Big Fat Real Estate Checks Ep 178: Using ‘No’ To Get to a ‘Yes’: Secrets to Connecting with Sellers & Creating Deals

Please enjoy this transcript, but please note that it may contain a few typos. With many episodes lasting over 2 hours, it can be challenging to catch minor errors. Enjoy!

Marco
Hey everyone. Welcome to Big Fat Real Estate Checks. I’m joined today with Brett Buras, the man, the myth, and in his mind an absolute legend. Awesome guy. He is going to be joining us today talking about motivation. We’re going to go through a deal, hopefully we’re going to go through as many things as possible to serve you, the listener. We want to help you understand that serving others is really how to become wealthy. In fact, I believe that is your God given right to be wealthy through the service of others and I mean really serving others. And the only way you can serve others is develop some skills, get access tools of the wealthy and really work on yourself and listen better, which is a skill in itself. 

Marco
So you can really serve others at a higher level because all businesses is figuring out what people really need. Step one, go out step two and go give it to them. Step three. And step one is vital because you really have to understand what the pain points are and only serve people that want and need to be served. And I think our big headline today or a big arc of conversation is really going to be about real motivation. At the very beginning, we Talked about the five Ds early on, maybe in the first 10 episodes of this podcast and we’re well into the, I think we’re almost in the 2002 now of the 5Ds, why people need to sell quickly. And sometimes we really lose our focus on those 5Ds, but they’re absolutely vital and important. 

Marco
And if you aren’t really listening for those 5Ds, it doesn’t matter what you say, how you say it in, the order you say it in, or how many questions that you ask, it won’t matter. You’re just wasting your time. Not every cake is ready and you can’t rush baking a good cake at one point. If someone really needs to sell, they will. But you have to get from want to sell to need to sell. And there’s a time and a place for all that. Of course, if you are enjoying this podcast like us, love us, share us, subscribe, make sure you do whatever you got to do in order to not miss any of the content that we distribute. Because my goal is to give you as much value as possible and for you to enjoy it, have some fun. 

Marco
So let’s roll up our sleeves if you got any and let’s get going. So Brett, where we left off on the last episode was big ears really listening. We left off on where the seller really has all the necessary information for us to extract or. Or really collect. So we can put that information on the board, those pieces on the board, to put the puzzle together, to really serve a seller at the highest level. And if you do it correctly with the right seller, it’s never really about money. It’s really about peace of mind. If they want to retire, well, that’s not really motivation. We were just talking about that before we started this. Retirement is not a motivation. Well, where are they going to retire? Where are they going? What are they doing? How much money do they need? 

Marco
They need money now, they need money later. And if they’re wanting to really retire and get out of the game and they’ve owned this asset for a long time, there’s tax consequences, which we can really figure out a way where they can keep more. Because it’s not the gross that matters. It’s. It’s the net. And there’s so many little pieces. As you get more and more educated and as you get more skilled, you can really structure deals that are not based on the highest number, but on the best result for the seller. And I know, Brett, in your wholesaling days, many moons ago, you would get opportunities at much less than competitors, and they’d be scratching their heads going, how’d you get at that number? When I offered more? What happens all the time? Because we’re not focused on the end dollar amount. 

Marco
We’re focused on the end result, which is a very different thing. Completely different. So let’s talk about that, shall we? 

Brett
Yeah. And I’m gonna just. Just a quick analogy so people can be thinking about this as we talk. It’s. You don’t want to be a snorkeler who stays at the surface looking down deep at you, just kind of observing what’s going on down there. You want to be a scuba diver. You want. You want to dive down deep into those motivations. Snorkeling is for rookies. They’ll let anybody do that. Scuba requires practice, and you got to get certified. You want to be a scuba diver, you want to dig, go way down deep. That’s where all the good stuff’s at. So leave the snorkeling equipment to the rookies. You get yourself certified in scuba, and now you get to see all the real stuff. So just keep that snorkeling, scuba. 

Brett
Somebody said that to me once, and it stuck, and so I figured maybe it’ll stick with one or two people. 

Marco
You should also do that with relationships. A lot of us in relationships are snorkelers. You really want to have deep relationships in all the things that you do. I think that’s a true statement for all things. I actually had the pleasure of communicating with a billionaire and he actually had that exact same analogy of don’t snorkel with relationships, be. Be a scuba diver. And that stuck with me as well. So I’m really surprised, actually that you say that right now because it’s actually an important skill in life. It is for sure. So what I’d like to do is, is go to a, I guess scenario one where. Where most are when they’re marketing or when they’re communicating with. With sellers on motivation. And then I want to hopefully, if we have time, go to a human being where we actually served her. 

Marco
I say we because I was partly involved in this transaction through helping Brett and helping him get the money together to get it closed. And really what the significant differences are and how as a. As a person that’s heavily in the business, how you quickly sift and sort to not waste time. Because at the end of the day, all we have is time. And this is a distraction economy where there’s so many distractions and there’s just so much time in a day. There’s very little time in a day. If you really think about it and where we focus, that time is really going to determine our future. 

Marco
And we can either waste a lot of time and hope that things are going to go our way, or we can really create our future, create our destiny by recognizing what’s serving us and what’s not serving us. What’s a time waster, what’s not a time waster? And understanding as well that fortune is in the follow up. Our whole process is based on the word no. Our whole process is based on, okay, well, if you’re not ready yet, let’s keep moving because one day you might be ready. And if you’re not, that’s fine. It’s a law of averages. At one point, someone will be ready enough and you’ll have a volume of lead flow that’s great enough where you won’t have to worry about finances anymore because you’ve already planted enough seeds that given time will turn into a crop. 

Marco
It’s very difficult to really change how hungry you are by only planting one seed at a time. Like one seed and waiting. One seed and waiting. You’ll starve doing it that way. So you need a lot of seeds to really have a good crop, because not all seeds are actually going to. 

Brett
Grow work in anything. Right. Just imagine being a farmer and that Was your philosophy. Right. Like, that doesn’t work. And so the other thing I’ll say, I hear a lot of people, like, they’re looking for, like, the magic list or like some secret or whatever. I’ve done probably 300 or so real estate deals in my career. Wasn’t anything secret about any of them. Just. Just publicly available information that’s available to me, my mother, or anybody else who wants it. The difference is what happens when you make that connection with someone in your ability to ask good questions and your ability to listen, in your ability to cut through the clutter and really focus on the signal and ignore all the noise. You know, the deal we’re going to talk about in this call was it’s publicly available information. It’s one of the Ds. It’s. 

Brett
It’s debt or default. Somebody’s in. In a foreclosure. That’s a default on a mortgage. That’s a piece of public information. So, you know, this wasn’t some, like, thing that, like, I invented to get in touch with this lady. It’s just a piece of public information. The difference was how it was handled. That was the difference. Because everyone had focused on numbers and money with this lady, and they weren’t listening because the thing that she cared the most about was, how do I get myself some time to stay in this home so that I can now then figure out my next move? And I got laser focused on that. 

Marco
And, and if possible, stay in the property. 

Brett
Yes, yes. And that’s. That’s the solution. We actually had a solution for her to stay in it forever, but she didn’t want that because, you know, she just wanted a little time. And then she wanted all that cash because she had a ton of equity to go move on. She wanted to move back to Ohio and be with family. And so whatever, like, that’s what you want. That’s. That’s what we’re gonna. That’s what we’re gonna deliver to you. 

Marco
Let’s find a plan. 

Brett
Yep. 

Marco
Yep. As opposed to just part of that plan, which is, here’s some cash, go figure it out. Right, right. Which is not really serving anyone at that point. So let’s first dissect, I guess, the biggest myth on motivation, which I think is the most common, which is I want to retire. How many times have we heard, oh, man, they’re super motivated. They want to retire. What does that mean? What does retirement mean? I’m technically retired. And I think we’ve discussed this previously in other podcasts Retirement means to be put out of useful use. Like when you retire a model of, of a product, it’s never seen again, it’s lost its use, period. And most people die within five years of retirement because they don’t have purpose. And nobody wants to live without purpose. 

Marco
And what is it that they’re really going to do and what is. What’s stopping? Why is the sale of this asset part of the retirement plan? What is it? Do they. Are they going to take the cash and then put it in the bank and then live on it? Are they going to take that cash and buy something else so they can live on that? Are they going to pay all the taxes on this now and hope that they have enough money to survive? Or it’s not retirement at all. It’s. Is it debt relief? Is it the fact that they owe the mafia money and they’re going to get whacked if they don’t come up with the cash? Because retirement is such a easy thing to throw out that it actually has zero value? 

Marco
And based on what we discussed on the last podcast, really asking more questions around understanding that motivation is important, but also content. That content also has to happen at the right time in the right context. Asking someone right off the bat, hey, why are you selling your property? I believe is the wrong time. And many, including myself, I was taught to do it as early on as possible. And I realized that if I do that too soon, I sound like everyone else, that is, that doesn’t care. That’s just asking the question to see if they could take advantage of that situation. And I can’t tell you how many times someone might have shared that information early on with someone else and they got screwed around and now they’ve lost trust with anyone that’s asking those similar questions. 

Marco
So be very careful and really get trained as to when you should be asking those questions. Now, I say that, but sometimes as you’re having a conversation with someone, there’s. They’re going to share something and it’s important for you to actually, Brett, you had shared this something that you were doing in your business, which is really just repeating the last phrase of the question that was stated, right? Oh, yeah, I think I’m going to be retiring. 

Brett
Retiring? 

Marco
Yeah, I’m going to be retiring. I want to move to. I want to go to Ohio. 

Brett
Ohio? 

Marco
Yeah, Ohio, man. My family’s there. And, you know, I’ve got a little bit of a. Something going on. My doctor said I can’t stay in this climate anymore. And I should be surrounded by family. And since I’m alone here, I thought, you know, being with family would be really important. 

Brett
Sounds important. Who’s up there? 

Marco
So you guys noticing what’s happening? I hope so. 

Brett
You can do that all day long. 

Marco
And sometimes they don’t even realize that’s happening. And it’s magic and it’s simple. It really is very simple. In fact, I challenge you to practice that as often as you can. As often as you can. Now be careful if it’s your spouse so they catch on to it. You’ll get punched in the nose a couple of times. Ask us why we know that. But it’s very effective. And it actually creates an environment where you’re doing the least amount of talking, the most amount of listening, and you’re capturing some great information from your counterpart. Very important. 

Brett
There’s some really, like, safe places to practice that. Like next time you’re in a restaurant and the waitress walks up and she tells you about the specials, whatever that last special is, you can just say like, oh, ribs. Or yes, like, what’s your favorite dish? And he says, oh, I love the stuffed piccata. Stuffed piccata, blah, blah, go on and on about. And you’ll see like, it’s just this natural. There’s a, there’s a natural human component to where the other person wants to fill the void over and over again. And it’s beautiful. It works in your favor, in fact. So you know, Marco, you’re just saying, like, so why are you selling the property? Like, for God’s sake, man, nobody should ever say that, right? So what I like to do, and this is easy and it’s part of the, like the judo. 

Brett
What do you say? 

Marco
Like using verbal judo. 

Brett
Verbal judo, using the other person’s momentum, right? 

Marco
Yes, verbal judo. So what if judo is. Judo is based on being able to defeat your opponent even if they’re larger in size because you’re using their momentum or their weight against them, right? 

Brett
So what I’ll do is I’ll say, tell me about the property, man. They’ll just blah, blah, on and on, right? And they’re not going to tell you that. You know, like we deal with a lot of mobile home parks. They’re not going to tell you the infrastructure is terrible in this. They can tell you all the great stuff. So I always have this question in it. A dear friend and a long time, like 50 year investor down in St. Pete taught me this. Why in the world would you ever want to sell Such a great property, and you just shut up, right? Because they should tell you how amazing it is. Why? Gosh, why would you ever want to sell something like that? That’s a very different thing than saying, why do you want to sell? 

Brett
They just gave you all the reasons in the world, and now you’re saying, well, geez, I’m not even sure what we’re talking, man. It sounds like that’s a keeper forever. And it’s a psychological thing that allows them to be more real with you, and it really works. And ultimately you’re going to hear something. But remember those first things you hear, or like this. The. The snorkeling. I want to retire. I want to move. I have my eye on something else. Whatever those things are, they’re all interesting, right? Oh, that’s. That’s interesting. Where at? That’s interesting. What is it that’s interesting when that’s interesting? Because what we’re trying to figure out is this a real thing? Does this really matter? Or are they just smoke screens? Because they don’t really want to get real about what the real situation is or the real issue is. 

Brett
And we have to be patient, right? We know there’s like steps one to 10 to buy a property. Let’s not jam all 10 steps in at one time because it’s unauthentic. And it. You’re going to piss people off. You have to be patient with this stuff. You might not. I say this all the time. Have you earned the right to ask the next question? What does that mean? What it. What it really means is, have I built enough rapport? Have I shared enough and you shared enough? Or is this feel like it’s going somewhere for me to ask a meaningful question? 

Marco
If it. 

Brett
If it doesn’t feel that way yet, I’m gonna hold off on that. Maybe I need to go do a little homework. Maybe I need to this, maybe I needed that. Maybe I just need to say, you know, appreciate your situation. But we’re gonna. We’re not gonna be anywhere close to what, you know, what you’re asking for because of a value issue. But I’m not gonna rush my way. It’s. You can’t rush your way into a relationship. You have to. You have to let that evolve. And I was thinking about this knowing that were going to be talking, especially on the commercial side of business. Like when I go back and look at the deals that you’ve helped me. I didn’t do commercial real estate before I met you. I came to you because I wanted to do that. 

Brett
Those deals were months and months and months in the making. And I didn’t understand that in the beginning. And so I was very impatient around those things. And I did. What I didn’t understand was that the time that, like, it’s kind of like. Like it was marinating, right? Like, that meat is better. Like, if you just. Yes, you could go eat it right now, but just if you give it a little more time to marinate, the experience is totally different. And that’s what was happening. And I was watching it marinate. Like, come on, hurry up, marinate faster. Like, as if there’s such a thing, right? Or a seed in the ground and you get angry when it doesn’t pop right out of the ground. Like, that’s the most silly and foolish thing ever. There’s a gestation period. 

Brett
Things are going to take the time that they take. And so in that time is on your side, people say, well, you might lose the deal. Well, you can’t lose what you never had. There’s no such thing. Like, you never had it, so you can’t lose it. And so those are like, that patience component is. It’s a tough one for me. I have, like a super high level of proactivity, and I want to go, go. In fact, I feel. I feel like I’m not doing the right thing if I’m not constantly moving something forward. It’s just this, the way God made me. And I have to beat that back down into submission at times because it serves me in many ways, and then in other ways, it doesn’t serve me at all. 

Brett
And so anyway, on the commercial side, man, it’s months and months and months in. Sometimes on the residential side, I can feel it in a culture, hey, we’re going to have a conversation. We’re going to. We’re going to lay some facts out, we’re going to learn some things, we’re going to ask some questions. But I haven’t really earned the right to dig into that infection yet. If I try to dig into that infection right now, the patient’s going to leap up off the table and run away. They need to know that I’m qualified to help solve this problem. They need to know that I care. They need to know that. That I have empathy for their situation. Then I can. I can dig into that thing a little bit and see if I can cure it. 

Brett
And so I’m probably saying this to myself just as much to anybody else, but being patient with that is really important. 

Marco
I think the word patient is a good word because at the end of the day, it is a patient. If we’re looking at this from a medical perspective, right. Not everyone wants to go to the hospital. Not everyone wants to be seen by a doctor, no matter how messed up they might be. Right. And it’s only when the patient decides to walk in generally that they want to get seen. Now there is an ER situation where you can’t say the wrong thing to the right person. That, that’s your, You’ve said that. Right? So if someone is really urgently needing assistance, you can say pretty much anything and it won’t matter because they’re ready for anything. Like they’re, they have multiple Ds going on. 

Marco
But what I want to really explore because we’re, we’re talking about, you know, being patient, listening, asking the right questions, making sure that we’re, you know, we’ve earned the right to ask the right amount of the right questions and in the right order. But how do we know if they’re ready? Like, how do we know to invest extra time with that human being? How do we, you know, and we deal with agents just I think, pretty much equally as we deal with sellers directly. Right. And I’m always asked what’s better, dealing with an agent or dealing with a seller directly? I like them both. I almost like agents better, honestly, because a real estate agent, once they understand and trust you, they can bring you infinite amount of deals. 

Marco
Technically, they can just go and find all the right opportunities with the right people that meet a certain profile and just bring them to you like a golden retriever. So you work at once and it can pay you on a recurring basis for life. Right. The right agent will always bring you opportunity because they know you can close and vice versa. With a seller, yes, you have direct contact, but it’s a one and done thing. You have to keep hunting over and over again. So how do we focus on the signal, all right. And not on that noise. So I want to circle back to the word retirement. All right, how do we know if a, if a seller or an agent says, yeah, they’re really motivated, they just want to retire. 

Brett
So first of all, if an agent or a seller says that, to me, it’s, that in and of itself is pretty meaningless for me. It just doesn’t mean anything. I’ve heard that so many times that, and I’ve seen it just be not very meaningful because it’s not a motivation. So there’s going to have to be something else that comes from the conversation that causes me to think that this is, you know, worthy of time. But at the end of the day, in with your process, we don’t even need to really be overly concerned with that stuff upfront because, you know, we’re going to be focused on the numbers, right? We’re going to, we’re going to get to know and no pretty quickly, which gives us, opens up the whole world, right? 

Brett
If we say, if they say no to one thing, they’re saying yes to, or they can say yes to anything else. And so when I hear things like, well, they’re just ready to, you know, they have their eye on another property, guys, that’s a luxury. That, that’s, that’s somebody that has a luxury. Well, they want to retire. That’s a luxury. They don’t have to. Right? They want to retire. So when you get these reasons that sound like luxuries, you know, there’s either a hidden motivation that they’re due to self preservation they’re unwilling to reveal because they feel like it exposes them. Like maybe they’re in debt up to their eyeballs. They don’t want to say that because they feel like you’re going to come in and pounce on them. So they’re masking it with something else. 

Brett
And right in the very beginning, you may not get to what those things are because the thing that’s really important to remember is that today’s unmotivated seller is tomorrow’s motivated seller. We real estate is a dynamic marketplace where there’s so many market dynamics that are changing. And I don’t mean the thing, I don’t mean like interest rates and all that stuff. Like, forget about all that. I’ve made money. High interest rates, low interest rates, blah, blah. I don’t even, I don’t even care. I’m talking about a seller situation. Their situation today could be one thing. In their situation next week could be something else. Think about someone who’s elderly who’s, you know, own that apartment complex or that mobile home park or whatever the asset is when you’re 75, 80, 85 years old, like the clock is ticking at a pace that’s pretty rapid. 

Brett
So things can change from a health perspective, from a relationship perspective. We’ve been in situations where we start talking to a couple this sweet, you know, would you like to be skipped? Sweet older lady is. And her husband have owned this mobile home park forever. And we’re just having great conversation and talking about they want to sell and this and that. Three weeks later, his wife’s in the hospital. Two weeks later, she’s gone. His situation has radically changed in the conversation is radically different. And so when you hear these. I wish I could think of some more. Maybe we could, like, just spitball some, like, retirement is a big one. I’m trying to think of some other, like, pseudo. 

Marco
They need to sell now. They want to sell now. They need this number. Well, the word I, I want to take it from a real estate agent perspective real quick. 

Brett
Sure. 

Marco
So if, if an agent tells you they just want to, you know, they’re looking to retire. They’ve. They’ve had this for a while and they just want to retire now. What. 

Brett
So I’m going to go deep on that. I’m going to, I’m not going to fight it. I’m going to lean into it. Oh, well, that, you know, retirement. Boy, that sounds really interesting. I’m not sure that’s in my future anytime soon. What, what are they looking to do? They just want to be completely out of the business or are they looking to do something else? Or what’s that look like for those guys? 

Marco
They’re just done with it, man. They’re just done. I don’t know. That’s all the guy told me. He just wants to retire. 

Brett
Gotcha. Have they shared at all in terms of, you know, what it looks like to just get this big wad of cash and tax consequences and all the things that come along with that? Any, Anything. 

Marco
Yeah, I think the guy wants to buy something else. 

Brett
Yeah. So for me, I’m gonna keep. I’m gonna, I’m gonna try that move for a few times, and if I’m kind of getting the hand, you know, which is what you’re basically giving me, like. I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know. I’m basically gonna go back to the numbers. Right. I’m gonna, I’m gonna go back to. We’re not gonna, we’re not gonna be at that number because the value’s not there. 

Marco
Right, Right. Well, buying something else, by the way, is not a. Is, Is not retirement exactly. By definition. Because if they’re buying something else, it means they’re driven by money, not by something else. More money or buying another asset is not part of the 5Ds. It’s not debt, it’s not divorce, it’s not death, it’s not displacement and certainly not disease. 

Brett
Well, Marco, here’s what’s interesting. This is a real life example. So when I decided to sell the hotel was profitable. Everything was good. Personally, I was ready to move on. I had some personal reasons why that was important to me, and I. And I wanted to move on. So when I hired a broker, I made it really clear to the broker, like, where I was on that deal in terms of, like, my thought process, my mentality, the pricing. He wanted to be much higher. I said, let’s not waste time with that. Let’s, let’s. Let’s bring it down a bit. Let’s do this. So my point is, this is when you have a real estate agent who’s kind of giving you the hands on. Yeah, I don’t know. Yeah, I don’t know. Yeah, I don’t know. 

Brett
They’re either trying to preserve their client or their client’s just not very motivated. Because when a real estate agent has a. I’ve been in the meetings, the shit, I’ve been the seller. Like, I’ve been in situations where something had to go. The conversation that a motivated seller has with a real estate agent sounds very different than the conversation that an unmotivated seller has with the real estate agent. Because you sit that agent down and you look in their eyeballs and you say, hey, man, I need this gone out of my life because of this and because of this, and I need to do this, and this has got to go. I want to see every offer. I want to look at everything. I want to try to make everything work. So when you’re getting the. I don’t know, I don’t know. Just understand. 

Brett
It’s one of two things. It’s either they’re trying to preserve their client’s situation or the client’s not very motivated and they actually don’t know. But if you ever talk to a real estate agent who has a truly motivated client, once they know they can trust you a little bit, and that’s a big piece, you have to be a pro enough. And we do that through behavior and communication. You can’t sound like somebody that’s untrustworthy because that’s the dead end. And this is, you know, gap compression in the way that we do. This gives us the, that authority to be that professional. A real estate agent representing a motivated seller is gonna, they’re gonna spill the beans and if they’re not spilling the beans again, it’s because they don’t know or they’re, or there’s no motivation. 

Marco
And if they claim that they don’t know. 

Brett
Right. Are you willing to go find out? 

Marco
Go find out. It’s that simple. Because if so from a typical, right now, the, the market is not even what it, not even close to what it was when, when the market was hot, when money was cheap, there was a lot of transactions that were happening on a weekly basis. Right. They were, they didn’t have to work that hard. And now that there are fewer buyers because money is more expensive, even if the Fed lowers rates, it’s not going to be what it was until money gets cheap again. Period. Right. There’s, there’s work involved now in being a real estate agent and you want to have the ability to obviously put food on the table for your family. 

Marco
You want to make sure that you’re listing or have access to the, as many listings as possible to show your clients if you’re showing the property or if you’re the listing agent. And, and if you’re really wanting to serve your client, the more information that you get from your client, the better you can serve them. So asking a real estate agent anything, and if their answer is just write it up and I’ll present it, does that sound like a agent that’s really working hard for their client or does that sound like a lazy agent that just wants to show that they’re getting some activity in order to get it? You know, in order for them to at least look good on something? Like, we got this offer, but I know you’re not going to like it. 

Marco
Which one do you think it’s going to be? Someone that’s really working hard to get a result or someone that’s really not working that hard in order to work for their client and we have no control over what the agent is going to do or how they do it? 

Brett
That’s right. 

Marco
And there’s, there are a lot of instances where there is a very motivated seller on the other end of the conversation, but the agent isn’t willing to put in the time or the work or even ask if they’re open to anything. Because I know when I’m selling property, my, my team is constantly, whatever the, whoever the agent is based on where it is, they’re going to text me and saying, hey, we got this offer. Do you want to even look at it? The answer is no. Or they’re asking me this question, do you want to see something? Are you wanting to go down this path and I’ll say no or yes or let’s explore that, right? Because that communication is important, because I want to sell it, and I’m not. 

Marco
I’m not necessarily motivated to sell it for the lowest amount unless it’s a real pain in the ass property, in which case, if I want a gun, I don’t care. I want a gun without it hurting me. 

Brett
Well, in all the questions you’re hurting the buyer on day one of a listing is very different than the questions you’re willing to answer on day 100 of a listing. 

Marco
100%, right? 

Brett
Day 100, you’re like, whatever, man. I’ll tell them whatever. You know, day one, you’re feeling like, you know, we got this all figured out. Day 100, you’re like, oh, crap, maybe we don’t have it all figured out, you know? And so that’s why I say that, like that there’s a dynamic there that requires some patience. Because as time goes by and time is on our side, it’s beautiful. The property’s not our problem. The time is not our problem. None of it’s our problem. So just consistently you have to have discipline. And I think that’s. That’s a struggle for a lot of people is you have to have discipline. And the discipline is to just do the same thing over and over again and be willing to follow up. And be willing to follow up. And just like, it’s. It’s funny because people in my. 

Brett
As a wholesaler, people would. People, cash buyers would come to me and say, hey, I want to be able to find houses like you do. And I would say, okay. So you want to do the marketing and you want to take all the phone calls and you want to. You want to be like. You want to get to the source, right? Yep, that’s what I want. So it’s okay, I’ll teach you how to do it. 20 grand, I’ll teach you how to do it. They’d write a check. They send me 20,000 bucks, say, okay, start tomorrow. I would teach him everything. Give them all the sources the direct, cheapest, direct mail, the way to do it, the best list, blah, blah. Inevitably, this happened. One, two, three times. Two weeks. I was following up, following. Hi’s. How’s it going, man? 

Brett
Some of these people aren’t really happy when they call. They’re, like, angry. So, yep. That happens, man. Some of these people, they want, like, too much money for their property. These are seasoned real estate people who buy with cash from guys like me. I’m like, well, yeah, well, of course, a lot of people want more than you can, huh? In every instance. These are really nice people. I still talk to them today. Gone. They didn’t make it a month. Like, man, you got to have some discipline. Like, who cares what all the other people say? That’s the noise. Let’s focus on the signal, because two out of a hundred, one out of a hundred need your help. 

Brett
You just got all distracted on all the other crap, and you weren’t even emotionally available for the person that actually needed your help because you gave all your juice, your emotional juice, to all the people that weren’t motivated. And that’s the biggest problem I see in the business is we spend so much time on unmotivated people that when it comes to the motivated person, you’re so damn worn out that you can’t even see it. You can’t hear it. You don’t see it. You miss it. And it’s. It’s terrible. Like, once you do it long enough, it’s so obvious what’s happening in. In, like, you know, since I, you know, started working with you and you’re helping me, and I’ve seen, you know, like, I’ve had a view now of, like, a lot of people doing real estate. 

Brett
I like, if I could, like, wave a magic wand and fix one thing, it would be ignore the noise, focus on the signal. Because life’s easier. Way easier. 

Marco
And those that typically want to write that check don’t want to put in the work in order to get to the result. Because there is work. And I look at it this way, even in life, if. If someone stole $10 from you, would you spend $86,400 to get it back? 

Brett
Of course not. 

Marco
I’ll say it again. If someone stole $10 from you, would you spend $86,400 to get it back? And everyone says no, right? So if someone calls you or you’re dealing with a motive, someone unmotivated seller or an agent for 10 seconds, which is $10, and you spend the next 24 hours worrying about it, that’s $86,400 worth of time at $1 a second. If someone calls you a name or says this it. There’s no such thing as a motivated seller. If there was a motivated seller on the market, I’d be buying. If this was a good deal, I’d be buying it. Right. You get all this noise from different people that are going to tell you it doesn’t work. Well, how are people making money in the real estate business that if it doesn’t work. 

Marco
So just to distill this, and we’re gonna have to do the case study on the next. On the next one, because I don’t want to. I know we keep saying the next one, but I, I promise it’s on the next one. And follow process. A process that allows you to ask a lot of questions to a lot of people without your ego being involved. See which one answers in the way that they should be answering, find out if it’s a real answer. Like retirement could be a motivated seller. But is it. Are they basing that statement on the 5DS? Are they basing that statement on a dollar amount cash needed for the next property? Cash is not One of the 5Ds, it’s just not. Now if someone has a medical issue, it’s not money they need. They need the medical procedure. 

Marco
And if you could snap your fingers and give them that medical procedures for free. They don’t need the cash. If it’s mismanaged and their tenants are really eating them alive, which we see, mismanagement is like death. It’s the death of the property they want out. It’s creating a lot of stress. So those are the things that we want to focus on, is what is it that’s really motivating this human being to get out of this fantastic property? Why would anyone want to sell this? 

Brett
It’s. 

Marco
If it’s so great, here’s a really. 

Brett
Funny story to make your point. So my daughter has applied to colleges and she’s got one college she really wants to get into, but it’s really hard to get into and she wants to get her mba. So I said, hey, you know what you should do is you should start a little business right now because you’ll have an amazing story to tell when you apply to MBA school. Like start now and you’ll have this amazing story and you’ll be a shoe in for MBA school. So she’s like, what do you think I should do? And I was like, well, let me tell you about timepieces and trading watches. So buddy of mine created this course about watch trading. And so anyway, I send it to her, she watches it and she’s like, oh, this is great. Like I could really get into this. 

Brett
So Marco, I gave her like I Taught her gap compression. She was, what is it? 

Marco
What is this? 

Brett
This is never going to work, blah, blah, right? So I’m like, just trust. 

Marco
Of course it doesn’t work. Just nothing I should do. 

Brett
So I said, hey, you need to go find. You need to get like 15 or 20 things going at one time. So, so that you’re in charge of which one you choose. So she gets about a 40 or 50% discount on this beautiful timepiece, right? So she goes through all the due diligence. She buys it, watch comes in. So this weekend my parents were in town and so my daughter is setting up a light box to take pictures of this watch because she’s got to remarket it and sell it. So my mom, who knows what I do for a living and like, you know, I fund my whole lifestyle in real estate. My mom says, so why would somebody sell you a watch for less than you could go resell it for? 

Brett
I was like, wow, that is a, that’s like, it’s like I’m so intrigued by this question. Like, like, my mom’s not in real estate, she’s a schoolteacher. And I’m like, well, mom, this person might have had some reason that money was less important than time. And they decided that at this moment in time, taking this amount of money was more important than waiting. And she was like, oh, like she had never even thought of that. And so it just reminded me, like, most people don’t understand, like, they’re not thinking about time and motivation and all these different things. Like, if my mom’s philosophy was true, pawn shops wouldn’t exist. Like, why would you ever go sell something at a pawn shop? Because you know they’re going to pay you like 50 cents on the dollar max. 

Brett
Because at that moment in your life, some money was a bigger requirement than waiting. And so really that’s the situation that we’re in. We’re in the business of sifting and sorting and sifting and sorting efficiently. This is the key. Efficiently having a process, having a system, having a. Like, it’s a process that allows you to sift and sort and allow the good stuff to rise to the top so that you’re only dealing with the people who you can, who need your help and who you can actually help. And that’s really what this is about. It’s not about three bed, two bath bricks, blah, blah, 27 unit apartment, 50 unit mobile home park, yacht, whatever. I don’t even hear that shit anymore. 

Marco
Those Are the bones right? 

Brett
Exactly. And so that sifting and sorting and you. And you have to have a way to do that and then you have to have a discipline to go do that all the time, over and over again. And when you’re committed to it, you engineer an outcome that is good for you and good for your counterpart. You can literally engineer the outcome. I am convinced. I’ve engineered many outcomes and I’m not great at it. In fact, usually I just. I need your help. So. But you can engineer outcomes to, to create the life that you want, which is pretty awesome. Can, all things considered. 

Marco
Well, this business is nuts. You don’t need a degree, you don’t need to go to years and years of schooling. You don’t have a board that’s looking over everything that you do. There’s no one that dies if you do this, if you make a mistake. As long as you have integrity and do things with the intention of what’s best for the seller and understanding what those numbers are, with a little bit of education, you become extremely wealthy and have the basically become a 1 percenter without having to do with the 1 percenters have done. And the reason I want to circle back to the bones is going back to being a patient. If my bones are broken and I go to the hospital and someone is having a difficulty breathing or is having convulsions or is. 

Marco
Is in a serious state, who are they going to see first in triage? Those that are suffering from a bone break or those that can’t breathe? 

Brett
Right. 

Marco
Those that are suffocating. We’re looking for the suffocators. We’re not looking for the bone breakers because some are just talking about the bones. The bones. I want bones. I want more bones. I’m looking for more property. I want more cash to be able to buy more bones. That’s the lowest priority on the triage. And if you really understand how to ask the right questions, to sift and sort with volume, because you need volume. If a hospital only had one patient, they would try to extract as much value from that patient as possible, overcharge and be out of business because they’d be making the wrong decisions for the patient. And this is the same. So a mechanism to have as many leads as possible that cost nothing. You used to spend a shit ton of money on marketing. That’s not necessary. 

Marco
You don’t need to spend money on marketing. It’s don’t need money to do that. You need a system and process to do that. And then from There sifting and sorting from all those that raise their hand saying, yes, I do really want to sell from need to sell. Okay, who are the needy people now who really does need versus think they need? And it’s someone that says they need what they really want and there are some that want, that actually need. And the process will really help you with that once you really understand it. It’s very simple, actually. Very, very simple. 

Brett
Well, we comprehensive. It is simple. It’s not easy, but it is simple and it’s a methodology. So the thing that I love about it is if you embrace the methodology, no different than, you know, the guys I graduated with who went on to dental school, right? They embraced a methodology and they’re dentists and they took that practice, they took that education very seriously. And now they run practices and they’re, they’re, you know, compensated really well for that. You have to take your real estate career just as seriously. You can’t be a clown. You can’t be a part like a. Every now and then. You can be a part timer, but you have to be consistent. Are you as serious about creating wealth as your buddies who are doctors and lawyers and all that other entrepreneurs and all that other stuff? 

Brett
It requires a level of seriousness that sadly, this distraction economy is going to bombard you to convince you that it doesn’t require guys. 

Marco
Consistency and persistency keep you distracted. 

Brett
You can decide who they is on your own. I’m not going to get into that. They want you distracted. The economy runs on you believing that you have to have a job, that you have to go trade your labor for money and that your labor is taxed and just stop it with all the matrix stuff, man. Bust out of that thing and be free. Be free. I didn’t even put a pair of shoes on today. I’ve been in my socks all day. I’m not going anywhere. It’s too cold outside. 

Marco
I’m glad that’s what you shared. 

Brett
That’s south of I’m fully clothed, but I just didn’t put any shoes on. 

Marco
Thanks for that. Appreciate that. Let’s end it there. Let’s end it there. So if were to sum this up into a couple lines, went all over the place. Focus. Discipline, discipline, persistence, consistency, big ears. Do people need to sell, want to sell? Make sure you have a system and a process, a machine that allows you to make it as simple as possible. Put in the time to work in the effort and really remove your ego from the conversation so you don’t make your motivation their motivation because this is very common. I’m a motivated buyer, so I’m going to make sure that you’re motivated. I’m only going to listen to what I think I want to hear, which is a whole other podcast on itself. All right, let’s hit the pause button now so everyone can take a potty break. 

Marco
And I piggy promise that this next podcast will be a dissection of Brett Steel that was closed last year in December. And I think on Thursday you got the lead and on Monday, that Monday or Tuesday of next, that week, next week you actually close. It was very fast and that’s how quickly things happen, right. Once you understand process. So stay tuned, listen to the next podcast. Hopefully this was as entertaining as and educational as it was motivating. And stick to it. Don’t give up, don’t listen to they, whoever they are. I don’t think that was English, but you know what I was talking about and like us, love us, share us. And thank you so much for your time, your energy and your great comments and we will see you on the next podcast. 

Marco
Appreciate you, have a great day and remember it’s your God given right to be wealthy through the service of others. Bye for now.