Mike C-Roc  0:00  

Your life will never be the same because every time you come into one of these setbacks, matter of fact, you’ll look for setbacks and problems. You get into these situations. You understand, man, this is a training session or this is fuel for me. This is rocket fuel for me. And the reason I say rocket fuel is because I’m trying to get into orbit. What I mean by that is there’s suppressors in life. Bad things happen to good people. You can call that gravity. And when gravity’s action, it’s trying to pull you back down. Well, I want to get to orbit where the gravitational pull is pretty much gone. And you need the only way to get into orbit is rocket fuel.

Announcer  0:35  

Welcome to CRE PN Radio for influential commercial real estate professionals who work with investors buyers and sellers of commercial real estate coast to coast.  Whether you’re an investor, broker, lender, property manager, attorney or accountant We are here to learn from the experts.

J Darrin Gross  0:55  

Welcome to commercial real estate pro networks CRE PN Radio. Thanks for joining us. My name is J. Darrin Gross. This is a podcast focused on commercial real estate investment and risk management strategies. Weekly we have conversations with commercial real estate investors and professionals who provide their experience and insight to help you grow your real estate portfolio. 

Today my guest is Mike Ciorrocco. Mike is the CEO of People Building Inc. He is a performance coach, author, dynamic public speaker, visionary and thought leader. He has been featured by Yahoo Finance as one of the top business leaders to follow in 2020 and is on a mission to build people. At his core. He’s obsessed with success and helping others achieve greatness. C-Roc is a guy who had a fire lit in him at an early age that fires led him to inspire others to see greatness inside themselves using past life events to fuel their fire. In just a minute, we’re going to speak with Mike about how you can turn setbacks into rocket fuel. 

But first a quick reminder, if you like our show, CRE PN Radio, there are a couple things you can do to help. You can like, share and subscribe. And as always, we would love to hear from you, please consider leaving a comment. Also, if you’d like to see how handsome our guests are, be sure to check out our YouTube channel. And you can find us on youtube at Commercial Real Estate Pro Network. And while you’re there, please subscribe. With that I want to welcome my guest, Mike, welcome to CRE PN Radio.

Mike C-Roc  2:45  

Thank you for having me. It’s an honor to be here. Anytime I have the opportunity to share my story and my content with others audiences. Man, I’m honored. And I just want to express gratitude for you, to you for having me here.

J Darrin Gross  3:00  

No, my pleasure, I’m looking forward to our talk. Hey, before we get rolling here, if you could take just a second and share with the listeners a little bit about your background.

Mike C-Roc  3:12  

Yeah, so I run a mortgage division for a large company called Nation’s Lending. And it’s throughout the 50 states mortgage lending. We have 40 employees and I get to work with three of my best friends I grew up with since I was 10 years old. We all went to high school college. And now we’ll get to work together. And my younger brother Casey is one of our sales managers as well. So when I wake up in the morning, despite thanking my Creator for being alive, and being able to impact people every single day, I also am very thankful for the opportunity that I have to come and work with such a great team along with best friends and my brother. So we’ve been doing a mortgages for since 2006. And we had our own company as far as our division since 2011. So for the last nine years, we’ve been learning growing, without much guidance, without much mentorship, kind of figuring out things on our own. And understanding that, you know, we had a lot of setbacks, just like anybody in business that you’re, you know, you’re going on, we could have the best guidance, mentorship or what have you, and still finding out that we need help. and not being afraid to ask for help, being able to go to somebody and be vulnerable. And so we’ve learned that in the last nine years, and now we’re actually seeing, finally, exponential growth over the last two years. And we’re finding things that work. And then we get so excited about it. We want to share it with people. So that’s what I do. I also have a coaching business called People Building and the podcast called What Are You Made Of?, and we’re just firing on all cylinders. And, you know, I just want to try to jam as much as I can in the number of years I have left on this planet to make the biggest impact that I possibly can.

J Darrin Gross  4:57  

That’s awesome. I love the way working with your buddies from 10 years of age. That’s, that’s pretty cool. And was everybody like minded? Or who was the, the the lead on getting in the mortgage business?

Mike C-Roc  5:14  

Well, there’s one gentleman, Chris Short, one of my best friends he got in first, I was in real estate. And two of us were in real estate as realtors doing well. And another one was in banking, not necessarily mortgages. So Chris was in it first, we all jumped in. And then as far as the building and scaling and all that they’re all on board, all like minded, but I lead the charge within the inspiration and the culture building. And then they jump on and help and they have their own strengths that they’re that we use them for. So

J Darrin Gross  5:48  

Oh, that’s awesome. And are all of you guys still located in the same area? Or have you spread out?

Mike C-Roc  5:54  

No. So we’re spread out. The cool thing about technology nowadays is we have seven, six or seven branches, I can’t even keep up anymore. But we have 40 employees spread out through Maryland, Delaware, and Miami, actually. So we use zoom, we use Microsoft Teams a lot to interact with each other every day in the morning, we meet with the whole team for 15 minutes. And we do a lot of video calls rather than we rarely use the phone anymore. It’s mostly video calls. So we have that interpersonal communication and contact with that. So but occasionally, we’ll be together at certain offices just depending on the day. So

J Darrin Gross  6:33  

No, that’s awesome. It is kind of a funny thing to think how technology has shaped our world. And in brought us closer and accelerated. So through this whole COVID experience. I think the just like what we’re doing right now, the video phone is kind of a ubiquitous experience, and, and all the different platforms and all the challenges that brings, but it’s all good.

Mike C-Roc  6:58  

Yeah, and you know, Darrin thing we talked about before we got online here is, you know, COVID has put us in situation where we can adapt more. And I just want to preface this because you may hear some noise in the background. And we’re overcoming a challenge right now You and I, that we had talked about and I like to bring things I’m transparent kind of guy because I any lesson that I can learn through everyday life, I like to bring it to people’s attention so that they can benefit from it. And you know, I’ve construction going on downstairs in my house two levels below me. And we said to ourselves, do we want to do this or not. And I’m not in my podcast studio, I’m usually in a nice studio. And you know, in life, man, I learned a lot of things with this. And COVID has bring that brought this to the forefront, that you have to be able to adapt to things, you have to be able to use setbacks as fuel for yourself, not just fuel, but rocket fuel, which we’ll get into later. But I just wanted to bring that up in case people hear a little bit of noises in the background. Nowadays, we’re in the COVID environment, the COVID, uh, you know, things are, you know, changing and happening out of our control right now and just kind of have to adapt and make the best of it.

J Darrin Gross  8:02  

No, that’s so true. I think it’s, it’s really kind of opened up a whole new range of possibilities, I think, you know, a lot of the the rigid kind of place to work and how work was to be done as getting exposed for, for what it is, I think the reality is if, if there’s work to that needs to be done, and people can do it. Let’s get it done. Right.

Mike C-Roc  8:30  

I love that. Yeah, I mean, nothing, nothing, you know, we can use all the excuses we want in the world for things not getting done. And that that’s a great example of COVID a lot of people used COVID for an excuse not to be successful. And when it happened for our team in the mortgage industry, as soon as it started to happen, getting to acceptance and acknowledging the issue that was going on as fast as possible was key for me and my group. And we met with our team and say, Hey, guys, this is what happened. And right now, things are gonna change. I don’t know how bad it’s going to get. But let’s just shoot and think that ourselves that we’re going to work absolutely the hardest we’ve ever worked in our lives. We’re going to be the most wore out at the end of this. However, this is the reason we’re going to make it a reason why we’re successful while everyone else makes excuses. And so 100% Man, I mean, I’m in a T shirt right now, I work most of the time and a T shirt. I wear a hat, I don’t have hair, I wear a hat, but we’re doing more business we’re more successful than we’ve ever been. And at the end of the day, like you said it’s about getting the job done.

J Darrin Gross  9:32  

Right right. So let’s let’s talk a little bit about your your driving, you know your your focus of taking you know, a setback and turn it into rocket fuel. The in the intro there read a little bit about something early in life. He had something is there a is there an episode that you can share with us that that kind of made that crystal crystalize?  

Mike C-Roc  10:02  

So, I came from a broken home there. And I don’t remember my parents together. And when I tell you the story, it’s not because I’m trying to play a victim role. I use this as strictly as rocket fuel. And I’ll explain to you why rocket fuel in a second, but no, my parents never know them together would do the other weekend thing, like a lot of your listeners may have dealt with the custody battles, the child support battles, all that jazz as a kid. Now, as a kid, I didn’t know any different, I thought it was normal. And you know, then I moved with my dad from eight to 11. And during that time, again, I didn’t know this was not normal. But I dealt with a lot of emotional and psychological abuse. My parents had conflicts, the step parents were, you know, had conflicts. And I was in in this environment and trenched in it and felt like it was all me it was my fault. And so, you know, I didn’t think it was anything of it. Until one day, I was coming home from my mom’s house after a weekend at her house. And we would go to these hills in southeastern Pennsylvania. And my stomach would be in knots before I would go back to my dad’s house, I would have anxiety. I just wasn’t right. And I thought it was normal. I thought it was like this is just the way it is. And my mom told me, she said, You know what, this isn’t normal. You shouldn’t be doing this, you shouldn’t feel this way. This is not normal. So at the end of the day, when I basically had the conversation with her, I opened up to her and said, Hey, this is what’s going on. I’m not happy, I’m being treated this way. She said, Listen, I’m gonna, I’m gonna follow court papers. And I’m going to, you know, get you out of there, if that’s okay with you, if that’s what you want. But if I do this, you need to stick to your guns, you need no matter what, because they’re going to try to talk you out of it. So one day, I came home from school, my dad had court papers in his hand, and I knew darn Right, well, what was in that, that envelope. And, you know, he said, Go Go back to your room. And I sat in my room for about five minutes, which felt like five hours. And he came in and he said, You know what’s in this envelope, you really want to move back with your mom, they don’t have it that great. They’re, you know, they don’t have money like we do. Now, my dad was my hero, he had a masonry business, very successful, I looked up to him, he’s a hard worker laying concrete, pour concrete laying block. And the end of the day, I looked that up to him for and he always had this wad of hundred dollar bills in his pocket with a rubber band around it. And that, for me, as a kid, that was like, cool, you know, I, I just knew that we got trips that we went to dinner a lot, we went places and had a nice house. And, you know, when it all came down to it, though, that none of that stuff really matters. And I became understanding of this. Now when he said that you really want to leave here. I said, Yeah. So he takes the $100, bills out peels one off, crumples it up and throws it at me, it says, well, you’re going to need this when you’re living on the streets with your mother one day. 

Now imagine 11 year old kid, his hero, basically throws in the towel, like a trainer would throw in the towel on his boxer. That’s the way I fell inside. But I’m very stubborn Darrin. And that could be a strength and a weakness. But I said to myself, I’m not going to let him win, I’m not going to need that money. And also, I knew remember, I thought this was an ordinary scenario, I thought that everybody’s going through this, I can’t be the only one going through this. There’s somebody else out there that’s given given up on and they’re going to need somebody to look up to, to see the experience where somebody rises from this, this this situation. Now I didn’t have it that bad, I don’t think because there’s people that had it worse than me. But at the end of the day, that’s considered to me a setback. Let down somebody given up on me. And so at that moment, I just decided that I was going to help other people by being a role model. I didn’t know that I was going to be able to help people as far as coaching them or being an inspiration as far as a mentor or what have you. But I do didn’t know that I could be the best I could be at everything I tried. You know, it got into sports, work, school, what have you. 

So that’s the moment I look back at this 30 some years ago, it’s clear as day that’s the moment that I can point to that really understood what setbacks are for in our lives. And that obviously, through my life, I’ve had many more as we progress forward. But the thing is, is that at that that’s the one that that the pivotal moment when I was a young kid. And what happens is, is that when you have a setback, a lot of people get thrown back. First, they don’t acknowledge it right away. They don’t accept it. They try to go through a denial phase, they go through a victim phase. Meanwhile, all this time is passing there. They’re not in the right frame of mind. They’re wasting time energy,

productivity, lagging, family life might be lagging. And if they could just understand this one concept to turn all setbacks, let downs negativity into rocket fuel for your future. Your life will never be the same because every time you come into one of these setbacks, matter of fact, you’ll look for setbacks and problems. You get into these situations. You understand, man, this is a training session or this is fuel for me. This is rocket fuel for me. And the reason I say rocket fuel is because I’m trying to get into orbit. What I mean by That is there’s suppressors in life. Bad things happen to good people, you can call that gravity. And when gravity’s action, it’s trying to pull you back down. Well, I want to get to orbit where the gravitational pull is pretty much gone. And you need, the only way to get into orbit is rocket fuel. So this is the things that go through my mind. And not a lot of people can relate to this, it might be too much for some people, but it works for me, and it works so well. And I feel like I got to share it and coach people about it.

J Darrin Gross  15:30  

I love the story and how you did take that and kind of galvanize and you’re you said, You’re stubborn. I’m sure that that that helped a little bit that you didn’t want to, you know, let it in there. But I’m curious, you know, you mentioned a couple things I’m familiar with, you know, acknowledging what’s what, what the issue is first, having some acceptance over that, and then kind of, you know, some sort of a plan to move forward kind of thing. What, what do you find? Is there a daily routine, because I think it’s one thing to have an issue on one day, like a big event, whether it be you know, you know, whatever it might be, but throughout our lives throughout the days, there’s always little things. And some we may just kind of deal with and move through, but, but just maintaining that, that high level, high energy, high positive, and we’re gonna get through this, we’re gonna get past this, this is not going to keep us back.  What is it? I mean, are you are you a Red Bull guy, you drink lots of coffee? What are you doing? What’s your what is it that keeps you, you know, focused and driven? And tell us a little bit about your you have a routine? Or how do you how do you stay that fired up?

Mike C-Roc  16:46  

Well, first of all, yeah, I like coffee. But that’s not what you know, I don’t drink it every single day. So I like to like coffee, and I work out a lot. But really, what it comes down to there is when you have a purpose that you believe in, and you’re so passionate about it and you’re obsessed about it. Really you don’t burn out. It the people burn out when they don’t set big enough goals and targets for their life and don’t have a big enough purpose. So I think people need to start First of all there, before I get into the routine thing, people need to start First of all, by thinking about being in the desert somewhere, finding a lamp that has a genie in it, and rubbing that lamp, Genie comes out and gives you three to five things that you could have no matter what it is not putting a limit on it. Don’t worry about if you think it’s impossible, what is it? and 95% of people don’t know the answer to that question for themselves. So it’s always starting right there. Because when you start there, and you don’t put any limitations on what you want in life, and then it’s a really big grand vision or goal. Once you do that, things start to open up afterwards. And so that’s where I start. And so when I you know, have a goal, I have a goal to create a, you know, a half a billion dollar company, I say half a billion because that’s where I want to start with with people building and helping people build themselves and helping companies build their people. So that’s a goal there. I have a goal right now I’m writing a best selling book. How do I know it’s best selling because I’m going to make it a best selling book. I’m doing whatever it takes to make it a best selling book and an impactful book. I have this in my head. I’m excited about it. I’m fired up about it. And so I’m just giving you some goals that I’m having. I have right now. My mortgage group we’re doing we started out doing 4 million a month, we have a goal to go to 100 million a month. That’s an unheard of amount of loan volume for group our size. Now we’re going to grow a little bit but at the end of the day, we can do it with just adding a few people. So that’s a big goal that we have and I continue to talk and preach that to my team so they’re constantly striving and not getting complacent and comfortable. kryptonite for me is comfortability and complacent complacency. 

So I’m constantly aware of that and so that’s what keeps my energy up because I’m not going to settle and sit back and and be okay with things happening to me. And and me giving control to something else and playing a victim. And I work out so morning routine man I get up I’m gratitude right away. Thank thankful that I open my eyes thankful for my legs and feet, my hands, my ears, my mind, my everything. It sounds corny, but I go through this list every morning, because I’m thankful for it. And what it’s done for me is it removes and eliminates and makes everything that I could complain about disappear. It’s a magic trick, if you so to speak, but you got to be patient with it because it doesn’t happen overnight. Now, I’d recommend people do it for 30 days, and then give me the feedback. Let me know how it works for you. I know it’ll change your life. So I start with that I start with the goals writing goals down, drink water every morning to stay hydrated. I read 10 pages every morning, and then I’m off to the gym, working out our workout at least. And then I have a team meeting with my team after that. Get everybody’s head straight and ready to go. That’s what fires me up. That’s where I have energy. I don’t listen, I don’t get tired or burnt out. I do However, sleep very good. And I get seven to eight hours of sleep every day. Because when I hit the pillow, I can’t lay there and watch anything with my wife, I fall asleep right away.

J Darrin Gross  20:10  

No, that’s awesome. So you’ve got you explained kind of two things there. One is the the importance of having a purpose. And you also explain your, your kind of routine. And then I want to ask you about team building your you have your own team that you’re selling here, the the responsible party for kind of motivating and getting them keeping them driven. It’s one thing to motivate oneself, it’s an entirely different thing to translate that and get others fired up and keep them focused and, you know, moving and have that energy in that. And it I think there is something to that the the positivity kind of feeds off of, you know, the, what’s that the the five people you’re closest to that, you know, you kind of absorb what they’re around. So, I wonder if you can speak a little bit about how you go about motivating others.

Mike C-Roc  21:12  

Yeah, so you have to, first of all, share your your vision and your big goal of your company with your team, your company, your employees, once you share that with them, then you have to find out what their personal professional financial goals are. I learned that from a mentor of mine, Branden Dawson, where he got it, I don’t know if he made it up or whatever, he created it, but I got it from him. I’ve done it in the past, but I didn’t realize I was doing it. And that he may be aware of it. And being more intentional about it, but getting with the team and having a one on one meeting with them and understanding where they want to go with their lives. Very important, because you cannot hold people accountable if you don’t know what they want out of life. And you’ve got to make sure that it aligns with your company’s vision and goals. Because if it doesn’t, there’s no alignment, you’re gonna have conflict, and then that can rupture the team. So that’s number one. 

Number two, is gratitude. Gratitude is very important. So we practice gratitude exercises, once a week in our team. In a sales meeting, we start the meeting with everybody going through one at a time saying the name of a person the week before they did something above and beyond for them, that has changed our culture. We’ve been doing that for over a couple years. Now. Secondly, I’m sorry, third is unlimited income potential, we create an environment for everyone to bring revenue into our company, even people that aren’t salespeople. So when they bring revenue into the company, they’re rewarded, but it obviously takes care of the company as well. And they can never complain about the money they’re making to leadership, unless we’re not helping them sell or teaching them how to do something. So that eliminates any animosity. And then also we do a we accountability, where we have a team that holds each other accountable. Rather than just the leadership down accountability, we have the team feeding off each other, and you get an actual lift, like a hot air balloon, when the team is holding each other accountable, and lifting each other up, celebrating wins together, etc. So those are the things that we really focus on. And that has lifted, our team has gel our team, it’s a constant work in progress, it’s not something that you put in place once and then you leave it if you do that you’re just as good as not doing it at all. It’s a constant work, I have to constantly talk to my leadership team about Hey, guys, we need to speak the same language, we need to be constantly on this hundred million a month, we need to be constantly holding each other accountable. And it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s hard work, it really is hard work to do. And it’s persistence, and you just got to be relentless with it. But if you’re committed to your goal and your purpose, then you will make it happen. And that’s that’s what we do.

J Darrin Gross  23:50  

Yeah, I am guilty on on having, you know, read something and been all fired up, you know, and in, you know, you head off for a couple days or whatever. And then life starts happening distractions kind of take over and, and, you know, it can be a little bit of a challenge there. So in those instances, how, I mean, there’s the personal side of thing, but then also try and keep the team motivated. Are you are you constantly taking the temperature of how the team is reacting and then trying to, to, you know, point them in the right direction or is that a daily assessment? How do you how do you deal with that?

Mike C-Roc  24:34  

Yeah, so with that, first of all, we do training every single day. Our whole team is on we call Cardone University. I’m not sure if you’ve heard of it or not. Grant Cardone is a mentor of mine. So we do Cardone University every day at 10am. I get a report to see if everybody did their four videos that they’re expected to do based on sales, training, motivational training, financial literacy, communication, etc, etc. by me doing that and getting that report I can see who’s engaged for the day. If they’re not doing their videos, then I’ll reach out to them say, hey, everything, okay? Anything I can help you with. So that’s number one. Number two, is every day of the week, my leadership team is assigned a day of the week that will reach out to each employee for five minutes, and just touch base with them and see if they need anything. Especially because we’re not in the same building. It’s important for us to make sure that we maintain a open door policy, so to speak, and also an engagement with our employees. So we do that every single day, there’s five people on the leadership team, my day is Friday, and we just call around real quick, even if the people don’t answer and shoot them a message if they don’t answer and let them know that we were checking in on them to see if they need anything. So that’s how we do it. And then we can gauge the temperature. You know, when you’re in an environment of we accountability, you’ll get like, there’s a problem with one of our employees. I’ll hear about it from one of the other employees because they care. And they’ll say, Hey, listen, john was a john was talking to me today. And he’s not real tickled about this, where he’s having issues with this, don’t tell him I told you. Now, that’s a trick in itself, because you got to figure a way around that without throwing that person under the bus. They’re not tattling. They’re just concerned with the team and they’re concerned with that person. So then we just reach out nonchalant and say, Hey, you know, hey, I was just thinking about everything, right? Anything I can help you with today. And you and you aim to attack things in a good way, not not like aggressively but attack things. To assist people, instead of running from problems. Like I’m always looking for challenges, I’m looking for problems. I want to solve things. Successful people do that they’re unsuccessful people, what they’ll do is they’ll look how can I get out of problems? not solve them, but how can I avoid problems? How can I avoid challenges? I look for them, and I want to solve them. And that is that has taken us to new heights.

J Darrin Gross  26:51  

I love that.  No, solving other people’s problems or saw solving your problems, problems. I mean, that’s that there’s always need for that. That’s, that’s good stuff. So you work with your own team, you also then mentor or coach others?

Mike C-Roc  27:10  

Yes. So first of all, real estate agents are a source for us for business. But we don’t like to just go to them and say, Hey, you have anybody that needs to be pre approved. And just ask for a cake, right? We want to go to them and say, Hey, listen, we know how to get business, we know how to teach you how to get business, how to make more money. Let’s do that. Let’s work together. Are you interested in making more money? Are you interested in making your business more stable, and then we go do that first. After that, then we ask for reciprocity. So that’s, that’s the route we take, we invest in people first, we give, give, give, give, of course you give without expecting return, we do that. I mean, there’s plenty of agents, we help and they, you know, they don’t send anything our way. But at the end of the day, if you do that, they end up giving you business back. And so we do that. And then also outside of the mortgage industry, I coach people from all walks of life, life coaching, leadership, communication, you name it, anything that has to do with building people I work with, I do one on one coaching, I have a group coaching that we do. And you know, we’re gonna get into some workshops and some digital courses along with the book that I’m writing.

Unknown Speaker  28:25  

Awesome.

J Darrin Gross  28:26  

Hey Mike, if we could, I’d like to shift gears here for a second. By day, I’m an insurance broker and I work with clients to assess risk, and determine what to do with the risk. And there’s typically there’s there’s three different strategies that we we look to. The first is we ask, can we avoid the risk. And if that’s not an option, then we look to see if we can minimize the risk. And when neither avoiding nor minimizing the risk or options, we look to see how if we can transfer the risk. And that’s what an insurance policy is. And I like to ask my guests, if they can take a look at their situation, their their, their work their clients, their, you know, employees, however you want to frame it. But if you can identify what you consider to be the biggest risk?  And again, for clarity, I’m not necessarily looking for an insurance related answer. But with that, yeah, if you’re willing, I’d like to ask you, Mike’s Ciorrocco, What is the biggest risk?

Mike C-Roc  29:37  

By the way, my friends called me C-Roc, Darrin, and so you’re more than welcome to call me C-Roc. But the biggest risk for me is I’ve been through business before where I’ve relied on people, I relied on their production what and even if they didn’t buy into the culture that we were trying to establish, I would just put up with it and there were they’re producing a little bit. And so the biggest risk for me nowadays is One, you know, I don’t ever want to have to do this. But I’m always thinking to myself, if I have to do something myself, I will. And I don’t want to ever risk my independence and ability to. So go back to zero and build a team by allowing people that do not buy into our culture to stick around our team. So in other words, have you heard of the term being held over a barrel? Oh, yeah. So I’ve been in this situation before, where I let that happen. And things fell apart in the company that we were in because I let the culture slide. And I was basically allowing the production to rule the roost, instead of people that are buying into the system that I know works. And so I was risking at that moment, our whole group, our whole team, everything that we built, based on production, rather than attitude and buying into a culture. So right now what as far as the biggest risk for me, to me is it’s constant. It’s I’m always looking at this, I deal with this right now, I have a few individuals in our company, I’m very open about it, that I’m not sure we’re going to last here, even though they’re doing business, because they think that that’s the most important thing, rather than being a part of the team, and buying into what we expect. So it’s very risky when you do this, because to me, you have to think to yourself, if I leave these people around the risk is that other people are going to see their complacency, the fact that they’re not bought in, and they’re going to start to buy into there, the people always start to buy into the band and the cancer, and that that risk is always present. And I have to weigh that and balance it, whether it’s worth keeping the production on, and taking that risk that other other people are going to see these people not buying in. So that that’s that’s what I would answer that question with right now. And that’s constantly on my mind.

J Darrin Gross  31:54  

Now, that’s, that’s really important, especially if you’re trying to create a culture and maintain a culture. It just occurred to me as you were, you’re saying that I’m kind of curious if you have any sense of this, but maybe you do, maybe don’t, if you’re looking around, and you see, and I’d say probably small businesses, what percentage of businesses that you run into, do you think have some sort of a culture that they’re trying to maintain, as opposed to more of just a, you know, more or create and maintain, as opposed to just something that’s kind of going through the motions?

Mike C-Roc  32:38  

Just from my experience, I’d have to take a guess, an educated guess. But I would guess that I would guess that 20% of companies, I think it’s a large problem, I think 20% of them might be too high there, have great cultures, and are trying to maintain a great culture, and very few, most people start a business, and they’re just so hung up on trying to produce and bring revenue in and not focused on how to do that. And they’re just basically go through the motions every day, and try to be in survival mode, rather than trying to excel and be great. And that’s the issue and when you wake up in the morning, are gonna go to where, you know, oh, I’m gonna go deal with these employees. And again, remember, I said that they’re trying to get out of problems, get out of challenges, rather than going and hammer them, attack them and solve them. I think that’s a big problem. And that’s why there’s such a big need for what I do, and people building. So very, very low, probably 20, maybe even under that Darrin. 

J Darrin Gross  33:35  

Yeah, I would concur. I’m, you know, unless you’re some sort of a larger corporate structure that has, you know, levels of management, and there’s, there’s people certain roles to maintain morale, or however you want to, you know, phrase that I would guess that it’s, it’s fairly low. So, but, and, you know, I appreciate you sharing just about the challenge of maintaining it, and actually, you know, maybe having a prune, you know, a few, a few players, rather than, like said be be, you know, put over a barrel, because those are the kind of those tough decisions, but I’m assuming, just like, we’ve been talking all along, that that making those tough decisions and, and solving those problems kind of gives you that, that fuel to to go further. When you go through that. So,

Mike C-Roc  34:32  

Yeah, a lot of times when you want to do more, you want to accomplish more, it’s not about doing more. It’s not about doing more work, adding things. It’s about taking things away, removing things out of your schedule, removing things out of your life removing things, and then then that allows you to maybe replace it with something more productive, and then you can accomplish more.

J Darrin Gross  34:57  

No, I love it. Hey Mike, where can listeners go if they would like to connect with you or learn more?

Mike C-Roc  35:04  

So first of all my books coming out at the end of this year and if they go to the mike c roc.com. With no k themikecroc.com. They can subscribe there get a copy of the new book. It’s called Rocket Fuel. Man I’m excited to get this out to people to share my story, how I’ve developed the culture how how I’ve gotten to where I am today, and also where I’m going. And if they go to there, they can do that. And also on Instagram, I’m big on Instagram and LinkedIn as well. But Instagram is at Mikey C Roc and m i k e y c r o c.  MikeyCRoc, and I like to engage with people a lot on Instagram.

J Darrin Gross  35:40  

Awesome. Mike, I can’t say thanks enough for taking the time to talk. I’ve enjoyed it and learned a lot. And I hope we can do it again soon.

Mike C-Roc  35:49  

I appreciate you Darrin, and thanks again, man. appreciate you having me.

J Darrin Gross  35:52  

You bet. For our listeners. If you liked this episode, don’t forget to like, share and subscribe. Remember, the more you know, the more you grow. That’s all we’ve got this week. Until next time, thanks for listening to Commercial Real Estate Pro Networks. CRE PN Radio.

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