Trevor Mauch  0:00  

I know it sounds like work. But the thing I always like to say is, is hamster wheel has worked forever. At evergreen is a lot of work in the first two years, first year, the first two years and then as it builds momentum you stack we call we call stacking bricks. As you stack those bricks, those those sturdy pieces of content they’re going to, they’re going to be up forever, that people are going to be searching those types of phrases for years. Everything starts to build up for you. And you get momentum and about 18 months, two years after you do it, then you look back and go well, I’m getting leads from all the work I did two years ago from the work I did six years ago.

Announcer  0:36  

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  0:56  

Welcome to Commercial Real estate Pro Network’s, CRE PN Radio. Thanks for joining us. My name is J Darrin Gross. This is the 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 Trevor Mauch. Trevor is the host of the Carrot Cast Podcast and the CEO of Carrot, one of the nation’s fastest growing companies, according to Inc Magazine, where they have helped the nation’s top real estate investors and agents plant over 3 million online leads in just five years, closing 1000s of deals with their software and training. Trevor lives in Roseburg, Oregon with his wife and three kids, and is passionate about using business to fuel your passion and amplify your impact that are the impact you want to make in the world. Part of the impact he’s passionate about making is helping entrepreneurs unleash that entrepreneurial dream of finally unlocking that freedom, flexibility, finances, and impact that you’ve dreamed, but have you yet to be able to fully make happen. And in just a minute, we’re going to speak with Trevor about online marketing and how to attract an audience and remain relevant. 

But first, a quick reminder, if you like our show, CR e pn radio, there are a couple things you can do to help us out. You can like share and subscribe. And as always, we encourage you to leave a comment we love to hear from our listeners. Also, if you want to see how I answer our guests are Be sure to check out our YouTube channel. 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, Trevor, welcome to CRE PN Radio.

Trevor Mauch  2:56  

Darrin, man, I appreciate you having me on big time and one thing I forgot to mention so we talked a little bit ago. I didn’t realize you’re a fly fisherman is still steelhead fishermen so I see the video there does shoots river fish and steelhead out there. Dude, we’ve got we’ve got a shared shared passion there, man. I love it.

J Darrin Gross  3:13  

That’s that’s a blast. That’s one of the great things the Northwest has is fishing. So I figure if you’re gonna live here, you might as well figure that. That’s right. I love it. But hey, Trevor, I appreciate you doing this. I’m looking forward to our talk today. But before we get started, if you could take just a minute and share with the listeners a little bit about your background.

Trevor Mauch  3:36  

Yeah, they’re in some kind of the short of it. Yeah, like you’d mentioned, I live in a small town here in Oregon called Roseburg. And it’s not like the general metropolis of tech companies or real estate investors or anything like that. But that’s kind of part of our purpose and part of our passion and mission. Like we were chatting right before we hit record. And we’ve got this building here. It’s 8000 square feet. It’s a entrepreneur co workspace where a bunch of other amazing entrepreneurs most of us online based companies work out of here and we’re working on like one by one acquiring buildings downtown Roseburg, Oregon to, to renovate get amazing businesses in those buildings. And we’ve just started it with the building next door as well. So that’s kind of like the home where we live, but my company carrot. We’re a team of just shy of 50 employees right now. And that’s a whole different story. And that’s a that comes from a guy who never wanted employees. How is that employees would be you know, a burden versus something that can unleash you. We help about almost almost 1000 real estate investors today. Mostly house flippers wholesalers, a lot of commercial investors as well. I personally use carrot for generating leads for tenants for my rental properties and for my Airbnb ease. But most of our clients generate motivated seller leads motivated house sellers primarily by the tune of hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of 1000s of motivated house sellers every year. Mainly from people going to Google like people do a Google search sell my house fast insert in any city, and then you’re probably going to find a number of carrot sites towards the top of Google and every city in the country, scooping up seller leads. So that’s kind of the high level what we do where we live. And, man, I’m excited to be on here with you.

J Darrin Gross  5:15  

Awesome. So, you know, it’s funny, you know, years ago and and, you know, pre pandemic, there were certain cities that were recognized as kind of the the hub of, you know, online or just, you know, more of your kind of centralized cities and stuff like that pandemic, truly proved that you can be anywhere and get work done. And, and a lot of people have made the decision to go anywhere. Yep. So I mean, I would think that in a weird way, Roseburg might have a special appeal to people that are looking for the anywhere that’s got some sort of a hub. And he’s seen any is is there been any inward migration? You know, as of late?

Trevor Mauch  6:00  

Man? That’s a really good question. Because I’ve been high. I’ve been high in rural areas for for years. And that’s why that’s why we chose to stay in Roseburg and start this company, right. But even carrot we’re a remote first company. So while we have just shy of 50 full time employees on on the states, we only have about eight to 10 here because some of those types of jobs are a little bit harder. But we do have some employees moving from Metro metropolitan areas to Roseburg, Pete, my head of sales and customer success, he moved out here with his his wife just recently from Baltimore, and they’ve been in Baltimore like their whole lives, and they wanted a slower pace, you know, and I think that’s what a lot of people are looking for right now is, is oftentimes these urban areas that draw them to the urban areas, originally, because of jobs and job opportunities. Sometimes those very things, the buisiness of it, the craziness of what has happened during the pandemic, and all in all of 2020 in urban areas, I think people are looking at they’re going, you know what, I can work from anywhere I want to work now. And let me go do that. So this space here is entrepreneur co workspace, but we don’t have a lot of kind of open space. It’s all dedicated offices, except for one space. And I really see Darren, if you’re in a rural area that is attractive for people to come to because of a slower pace where there are good amenities there. There’s, you know, here, there’s 35 wineries in town, there’s nine breweries, there’s amazing outdoors things, you’re not going to find the most vibrant nightlife, everything shuts down at 10 o’clock, you know, but there’s not a lot of that going on. But if you want an amazing place to raise a family, and that is the inflow we’re seeing, as people that moved out after high school after college, they were away for 789 10 years, they got married, and they’re coming back here to start young families or with their young family for better quality life now that they can work from anywhere. So we’re doubling down on the concept of downtown in rural, we’re doubling down on the concept of CO workspaces, especially in rural, I think those are going to be amazing opportunities for commercial investors next 10 years.

J Darrin Gross  8:02  

I love it. So your firm carrot? You mentioned some of the the services or that you you work with a real estate investors and professionals. Can you describe a little bit about what Karen is and how it works?

Trevor Mauch  8:21  

Yep, for sure, Dan. So that the original concept was this was in kind of 2000 through 2010, that’s when the internet was kind of getting its feet, the whole the whole call to arms for all all small business. And whether you’re an insurance broker, or you know, the local restaurant, or a plumber or real estate investor, the whole call to arms is like you got to get online, you know, so that’s when you saw GoDaddy pop up and Wix, and Weebly and Squarespace and all of those local mom and pop web developers in town, they all popped up during that decade 2000 through 2010. And when I started entrepreneurship in business, it was right around 2008. And I saw the opportunity for using the internet to really grow a business, not just get online. And, and I started to learn how to make a website actually attract your best clients, you know. And what we found Aaron was, was the most motivated people aren’t the ones that got a direct mail piece that dropped on their on their doorstep, you’re going to activate demand for sure, the most motivated people are seeking out a solution actively. And increasingly, so since 2008, where were people doing it the internet. And then when iPhones came up, you know, everyone pulls out their cell phone to do a Google search for anything that they want. And so that’s the opportunity we saw is we’re like, man, everyone’s online. But their websites aren’t actually working for them. They’re not actually attracting a lot of leads, and then converting those leads at a high rate, because websites were made to look pretty and into setup easily. They weren’t made to perform back then. And so we stepped into that in 2014. And we’re like, what if we were actually just to build websites that converted and actually rank really, really well in Google. So when you sent 100 qualified people to that You would get out, you know, 1520 3040 leads that you could actually work with instead of a few. And that’s what we double down on is it was all about performance, how do we make your websites perform, so you can stop losing leads and deals from an underperforming website. That’s what got us to grow. What kind of is getting us where we’re where we’re going now, is we really hyper focused on what I call evergreen marketing, Darran. And there’s outbound marketing, which works amazingly well, your direct mail, cold calling, you’re knocking on doors, all that works great for any business. The problem with those types of marketing is it kind of keeps you on the hamster wheel. You know, in us as entrepreneurs, we want that freedom, like you’d mentioned earlier on, and you can’t really have the freedom if you’re always on this hamster wheel, where you’ve got to make cold calls today to keep business coming in, you’ve got to knock on doors, you, you’ve got to send out that direct mail all the time. The only way for you as an entrepreneur to get off the hamster wheel is for you to hire people to do it, which is a great option, or fee to choose marketing that actually works for years, not just weeks or days. And so we help people get off the hamster wheel and do what we call evergreen marketing through a Google.

J Darrin Gross  11:08  

Now, that’s awesome. I mean, you’re you’re, you know, spot on from I mean, is a guy that was kind of the slow ski, to come to the market and understand just what or I knew, and I know that I need to be online, but the whole, just the everything you described about just the the labor the intensive labor of being online and creating a presence and, and you know, continually updating and, you know, being some social media guy. Yep. I mean, it’s, it’s like all another job, you know, I mean, it really takes your eye off the ball of what you do, you know, if you’re constantly trying to create content stuff. So, let’s talk a little bit about when you say evergreen content, I mean, my if you when you say that, to me, I’m, I’m envisioning something that’s, that’s timeless, meaning that it’s going to be relevant today. And it’s gonna be relevant, you know, three years from today, presumably? Is that kind of what we’re talking about there?

Trevor Mauch  12:08  

Yeah. 100%. And so kind of the way that we approach evergreen marketing is this is, is number one, you will work with a ton of real estate agents and a lot of real estate investors, right. The majority of our clients are investors, but the real estate agency years ago, they were taught and educated that social media is the thing, you know, say real estate agents are posting three, four or five times a day on social media, sometimes a lot more. And here’s the thing, they’re like, every single time I talk about hamsterwheel, marketing, like direct mail, cold calling, knocking on doors, you know, social media marketing, it’s nothing that doesn’t work, it works amazingly well. What oftentimes we don’t connect with is the fact that our market actually dictates our lifestyle. If we’re doing marketing that requires us to stay on the hamster wheel, and we can’t get off. Or we’ll we’ll see a downturn, then that that business owns us, like our marketing owns us, instead of us owning the business. And so when I start to look about evergreen content, the first thing I look at is what are you already putting on social media, if you are active on social media? What types of videos are people putting on social media? And how do we just repurpose that to get it over on a website in the right way that Google’s gonna like it, and I can kind of walk through a couple basic steps everyone can do, that’s really simple. But if you post a video or a picture, or a post on Facebook, or Instagram, it’s amazing until 72 hours later, when it’s way down the list, and almost no one sees it. And so you have to post again and always say at the top of people’s feeds, and I can carry out, you know, what if you want to go on vacation, and you don’t want to, you don’t want to do that. And so what we’ll work with people on to say, okay, you know, who’s your primary client? What’s your primary prospect? And what are the situations that they would go through? What are the phrases that they would type in like for you? On the insurance side of things? You and I, are you? You live in Oregon still, Darren?

J Darrin Gross  13:56  

Yeah, I’m up here in Lake Oswego right now.

Trevor Mauch  14:00  

My old stomping grounds I lived, I lived up right up. Oh, my gosh, it’s been so many years now. It was right by is McVeigh of McVeigh by the river. The 70s nursery, like right behind that is where is where we live for three for three years.

J Darrin Gross  14:15  

Yeah, we would have been neighbors almost.

Trevor Mauch  14:17  

So it’s funny. So in this example, here, I’m just pulling up Google on my end, you know, let’s say someone was looking for business insurance, or there’s a certain type of insurance in Portland. And I was going to type up, you know, insurance broker, Lake Oswego. And so what I’m doing is I typed it up and Google is give me some suggested searches, right? And it popped up, you know, insurance broker, Lake Oswego health insurance broker popped up there. And then at the bottom of Google, and that’s one thing I always do is what what is the broad topic of what my prospects think I am and what are they looking for? And then I search it and I scroll down to the bottom of Google, and then it’s gonna give me a bunch of suggestions. And this one happens to be a bunch of company names. You know, it’s like business insurance. Sisters, Oregon business insurance Hood River, full heart, Roger biz net, so he must be a big insurance guy, I don’t know. But the cool thing is when you start to put out content, and you do it consistently on your website instead of just social media, and that content is robust, it’s not just 100 words, it’s 7800 900 words. And that’s what Google was gonna look at, you start to build up this authority hub on your website. So Google sees as our amazing robust content, this guy Darren is an authority on insurance in Lake Oswego. And then your whole website’s going to lift. And now you’re going to be in front of that evergreen flow of your most motivated prospects who are closer to the by decision than someone else.

J Darrin Gross  15:44  

So let’s talk about that. I get the kind of the the local kind of thing is what do you have that would drive a lot of that presence? Or on the search?

Trevor Mauch  15:53  

Yes, so the local part, it makes it easier to rank really well if you’re localizing it. So when we’re working with an investor or an agent, their services are usually hyper local agents, specifically, or hyper local. But we do have a lot of investors who do business in 345 states or they buy they buy houses nationally. And so what happens is, let’s say, let me ask you a couple questions here there. Are there certain cities, in your example, there are certain cities that you do business in, that you’re like, Oh, these are my five favorite cities? Do you have cities like that? Or is it very general and broad,

J Darrin Gross  16:30  

more of like the Northwest, I mean, I, I work with clients nationwide. But I would say that obviously, just having a physical presence here, and just, you know, local, there’s, there’s a a significant portion of my business, that is Oregon and Washington, the Portland metro area, so perfect.

Trevor Mauch  16:48  

And so that’s a cool thing is it depends on how your your primary prospects search. And so if they’re going online to search local restaurants, of course, they’re probably looking for a restaurant right there where they are, or possibly, maybe they’re looking for a place that they’re going to be in the future on vacation. But with insurance, they oftentimes type their local area, right, this type of insurance in my local area. And what we what we pioneered shoot seven years ago in the real estate investor space, was we would look at companies like loopnet. And then Zillow came to follow and we noticed, man, most of the most of the searches that I do on investment properties for sale, insert any city in the country, you’re gonna see loop net ranked number one, number two, and number three in Google, right? And we started looking at that and say, Well, why is that the case? And then you’d click those links. And it’s almost never their homepage, like their homepage is never the thing that’s ranked there. It’s always a page hyper specific to that location for the thing I was looking for. And we said, What if we can’t take this same concept to the real estate investor space? And how do we how do we amplify that so an investor would launch what we call a location page, or a city specific page, where you can launch a location page for that discipline. And if you’re in business in 17, cities, you should have paid for every single one of those cities for the different types of services you offer. And so for you, if you offer three different types of insurance, it might be a great opportunity to put landlord insurance broker in, in Lake Oswego landlord insurance broker and Beaverton landlord insurance broker in Salem land, you get the idea, right, and create a separate page for each one of those. And so I know it sounds like work. But the thing I always like to say is, is hamster wheel has worked forever. evergreen is a lot of work in the first two years of first year, the first two years and then as it builds momentum, and you stack we call we call stacking bricks. As you stack those bricks, those those sturdy pieces of content, they’re going to, they’re going to be up forever, that people are going to be searching those types of phrases for years, everything starts to build up for you. And you get momentum and about 18 months, two years after you do and then you look back and go, Well, I’m getting leads from all the work I did two years ago from the work I did six years ago. From for me, Darren, we built care at the exact same way. We didn’t do any paid marketing for the first three years. And we said, What if we just went went went and looked at like, what are the phrases were national company? So we said, What if we just looked at the phrases that our ideal prospects are searching in Google. And then we just started to create content around those phrases that was robust, you know, 800 words or more was interesting. It was valuable. And then we started to create one or two those a week. And that was our that was our primary marketing strategy. And it could be phrases like how to invest in real estate, how to wholesale houses, it could be motivated house seller leads, it could be websites for real estate, investors, things like that. And so that might be a good strategy for you as well do the we call it do the localized ones first for your primary business function, you know, investment or investment, property insurance, landlord insurance, whatever it is in these locations, and then we go after the niche searches. What might they searched? It’s more broad that isn’t location based. It could be what type of insurance Should I get if I own a rental property? Right. And that that could be amazing content that you could create and build that authority hub on on your website.

J Darrin Gross  20:12  

I love the kind of the timeline, the two things I picked up from what you just said there was the timeline of expectation there anywhere from 18 months to two years. And then also the, the, just the volume of content, the frequency, you know, something from one to two articles a week, and the length of the the art of and then I think the key thing is, this is the key to all of it, if it’s not interesting and valuable, it doesn’t matter which hinders, there’s clearly a lot of people that that tried to game the system, unfortunately, Google got smart enough to recognize the game. And a lot of cases, but just, you know, just if it is valuable, and it’s evergreen, I mean, that that’s, that that works nice. what’s frustrating, and also rewarding in this whole thing is recognizing people that I know that have gotten, I don’t know, say a head start. But they’ve done the work, like you said, they put the brakes in place. And now I see leads coming in and going wow, okay, that really works.

Trevor Mauch  21:19  

It’s crazy. And here’s here’s the cool thing is that the reason I even started to dive into this, this type of marketing Darren was before before carrot, I did a lot of damage to marketing. And like I said, it worked, I made some good money by this sort of in 2011 12. In my previous company was online business as well. But our income was kind of boom and bust, you know, where we would have $130,000, one month, one month, and then we then me and my business partner would split $6,000 the next month. And then we lost money three months after that. And then we made another 70. And it’s like, man, at the end of the year, your income statement looks pretty good. But you’re stressed the entire year, because you didn’t know where your income was gonna come from in three months. And, and when that happens, you can’t really plan ahead, you can’t plan ahead well and have confidence to hire an employee Sure, like I don’t know, it’s, it’s so inconsistent. You can’t plan ahead well, and say, You know what, I’m gonna take a month off of work, and I’m legit not going to work at all, or I’m gonna not work as hard or I don’t have to do any marketing this month, because I know it’s coming in or whatever it is. And I kind of had that that dream. I’m like, Man, what are the things in my business that I don’t like. And in 2012, I sat down and wrote wrote down the list and 2012 was this big transition year for me, I figured out how to get a business off, you know, off the off the ground. And what I discovered down is about two to three years into a business, maybe three to four, it’s very common for for us to lose that edge, lose that excitement, lose that fire for that business, we have started, you know, because when we start this business, whether it’s being a commercial real estate investor, or you know, any type of business, you’re usually running away from something, right, you’re wanting running away from a job you didn’t like you’re running away from an income ceiling, you didn’t like you’re running away from some people saying you couldn’t do something and you want to prove them wrong. And then as soon as you make that thing work, and you start to hit that that income level that you’re hoping for, or there’s progression, that fire that you’re running away from is gone. Now that motivation is gone. And we forget to now run towards something. And so now happened to me, in those early years as an entrepreneur, and I started to wake up during the, you know, some days, I’m like, why am I doing this, I’m not excited about what I’m doing right now. I feel like most of what I’m doing is just my energy being sucked out of me, but I’m making good money. So it was hard for me to, to justify it because the outside world was validating me saying, Man, you’ve got what I want. And I had it and I’m like, I’m miserable, though. I just don’t like it. And so during that time, I started to switch my mindset from trying to be productive, and trying to like do productivity hacks to well shoot, how do I just have more energy during my work? How do I can I base my work on energy instead of instead of making a list of what makes me money doesn’t make me money, and crossing out all the things and stuff that doesn’t make me money and saying, I’m not going to do that, and doing more of the things that make me money. I said, Well, what if I just flip the script and I just do a, an energy on it, I call it and just make a list of all the things that drain my energy, and all the things that give me energy, especially the things I’m not doing, but but give me energy. And I go, what if I just changed my work towards energy instead of money, and maybe the income will follow. If I do work that gives me more energy than not. And that’s what led him to evergreen marketing was a sort of look at all the things that are draining my energy was me staying on this hamster wheel to try to get customers to come in. And I was executing on this stuff. And I looked at my p&l in my leads. And I said, Well, there’s this little line item of leads over here. And they were like our most profitable clients. But it was a minority of our income. And I said Man, I barely put any work into that and that was work I did two years ago and it’s still paying off. What if I just did all of that. It’s gonna take a while to transition. It’s gonna take a lot of like transition now for that drip of the instant gratification of You know, paid marketing or things like that. But what if I just made that shift? And what if my whole business was built off of that, and then I could do paid marketing or hamsterwheel, just to if I wanted to, or if I wanted to grow and amplify it. And that’s the shift I made, I’m like, no longer Am I going to build a business that’s inconsistent and predictable, I’m not going to build a business that isn’t fun for me, I’m not going to build a business that that is not based on my unique abilities, I’m going to really dive into and embrace it.

J Darrin Gross  25:27  

I love the the energy, thought and because that is just like, you know, I got to do this again, kind of thing. And, and, you know, it’s a grind in, and I’ve worked with various marketing people over the years and stuff and in certain things, you know, produce, like you say, I mean, I’ve done I’ve worked with people making outbound calls and, and outbound marketing, I mean, in the reason why people do it is it works, it works. But if you don’t do it, it’s done. I mean, there’s not like a line of people trying to get in, it’s a matter of Have you got to pay to continue, you know, making the, the outbound calls in order to have the opportunities to to make sales and then and so, you know, how did you when you were sifting through that make that decision of what was giving you energy versus what wasn’t? Because I think sometimes, you know, the, in a sales environment, especially, you know, making sales, you know, or, you know, making money because you’re making sales. Yep. That’s energizing, but, you know, distinguishing between the activity versus the I mean, to realize, really, what was the root of that, you know, sounds like you kind of went through, you know, the different sales you’d made and realized what customers came from what efforts is then kind of what, what you did, or is that I mean?

Trevor Mauch  26:46  

Yeah, a little bit, I really took stock and everything, like everything in my life at that point, because, and I think a lot of people on this podcast can probably relate you guys, you guys might be in a spot and you’re in your job right now, or your business right now. We’re like, man, I hit the goals that I thought I wanted to hit years ago, I’ve got the income coming in. But the clouds didn’t part the angels didn’t sing, you know, it’s like there’s, there’s fulfillment is missing. And, and, and it hit me, I had a friend, or I have a friend, who was really successful still is, and he was kind of like the guy at that time that I looked at and said, Man, he’s a man of faith. Like, he’s a father. He’s coaching his kids football teams. He’s got these two businesses, he’s able to go to business number one on two days a week and just do what he wants to do business. Number two, he just does what he wants to do. And I’m like, I’m doing all this stuff, like all this stuff, even stuff I don’t want to do and it feels like it seems like when I talk to him, he’s more energized than not. And I said, Greg, what’s, what’s your secret? And he said, Man, he said, the biggest thing is, you’ve got to figure out what your unique ability is. And he learned that from a guy named Dan Sullivan, with a company called Strategic Coach. And so Greg had talked to me about unique ability. And I ended up actually joining Strategic Coach for a year in 2012, which, which changed the course for me because that one little thing of unique ability unlocked for me, and this, this is where it was this or the energy thing came from Darren was, I was in workshop number three, I think he go quarterly to this, this Strategic Coach thing, I flew into Chicago, every single quarter, and they lay out a plan in front of you, and they make you think about your business and your life. And the whole thing is to win back your time and grow and grow a great business. And the whole the whole unique ability thing wasn’t clicking for me, like I knew that I wanted to find it, but I couldn’t figure out what mine was. because on one hand, get a bunch of very smart people saying your unique ability or your you know, whatever you want to call it your superpower, whatever is things that people will tell you you’re really good at and you get paid really well to do. Right people say you’re really good at you get paid really well to do they’re like do more of that. And that’s what I did for those three years. That’s what got me a pretty good business and made some good money. And it’s also what got me so I completely wore myself out and lost my fire. Because half the things that were making me really good money and people said I was good at completely drained my energy and I did not want to do them. And I’ll give you some examples. I love strategy, right love strategy, but I hate actually the execution of the thing. So like I want to come in and blow up the whiteboard and I’m gonna sit here and then I just want it to be done you know the things to be done. But if I have to sit down and write the emails or do this like ah just sucks the life out of me.

I love love love doing these things. This gives me energy. But what I don’t like is writing content which is kind of funny because that’s what my business is built off of with carrot like even when I started carrot I’m like I’m content forward. And and I found myself wearing myself down writing late at night to get to a deadline to get an article out and go man, I love the Evergreen marketing thing but I don’t like I don’t get energy from the writing. I get energy from the strategy of coming up with the articles and the topics but don’t want to sit down and write. And so for me the energy audit actually became a process that I do quarterly and you guys can find it I’m it’s a free worksheet. I don’t think you have to download Don’t think you have to opt in for it. Just go to carrot comm forward slash energy, carry comm forward slash energy, no opt in Nothing, I just want people to use it and get it. But I took a piece of paper drew a line down the middle. And on the left side, I’m like, okay, the definition of your unique ability from Strategic Coach is you’ll know that you found it when you when you get more energy, when you’re done doing the thing than when you started. You have more energy when you’re done doing the activity than when you started. And it’s something you could be amazing at potentially world class out if you work that hard enough. And so I said, Okay, let me find what those things are. So drew a line down the middle of the paper on the left side, it was drew energy drain on the right side of his energy give. I said, let me just write a list of all the things on an average week that I do currently that drain my energy. It’s like writing emails and doing this or writing blog posts and having these types of meetings and put stuff in your life to write like, this type of chore at home. I don’t want to mow my lawn. I don’t like that. And so all these things on their own. And the right side is what gives you energy, especially the things you’re not doing right now. Okay, I liked working out I wasn’t working out it gives me energy. I wasn’t doing it though, because I didn’t think I had time. Okay, I love strategy, but not like execution of the strategy. I love having conversations like this with smart entrepreneurs. I love dreaming and vision. I don’t like actually executing the vision, right? And there’s the I’m looking at it going, Oh, there’s a lot of things that make me money on the left side. And the things on the right. And like I don’t know how to make money, just having conversation with smart people. I don’t know how to make money, just strategy not executing it. Like how the heck does that happen? And so one by one there and I did this, I said, Okay, I don’t have to know how to do it. But what if I could just start switching energy draining activities for energy giving activities every quarter? And let me do let me kind of take a synopsis at the bottom of that sheet. And let me write down. What percentage of my average week right now is these things that drain my energy versus these things that gives me energy. And at that time during 2012 it was about 70% energy draining 30% energy giving No wonder I wasn’t liking my work anymore. No wonder. I’m like, Oh, damn the answers right there. It’s energy. It’s not productivity, it’s not. So if I can get more of these crappy things done, it’s I’ve seen stop doing those things. And so every quarter, I do that list, and I still do it today, circle one or two of the items that drain my energy the most write down how many hours per week I do on those things, let’s say seven hours on writing blog posts for week, three hours in this other thing, checking email, or whatever it is. And I go cool. Over on the right side, what thing gives me energy that I’m not doing enough or not at all that I want to replace with that seven plus three to 10 hours a week, I’m buying back. And I’m gonna replace it with this other thing over here, even if it doesn’t make any money. Because on the article side of it, let’s say it was seven hours a week, I’m like, I’m not going to do it anymore. I love the strategy side, I’m going to I’m going to lead this strategy, my articles, I need to find someone who’s amazing to write them now. And so that continues that money making activity continues. I replaced it with starting my podcast, because it gives me energy, like I have no clue how to make money from it, I just want to do it because it gives me energy. That’s it.

J Darrin Gross  33:04  

I just loved the whole energy essence of it, as opposed to the focus on like, the money side thing or something because energy is something you can feel and you’re like, dude, I remember years ago, I remember I bought a ski boat. And it was just like, there was this passion that was just like it was, you know, every every day, I was like trying to get my work done as fast as I could, because I knew as soon as I’d done like, it’s a Hey, guys, I’m at the lake, let’s go. And there was just, but it was it was it was like kind of the lead of of, you know, whenever I was talking to people, you know, I was like invite them on the boat or there was just like, there was some energy, you know, like he said energy. And just but just to have that that energy. And it’s and it was such a giving thing, even though there was a cost to it that the give was way more beyond the cost and that

Trevor Mauch  33:53  

it’s gonna make every other part of your life better. Right. And that’s one of the best that I was making in 2012. there and I said I don’t know if it’s gonna work but what you’ll what what if all of these things over you’re working out doing starting a podcast only doing strategy or mainly doing strategy doesn’t mean I’m only doing that. But I didn’t I didn’t have a team at that time. So I’m looking at this photo shoot. So how am I going to do this stuff? I don’t have a team Well, I once again, I every quarter that was that was the first stuff on my plan that quarter it was it was creative process for this thing, and then find a person to do that thing because I’m not going to do it anymore. Credit press for this thing. We’re just saying no to it. So I hired an assistant. She took over my email, and she took over a lot of those things in her and I still do the energy audit quarterly. Trevor what what did you get back on that energy drain list that that is there. Now that wasn’t before? Oh, what’s this? How much time a week is it taken? Man about this. I don’t even know how I let it slip back in or what it did. And then it’s like I how many hours there what two things? What do you want to add back in? I need to get working out again. Okay, cool. Then she would help me on that and one by one there and it didn’t happen overnight. I started to make that shift and that’s when I really embraced building it. Team because I never wanted to build a team before. It was all it was all about how do I keep the most money in my pocket? Because every employee is reducing what’s new in my pocket? And it’s a burden. Today, almost 50 employees? Is it a challenge? Yeah, it’s a challenge. But I wouldn’t trade it for the world. Because I’ve got my time back, I’ve got my freedom. And we’re making more impact than we ever could have made before.

J Darrin Gross  35:22  

I love the the Periodic Review kind of thing where you’ve got, you know, you’re doing it because I think that it’s too easy to get into the routine of the day of the week of the month of the year. And the next thing you know, there’s years gone by, and you’re still at the same point. And to have that kind of periodic review, and just be very conscious about what you’re doing, and where you want to go. Which is, is awesome. I appreciate you sharing that.

Trevor Mauch  35:48  

Yeah. And one final thought on that. Darren, just kind of piggybacking off of what you just said, there is for the people listening to this, you might be looking at this going well, you know, Trevor, of course, you can have energy in the software company named for vegetable and like, we have everything in this office is orange, we have carrot dolls, we send out 1000s of them every year, like we do things intentionally that are fun, guys, it has nothing to do with the type of business I have. Because I know plenty of software company owners who have completely boring businesses and their energy is getting drained in it, it was just a conscious decision to say, What is it about business that I want to amplify that gives me energy that I have fun doing. It doesn’t make any business sense that we make a line of dolls that are care, like super carrot and farmer care and all that. It’s just fun to do. And we like it, and it gives us energy. And it happens to be a good business decision, too, because people like it need posts on social media. So if you’re in real estate, if you’re a commercial real estate investor, if you’re an insurance broker, awesome, the energy audit is actually going to be a way to help you enjoy your business better. Because we oftentimes despise our businesses, not because the type of business that it is, but because of what it’s taking from us, because it’s taking our energy from us, because it’s not letting us live those passions. And so, you know, one thing I learned years ago, I thought I had to build a business around my passion. You like boating, like fishing, I love mountain biking, I love fishing, I thought man, I’m gonna have to like start a business in that. And what I realized is no, we have to, we have to start a very intentional business that gives us energy that gives us what we want the business supports us other than rather than us supporting it, and it takes work to get there. It’s not overnight. But then how do we make the business fuel our passion? It doesn’t have to be it. You know, if you love boating, and love fishing, it’s like awesome. How do you bake that into your business? You know, is there a more active way that you can even have annual or monthly or quarterly boating and fishing trips with your clients? And you just do it because it’s fun. And you sell already and post on social media? You know, is there a way that that you can bake in some some other way of purpose or passion into that? And I think this podcast is probably part of it for you too.

J Darrin Gross  37:52  

Yeah, no, I think that you’re spot on is you know, it’s part of your life. It’s not like this extra thing. It’s it’s all baked into together there. And indefinitely. When you have a passion and you’re able to live it and share with others. It just shows that and it attracts, it attracts people to come and work with you. So hey, Trevor, if we could like to shift gears here for a second. I mentioned earlier that by day, I’m an insurance broker. And there’s a couple things we do with with clients when we’re assessing risk and trying to turn to determine what to do with it. And there’s three different strategies we typically look to, we first look to see if there’s a way we can avoid the risk. That’s not an option, we’ll look to see if there’s a way we can minimize the risk. And we can’t avoid nor minimize a risk. And we look to see if we can transfer the risk. And that’s what an insurance policy is. And I like to ask my guests, if they can look at their own situation. It can be their clients, investors, market tenants, however you want to define it, or identify. But if you can take a look at your situation. And and, you know, tell us what you consider to be the biggest risk. And for clarification, and just want to make sure you understand I’m not necessarily looking for an insurance related answer. Yep. So if you’re willing, I’d like to ask you, Trevor mock. What is the BIGGEST RISK? 

Trevor Mauch  39:22  

Man, this is a good question. So four years ago, we started when we do our annual planning, one of the first things that we do, like we’ll set numbers and goals and stuff like that. But then right after that, we do an exercise where it’s like, it’s kind of kind of a SWOT, I guess you could call it but it’s like what could kill us? What What can kill this business? Because oftentimes, we ignore those things that truly could take us out and they take us by surprise. And so the things that the top of that for us are, if since we’re so heavily focused on Google, and not all the leads for our clients come through Google searches, it could be from pay ads and things like that. But we’re very heavily focused on Google, if there was a major change in Google and we got are caught with our pants down, and our websites all sudden, for some reason weren’t exactly what Google is looking for. That would be decently catastrophic. And so we take that go, Okay, how do we make sure that that’s front and center in our product? Whenever we’re looking at anything product related? How do we make sure we’re always relevant in Google, we’re staying ahead of the curve or websites or fast things like that. The second one day, and I’ll just give you two here is being Frank right now in this business. I’ve been building a leadership team, we had an outside company come in, and did a really good audit for three year vision moving forward. So we all kind of knew what were the weaknesses, what were our blind spots, and I had kind of known it. But what what came up is that I am too key on the strategy side in a way to many parts of the business where people from all around the company see me as innocent as necessary on the strategy. And I’m like, Oh, my gosh, I totally didn’t lead well there in those certain spots. Because if I’m that key, if something happens to me, they all feel this thing’s gonna fall apart. And so we got around a table, it’s like, how do we make this not true here? What what’s in my brain? Where do we need to upgrade leaders? You know, keyman insurance, that is an actual thing that we did about a year ago, when we did that, and it’s given me peace of mind for me and my co founder for sure.

J Darrin Gross  41:35  

No, again, I appreciate you sharing that and, you know, not only are you talking the talk, but you’re walking the walk and kind of figuring it out and and trying to make it all work for a long time. I appreciate that. For sure. Trevor, where can listeners go if they would like to learn more connect with you?

Trevor Mauch  41:57  

Man, there’s a couple spots so I’m really active on Instagram. I don’t post a lot over there. But I answer every every single dm I’ll post maybe a couple times a week, kind of document behind the scenes that my business here I’m also a real estate investor. He also I own commercial real estate, I own some some multifamily and some Airbnb zz as well. It’s kind of my side hobby. But carrot calm as a primary if you want to kind of learn about what we’re doing, we put a ton of content up there for free. So if anyone in your teams wants to learn how to get leads, for sellers, buyers, tenants, things like that, go to Kerry calm lots, lots of free info. I’ve got the podcast called the carrot cast, just look it up carrot cast and Apple podcasts or Spotify or go to carrot cast calm. And about half the episodes are interviews with investors that are out there crushing it some some big multifamily commercial investors as well. And then half of them are literally me and my truck with my cell phone when I’m driving home takes 15 minutes to get there. I call them Trevor truck talks and it’s just what’s on my mind as an entrepreneur not related to real estate at all. And I love doing them yes, we care cast

J Darrin Gross  43:03  

awesome well, Trevor, I can’t say thanks enough for taking the time to talk today. I’ve thoroughly enjoyed it learned a lot and I hope we can do it again soon

Trevor Mauch  43:13  

there and I absolutely love the opportunity love what you’re doing and hopefully it since we’re not too far away, man, we can meet up for lunch or something Sunday. Let’s do it.

J Darrin Gross  43:21  

I welcome it and look forward to it. Awesome. Thank you Darren like an avid. Alright, and for 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 Network’s. CRE PN Radio.

Announcer  43:44  

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