentality up front because that’s how they make deals work is they just, if I could save a little money here and save a little money there, and if I buy this right and all this comes together, then I’ll do okay. And I think that transcends over into outsourcing stuff or giving away you know delegating responsibility is like I’ll do it, I’ll just do it.

I’ll just do it. I’ll just do it. So I still struggle with that. I mean, in one of our companies now, we have almost 80 employees, so we’ve found ways to delegate a lot of things, but I still struggle with a lot of things that I feel like I can do a better job. But the truth is I just don’t have, there’s no more time in my day to do things that I don’t, you know, absolutely have to do. I really need to focus on what I enjoy doing and the things that I can add the most value instead of every little thing, right? So that’s probably one of my bigger things is delegating. And it’s hard to find great people. I mean, if I’m being honest, I’m not, I’m probably a better like leader of people like for investor fuel and I master myself then I am a manager, if you will. And so I’m not necessarily the most patient manager, if you will. And so we all have, we all have plenty of flaws. You just have to find ways to know who you are and work inside those bounds and figure out a way to outsource the rest.

David Richter:

Yeah, man, if you’re listening to this right now, that’s key. That is something as you, the ceo, if you’re the CEO of your company, you have to think like that. The CEO of most companies doesn’t sit in all the seats. So that’s where you have to give up that control, find those right people and eventually be able to say 80% of what I do is good, but I love what someone said that I’ve heard in the past is like, but if you hire two people and they both do 80%, they’re doing 160% of your output, you know, like they’re doing, you know, double what you were doing. So it’s like even sometimes, even if they’re doing a little bit less perfect than what you could have done, they’re still doing more overall than what you could have done. No doubt.

Mike Hambright :

So, and what’s the value to you of having that off your plate? Right,

David Richter:

Exactly. That is, there’s in my <laugh> for me now, that is absolutely priceless. Like, I will pay, if I’m involved specifically in a task, I will pay a much higher premium than, you know, like to get that off my plate than if it’s just a random other task in the business. You know, it’s like if anything’s tied to me, like get that off my plate cuz I know what I’m good at in the business and what I need to do for it. So totally understand that. So here we go. Just a couple last questions here. One, what general advice would you give the real estate investing community here before we’re about to wrap up?

Mike Hambright :

Yeah, I would say, you know, make sure that you’re surrounding yourself with the right people. I think back to being cheap, there’s a lot of people that avoid masterminds and things like that because they say, well, it’s a lot of money. And it’s like in the grand scheme of things, like what if it helps you do, you know, the cost of amazing mastermind, like investor fuel you’re a part of here for example, is like, like you make more profit than that on one deal. And what if, you know, we have plenty of people that have come in that have tripled five x their business, right? And, and it, and it wasn’t, and it’s not from me even though I’m the leader, it’s from the peer to peer community of people just to get around and learn and grow from. And so really kind of surrounding yourself with the right people and the right knowledge. You can buy your way, you can invest your way up that learning curve. And I think a lot of people back to the frugality of the average real estate investor a lot of people don’t quite understand that yet,

David Richter:

Right? That is so good. That’s what that’s how once I went to a mastermind the first time years ago, that opened my eyes to a whole nother world of like, oh wow, I could have learned from all these people and their mistakes and I don’t have to make ’em, you know, like, this is great, you know, so, and getting to be able to listen to them. Then what was cool was when I started be able to give back to them like, here’s what we did, this didn’t work. Like please don’t do this. Like save yourself some heartache here. So, you know, being able to give back as well. So that’s good stuff. Last question, is there any way our listeners can provide value back to you? What do you have going on? How can they connect? Got I see your investor machine shirt on, you know, like what do you, you know, like what are you working on right now? Because you just helped I think a whole lot of people that listen to this episode.

Mike Hambright :

Yeah, I think look, here’s what I tell people when people join Investor Fuel sometimes and they ask like, how can I add value? Or they ask me like, Hey, you helped me a lot, how can I add value? I say, look, just be a good member of the community. Like help each other out. Like be cool to each other, right? I think this, this industry I think has actually seen a pretty significant transformation over the last five or six years of kind of dog eat dog to like very collaborative and it’s a pretty cool thing to see. And there’s lots of people like you that provide services for folks that help them out. And like we do, I mean, we have investor fuel and investor machine is kind of a done for you lead generation service for professional real estate investors. And that all spurred from being out, you know, in the foxholes of the world listening to what people’s biggest problems are, how do we help people? And for us it was, you know, building a better mouse trap for lead generation. For you it’s providing fractional CFO services. And so I think for people listening, just, you know, find people that can help you grow your business faster and when your time gets freed up, use some of that to go back and help other people with what their needs are.

David Richter:

Awesome. So how do people get ahold of you? Or like where do you wanna point to? Like investor machine or like investor fuel or like what do you want them to Yeah,

Mike Hambright :

Yeah. Hey, if you just wanna connect and follow along on social media, I probably use Facebook the most. So you could just look for my cam right on Facebook for investor fuel and I wanted to make sure that we know that some folks came from you as your listeners Davis, so we take good care of ‘them. So if you wanna learn more about Investor Fuel, it’s a mastermind for single family and multifamily investors. In fact, our next event is coming up here pretty soon. You can go to investorfuel.com/profitfirst. So we’ve got a specific link there that we know you came from David, so we can take good care of you. And if you wanna learn more about our kind of data company and lead generation service, it’s kind of a done for you solution. We do some pretty unique things with data and identifying who the most motivated sellers in your market are. That is the investor machine, the investormachine.com/profit first. And both of those links you can just schedule a call with us, actually the investor machine one. We have a about a 15 minute video there to kinda explain a little bit more about how our system works and then there’s an opportunity to schedule a call with us if you wanna learn a little bit more about it and see if we’re a fit for one another. So those are the best ways.

David Richter:

Awesome. Can’t recommend Mike Moore and the services he provides in the communities and what they’re doing. And like I said, a lot of our clients, the high level real estate investors are, you know, going there and you know, using investor machine and there’s just good stuff all around there. So wanted to make sure I put that in there. And then if you are a real estate investor or business owner or want to be a business owner, like we were talking about, move from real estate investor over to that side and stop living deal to deal, you can head over to simplecfosolutions.com, click the schedule call button and we’ve got a team member there that’s gonna talk with you. Are we the best fit? Are we not? Is there a relationship that we have for you? Like what’s blocking you from getting you true financial freedom? Is it an introduction to Mike and his group? You know, like, where can we provide the most value for you? Cuz we want you to keep more of the money that you’re actually making. That’s why this whole podcast is here for you to hear people like Mike, the struggles that he’s had or the people that he’s put in place to help him. So that’s where I wanted to make sure you’ve got that outlet as well too. Thank you for Wing. See you on the next episode. Remember, start making profit a habit in your business.

Outro:

This episode of the Profit First for REI podcast is over, but there are plenty more where that came from. Are you ready to learn how David and his team can help implement the Profit First system in your business? Schedule a discovery call at simplecfo.com right now. We’ll see you next time on The Profit First for REI podcast with David Richter.