team Archives - J Darrin Gross Podcasts

Commercial Real Estate Team Building with Chris Prefontaine – CRE PN #352

Chris Prefontaine 0:00

I was a solopreneur with maybe a team member or to like, let’s say back in the relative days, I had that hat on for about five years. I had, you know, a really good executive assistant, I had someone that did just buyers and I had a runner. Okay, so that was a team. However, a lot of people and I don’t want to water this down in any way. But the fact is, a lot of people, most of us can muscle our way to a million dollars in revenue. That’s my opinion, meaning you just do more you do more follow up, you get up earlier, stay up later, you know, you can mostly Wait 2 million the challenge I found coming out of the crash is if I want to scale and have a life and not just be on a treadmill as a solopreneur I didn’t need to build a team. So a whole new set of coaches a whole new set of meeting rhythm, etc. And that’s that there instead of the team

Announcer 0:49

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 1:08

Welcome to Commercial Real Estate Pro Networks, 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 Chris Prefontaine. Chris has 25 plus years experience in real estate as a builder, developer, realtor, real estate investor. And he’s also a best selling author. He’s got a couple of books, real estate on your terms, the new rules of real estate investing and real estate investing for women. And in just a minute, we’re going to speak with Chris about building the team. But first a quick reminder, if you like our show, CRE 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’d love to hear from our listeners. 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. With that I want to welcome my guest, Chrisc welcome to CRE PN Radio.

Chris Prefontaine 2:29

Thanks, buddy. Good to be back. And I guess you’d had the whole fam in your in here. So I’m glad to be here.

J Darrin Gross 2:36

Ya know, we’ve had the pleasure of speaking before and also got a chance to speak with Zack and Nick and, and I love what you guys do. For the listeners, if you could take just a minute and share with the listeners a little bit about your background.

Chris Prefontaine 2:50

Sure, so I’ll be brief. It’s I’m actually going on 30 and a half years that that whole beginning of my career was span went from building homes, to owning a brokerage to doing some condominium conversion projects to coaching people throughout US and Canada ran up to the crash, post crash, we revamp everything we had to and kind of redefined how it is that we’ll buy. We now by when I say we myself, my salon, my son who have been on your show, as you said, we buy everything on terms in our area of knowingly, which is owner financing preferred subject to existing financing and lease purchase. And that can be we teach a lot of single family but we it can be commercial it can be my office building was bought that way. So it can be any kind of property. And then we go out and teach that to students. And the big difference is, as you probably know is we don’t teach it we get in the trenches and do it with them. And that’s a big, closing a big gap I feel in the industry of letting people actually get stuff done instead of learn about it and try it on their own. So that’s a that’s a high view of it.

J Darrin Gross 4:00

No, I’m always a big fan of somebody that’s done that as opposed to just read the book and, and gets all excited about it and ready to share the gospel kind of thing. So definitely a fan of that. Well, let’s talk about this because you and then the introduction, we just talked about all the different ways that you’ve operated in real estate. And and you know the changes and how you’ve morphed into what you are now. And so if our topic is how to build a team may ask you this. At what point did you realize you needed a team in that progression of where you were or did you always have a team just a different, different team members?

Chris Prefontaine 4:48

Hey, this is interesting because the way I’ve segmented is pre 1 million and post 1 million and here’s why I say that for my career. Gosh, I’ll get to the crash I can say so let’s call it 18 years. I was a solopreneur with maybe a team member or to like, let’s say back in the relative days, I had that hat on for about five years. I had, you know, a really good executive assistant, I had someone that did just buyers and I had a runner. Okay, so that was a team. However, a lot of people and I don’t want to water this down in any way. But the fact is, a lot of people, most of us can muscle our way to a million dollars in revenue, that’s my opinion, meaning you just do more, you do more follow up, you get up earlier, stay up later, you know, you can mostly Wait 2 million the challenge I found coming out of the crashes, if I wanted to scale and have a life and not just be on a treadmill as a solopreneur. I didn’t need to build a team. So a whole new set of coaches a whole new set of meeting rhythm, etc. And that’s that there instead of the team, it did start with us having Zack micellar and Nick, come to me and say, Hey, I’m gonna be proud of what you’re doing. And I will share in deals, I’ll make this work type thing. And then the necessity came to build a team and hook up with an organization that could show us how to do that, because I frankly, didn’t know how to do it. I never did it before. And then to go post 1 million is a totally different animal. So that was a long answer. I hope that that answered your question.

J Darrin Gross 6:14

No, I that’s that’s kind of what I was looking for. And I’m assuming that the post or the more than a million came after the crash is that when you kind of want you had retooled, and

Chris Prefontaine 6:28

Yeah, yeah, it did. I was tired of a few things. Aside from the way we buy, I was tired of being on the treadmill. So every January thinking, Okay, I hustled my butt off, I gotta do that again. So let’s tie it to that piece. I was tired of zero leverage when the market pivoted. And that was because of the way we did deals. But also because we had no team it was just me. only so much that can go around. So yeah, it was post crash. And now it’s been scaling since then. But I do owe a lot of it’s not like I brilliantly came up with something. I owe a lot of it to the organization. We joined back in man, it was December of 17. We joined a lead entrepreneurs out in Arizona, and I credit them all the time with all the scaling and all the work we do with them. So they’re amazing.

J Darrin Gross 7:12

Got it? And how did you find them? Was that you were seeking help? Or did you Did somebody recommend them? Or how did you

Chris Prefontaine 7:20

A little of both. Every four to six months? Definitely not more than a year depending on who the mentor or coach is we’re looking for. Okay, what do we need next? Like one year it was we got to figure out how to get more leads in here. We muscled our way to this. So we had to get someone lead gen funnels going in in December of 17, or halfway through 17. It was, hey, if we’re gonna scale we’re gonna get to find someone who knows how to scale because I never did it. And I asked around, we came down to two people. One was someone inside of the Dan Kennedy camp where they were doing some big mastermind groups for business owners. And then one was this group called the lead entrepreneurs who were at that time inside of Infusionsoft. It was a bunch of Infusionsoft guys and gals that were teaching their clients how to scale then they broke off to lead entrepreneurs right around then like January of 18. So was asking around and it was pointedly saying what’s the next mentorship? We need? It was that and that’s how we found him.

J Darrin Gross 8:18

I haven’t heard the Infusion Soft mentioned very often I think now they call themselves keeper whatever. But yeah, we we’ve been using them for quite a while and, and probably have not leveraged all of the tools that they have available. Because it’s I feel like I’m kind of like sometimes driving they are using the VCR with flashing 12 Just for the play button as opposed to pin tool. Alright, so you you realize you don’t have the skill set. To grow the team you recognize you need to grow the team you find a potential mentor or some some vehicle that can help get you there. What what was, what did you recognize once you found somebody with some direction as to the hurdles that you had and the hurdle she needed to solve first?

Chris Prefontaine 9:16

What comes to mind with that question is we have these things we build up these muscles we build up right? Our protocol, our daily rhythm, all this stuff as a solopreneur. So part of it was doing what I tell our students to do, which is you gotta let go, you gotta wipe the white boy clean and you gotta be you gotta trust this you gotta put blinders on but three years, I tell our students that but it was hard for me to do that because now I’m in the trenches, you got to take my own advice. That’s the hardest thing like don’t trust the playbook don’t second guessing system. These guys had already scaled and so each time I had a doubt I just said, no, stop, get the drunk monkey off his shoulder trust these guys. And I always say three years but now we’re going on five years this am I’ve been with them. So I’ve sort of made it past the hump of this this work the way that teaching me you know.

J Darrin Gross 10:08

So in In, he joined in 17. You, you realize that you had to kind of focus in lakes and let go and trust the playbook. How quickly did you start seeing the results?

Chris Prefontaine 10:26

Okay, so the first meeting rhythms, so to speak, let me back up, the first thing they have you do is develop your mission and not case it was a five year mission ends this year. But developing mission, then develop your values. And I had the team which was my family at the time and one one staff member, now we have 14, but at the time, we all voted on those values. And I started to see the benefit of that piece right away. Here’s why. Especially with family, when decisions come to the table, emotions can get involved, especially with money, and especially with family. But when there’s a set of values set up, whereby you hire fire, make decisions on those in a mission that you hire, and fire and make decisions on. There’s no personality that can come into it, you doesn’t meet this or not. So that helped a lot. We realized that soon as we set them up, because we started acting and thinking and talking about, we’re like, oh, this is weird. We’re actually living it. And then it started coming to fruition after the first off site, which to me was a foreign concept. Leave the office even with this, when there was little team five of us do an off site planning day now after three days. And that’s not to come to fruition like, like never before a crystal clear. Whereas before you couldn’t get me to take three hours. I think that was a waste of time.

J Darrin Gross 11:41

Yeah, no, it’s it is incredible. And I’ve heard it often said about, you know, working in the business versus working on the business kind of thing, just the, you know, the, it’s so easy with, I think solopreneurs just, you know, the the nature of how you got to where you are, is basically solve the problem that’s in front of you, and be the one that’s doing the work as opposed to recognize who you can assign to it, and know that the task will be completed and letting go of it. And you know, just in and also just sitting on your hands when you you see things aren’t going the way that you would have done them yourself kind of thing. Yeah, yeah. So when when you you started the group, or started working with the group, you’ve got the off sites, you’ve got your your mission and your values in place. What were some of the things that you identified that that were key to building your team?

Chris Prefontaine 12:47

Again, what comes to mind knee jerk is I always tend to I think a lot of solopreneurs tend to load the plate up. Right. So the first few things that came up in the off site where I was trying to treat it like let’s just add things to the to do list well it’s not one off site is an off site is to prioritize those and so that the team members aren’t feeling like okay, I got all this off site, I’m going to walk out with 1000 more things to do now. So the first offset have made that mistake then we hired a facilitator who we met through that company and they run the off sites now. And so now the team members feel empowered when they leave there they feel like that part of the decision when they leave there, and instead of feeling overwhelmed with to dues they feel like they have we call them smarts but they feel like they each have their sort of two or three smarts that they’re going to work on and that’s it that’s it they’re going to live by for this trimester we do trimester instead of quarterly but whatever it is you run on I think it helps the team members a whole lot versus me as an owner going let’s just keep whipping things at this in half we do this trimester throw more at it doesn’t help it just frustrates everybody.

J Darrin Gross 13:53

So isn’t it if I’m hearing you it sounds like kind of you were really kind of the the impediment to a lot of progress until you you made the decision to go with the team route and and bring in outsiders just based on my experience that’s pretty rare. There it’s pretty rare that the person in charge that gets assigned the front of the check is willing to do that. Are you are you finding that that’s you know when you coach others are you finding that people are buying right away or is that that usually kind of the primary resistance

Chris Prefontaine 14:36

you’re you’re spot on it is a resistance the other resistance is the overhead piece comes to mind meaning I’ll take our high level students I still coach and so I’ll say from third party looking in I’ll say Hey Mike, this is what you need to do next you need to hire an executive assistant. Here’s why. Oh, I don’t know you know the dollars come to mind the cost versus the the reach Turn on investment. So now my mind shift that I’m trying to help them is, okay, an employee’s not when done properly a cost an employee, in most cases, unless it’s accounting or revenue, non revenue is revenue generating, almost all our revenue generating have to put in the right place, they’re either freeing you up to generate more revenue and do what you do best, or they’re literally generating revenue. Like we have a person who’s ahead of director, she’s director of JV relationships, her sole function is to book us on events, to do live workshops, and to go ahead and work through relationships with sponsorships and things like that she more than pays for us out. Well, that’s a position that some people go, Oh, that’s a cost. No, it’s a revenue generation spot to be filled. So we’ve got to help them nail in your question. But that’s, that’s my take on it.

J Darrin Gross 15:52

No, I love because I think that most people would stop at the cost, not recognizing how they could convert that into a revenue generator. That sponsorship kind of opportunity then? And that seems pretty like outside the box? Is that something that came out of one of your off sites? Or was that just something that you guys are constantly thinking outside of the box? Or how did you,

Chris Prefontaine 16:16

ah, the gentleman that produces that podcast with us has become a good friend. And he also has a weekly accountability partner with me personally, we just do that one on one. And he had helped me understand the power of once you have the authority to answer you have what we call the wicked smart community, once you have this smart real estate coach podcast built to the size it is, vendors near you in other avenues, but vendors want to be in front of that audience, right? It’s second animals. So people like credit repair people, like a funding company, they want to get in front of the audience. Okay, so they pay for the right to do that now that that’s the only difference. And part of this whole process is the conference that that’s what you have the conference that you have to put a person in place to then go do what you’re best at to generate more the conference, you have to say, Yeah, we’re worthy of this. A lot of that stuff, mental growth, I know that sounds like off B. But a lot of this is going to be mental growth, because you don’t come as a solopreneur. Or you don’t come from the Gob and obviously know all this stuff. It’s a different mindset. So there’s a whole different growth factor there relative to building a team, it’s you and your mindset.

J Darrin Gross 17:22

And the confidence piece is really a hurdle that I think that I think personally, it’s not always easy to identify the benefit I bring, or that the value that I have that that you know, translates. And, you know, recognizing that and being able to flip that recognize that I am bringing value and then there’s there’s worth and that somebody else would be willing to pay for that. That’s a huge. I mean, it gives you the chance to really launch and you know, momentum and then really springboard into something much bigger. That’s, that’s great. So you, you identified the wellness, talked about the different people on on the team that you you have, and at what point were they recognized as being needed and how you went about adding them?

Chris Prefontaine 18:22

Yeah, give a few examples. And you can tell me if you need me to go deeper. So as I look back, the people that were needed are usually result of somebody being maxed out. And one example comes to mind as in fall of 18. We hired first mediate real in house media person that could do filming and in video editing and all that and how did that come about? We were outsourcing. So usually, we’ll go to outsource. First, we are outsourcing to a company, that we’re taking our homemade videos, editing them, make them presentable, posting them on YouTube, things of that nature, let’s just say that got to the point where one month we did 100 hours with them. And we said, oh, wait a minute, look at this expense, we could bring on our own person for that. And this went on for like several months. So even though that was an enormous decision in my head back then to bring that kind of employee on that kind of pay. It was it paid for itself tenfold and the quality went through the roof and people realize that instead of usually it’s your subcontract out, that’s simple for you, you don’t have payroll and payroll taxes and all that related. And then once you you’re maxing that out, or you can justify replacing that that’s one issue. The second issue is if you already have a team, and the team members is so stressed out and it’s so maxed out that they can’t take on more, and they’re actually you can see and feel that stress. That’s usually time to look around and start divvying up things to is that make sense?

J Darrin Gross 19:45

Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. I think that, you know, again as a solopreneur if your primary job to generate revenue is sales, and you’re doing especially a lot of this marketing stuff, which is basically time consuming in It’s, it’s into production put out a high quality product, if there is a lot more involved than just taking out your phone and you know, videotape your video on something and posting it. So, you see, that’s, that’s a great example of marketing. Are there other positions that you recognize where you guys had ever at any point prior to outsourcing it subcontract? And were you doing it in house?

Chris Prefontaine 20:30

Yeah, we had, when we were just doing a few videos, we had a girl Lauren, just taking my homie videos, and then you know, cutting the ends off and the front and the back off, and then we post it. And then it went to a VA in the Philippines, and then it went to a higher quality, outsource and then it came in house. All the jobs that are really easy, in my opinion, if you’re a solopreneur out there listening, I don’t care what position you’re in, frankly, you the very first thing I would do if I were in your marketplace and started my business, in any niche is out getting an executive assistant. There, there are companies that hire great ones, we’ve hired many from one company, because to your point, just then if it’s sales, or if it’s the phone, or whatever it is you’re good at. If there’s any task less than a $20 task, why are you doing it worth $20 or less? Just hire an executive assistant. So if someone said, Chris, if you had little money, what would you do and you opened up in I don’t know, pick it Alaska, Florida doesn’t matter. I get there and I hire an executive assistant to get to work. And I would do only what I was qualified to do it on the phone. In my case, it’d be effective in structuring deals, they would do everything else. They would do the CRM, they would do the callbacks, they would do the paperwork, they would do my personal errands, they would do all that. That’s the first thing to do with anyone Why We Should I should have said that first. That’s a no brainer, in my opinion.

J Darrin Gross 21:46

Yeah. It’s, it’s again, I think part of it is when you are the solopreneur and you’re doing everything yourself and you can’t make the distinction as to what’s what and and you just have your like you said your your list of more things to do. Kind of taking a step back and and get some clarity on it as is important. So that the couple of examples you’ve you’ve cited, kind of the marketing and the executive assistant. Are there any other positions that are production oriented, that you have identified? That you’ve brought on?

Chris Prefontaine 22:30

Yeah, a couple of things come to mind there. There’s our podcasts, right? I can go either business, but from the coaching business, our podcasts, we were paying people to book interviews, which you’re probably familiar with. And instead we had an in house person get really good at doing that and secure in that. And so although we still use outside sources, because they’ll call us from time to time, we have an in house person that now probably does maybe a quarter cost wise of what we would paid out. So it’s that so that’s on the on the on the coaching side, on the and internally on the property side of things. We have duplicated for us it was I duplicated myself with my son in law, Zack and then Zack then duplicated himself and put we call himself a specialist of the issues column acquisition as but we put two people on the phones, trained him set parameters up, and they do all the lead gen now, so that Zach and I aren’t necessarily doing that. But we’re doing a high level deal structure only. So you can rip apart any piece of this. And it’s always how can we duplicate ourselves to do what we do best?

J Darrin Gross 23:33

Yeah, no, I, that whole lead gen thing I’ve found to be so freeing and that, you know, before when I was the one doing all of the calling all of the outbound stuff, there’s an exhaustion that happens to finally when you do have an opportunity, you’re like, you know, you’re not necessarily your best perhaps. Whereas if you have a lead that’s teed up, that is wanting to talk to you about the opportunity, that’s that’s just an entirely different conversation, at least a different energy I found just as a, you know, able to kind of have a repeatable swing, you know, and that you’re constantly in that sales mindset as opposed to the, you know, hunting, hunting 9090 9090 nothing being, you know, kind of thing. So,

Chris Prefontaine 24:20

yeah, there’s good. I mean, we have virtual assistants still to this day, not in house. We have virtual assistants who are well trained to do our calls for us that we’re talking to a low hanging fruit, like, to your point like, why would I go sifting when I can just take everybody that’s sifted?

J Darrin Gross 24:34

Yeah. To me, it was just an amazing, amazing opportunity then to shift like that. Yeah. So training, I’m assuming or do you? Obviously you guys have been doing the jobs or somehow it’s been, it’s been done in house. Do you? Kind of have write input the job is so that you can then get the quality output you’re looking for how do you go about, you know, off, or I guess transferring that to where that whoever you get is able to do to do the job.

Chris Prefontaine 25:16

The only time you write something up, I’m not big on job description, because I think it puts people in a box and doesn’t leave for flexibility. So are our values, things in our values are things like, constantly innovate and improve? Well, that’s hard. If you’re in a box, you feel like you just got to do X, Y, and Z. So what we do to answer your question is when someone comes on board, each trimester remember I mentioned the word smarts earlier. So we’ll have priorities for the trimester. And team members will volunteer for one of those priorities. And with a priority will come a bunch of smarts, and you’ll be assigned some of those you know, that’s what you own the trimester. Second thing is, so that’s strategic. On the operational side of the business, every trimester, every employee, every team member has what’s called the Big Three, the three things that they own part of their operational function, they’re like, for me, it’d be driving revenue, I’m the I’m the chairman and founder for Zack, my son in law might be, I’ve got to get the coach’s department up to this level or producing this level, like that’s what he owns for the time. So he might own an extra semester too. But they’re called the Big Three and what you own. That’s, if somebody does that they’ve they’ve successfully accomplished a trimester versus this some job description kind of keeps you limited, these are very, very focused on what we’re doing.

J Darrin Gross 26:36

And then with that, does the employee or the team member have an opportunity for input feedback on how maybe things could be different? Better?

Chris Prefontaine 26:49

Yeah. So they’re meeting their meeting with what we call the one on one sessions. As far as meeting with them. They’re meeting one on one with their direct report every single week, for about 20 to 30 minutes. And then monthly, we have an all hands meeting. So we’re all following up on how this milestone how the Big Three doing. So there’s some built in accountability there. And they get to say, like, everyone’s voting on this stuff. This isn’t standalone stuff.

J Darrin Gross 27:16

No, I love the the team input. Again, I think the more you have the input, the more you have the ownership. And, and the ability to Why are you just giving them you know, ownership of it and the opportunity to perform? How do you do you have any kind of rewards for performance?

Chris Prefontaine 27:38

Ah, good question. They, there’s a lot of incentive built into the revenue generals by percentages, overrides and things like that, if they’re in a revenue, Gen. Rev Gen roll, like the ones I mentioned, there, they get small overrides. So if we have a base product, it’s in our workshops, they’re gonna get an override, if there’s sponsorships, they’re gonna get an override. So they have their base, they have their operational big three, but they get overrides as well on success.

J Darrin Gross 28:08

So you mentioned this, is your five of your having joined the exam? Or was entrepreneur executives, elite entrepreneurs? How have you seen the the revenue and whatever it was you were trying to grow? As was revenue? Primarily the the focus then are what are you measuring? Today, in comparison to what you were measuring back then?

Chris Prefontaine 28:36

Well, we started the five year mission is to answer their revenue has grown every year between 25 and 100%. But that wasn’t the mission. The mission was set up five years ago and ends in December of 22. In the mission was to dominate the real estate mentoring market by helping our associates our students, complete 500 transactions. So that’s the mission. But now what has to feed that? Well, we’ve got to get our foundation Academy courses out there, they can’t learn to do that. We’ve got to, you know, build the coaching problem, or they can’t coach them to do that. So there’s all kinds of things that feed that. And then of course, revenue follows, right. But that was to do transactions not to, like so many people do, sadly, go sell a bunch of stuff. Right? It was how do we get them to complete transactions? I don’t know many companies that do that. So that’ll end this year, we’ll we’ll be starting to reset the mission for probably a three year mission after this.

J Darrin Gross 29:29

Awesome. So looking forward from where you are now. Any any thoughts on what what you might reach for in the next five year plan?

Chris Prefontaine 29:41

Yeah, a couple of things. It will be transaction driven again, where we’re starting to count families we’re affecting meaning. When we do a transaction on creative real estate. We’re really affecting the seller and the buyer plus our student. So we’re affecting three families minimum per deal. So we’re starting to track that and I think that might play in To the reset the mission, we’ll be meeting at the end of this month to do that. Because as the markets turn a little bit here, I think we got a perfect storm going on, we got forbearances come and do we got interest rates going up, all these things lead to us really being able to guide more people in thriving. Whereas I know some people are frustrated that I want to say that I can’t wait, I look forward to it. Because the banking is not going to get easier for buyers and sellers. And we can help them through that, navigate that and as a result will will get rewarded well, because we’re creating generational wealth for some of these families and generational knowledge on how they can do deals and how they can have homeownership without going to conventional. So it’s pretty cool.

J Darrin Gross 30:36

Yeah. Now, like we were talking before we started recording the opportunities in the storm. Yeah, yeah. So that’s great. Chris, if we could like to shift gears here for a second? Sure. My dad, I’m an insurance broker, and work with my clients to assess risk and determine what to do with the risk. And there’s three different strategies we typically look to to to try and manage the risk. The first is we look and see is there a way we can avoid the risk, when that’s not an option, then we look to see if there’s a way we can minimize the risk. And if we cannot avoid or minimize the risk, and we look to see if we there’s a way we can transfer the risk. And that’s what an insurance policy is. And I like to ask my guests, if they can identify what they consider to be the biggest risk. And it could be the market could be interest rates could be you know, politics. Whatever it’s it’s for, it’s for you to frame the question and provide the answer. But with that, I’d like to, if you’re willing, I’d like to ask you, Chris Prefontaine, what is the biggest risk?

Chris Prefontaine 31:50

Probably gonna throw a different twist at this fire, especially coming from the insurance side of things. Look, the market my opinion, the market is going to keep changing. It has for decades, I’ve been out for three decades, it will continue to change. So people get all caught up with the media and all it’s going to change. And the risk is that the risk is not there. The risk is you not knowing how to navigate. As it changes, you call it the storm. And when you know how to navigate when the market changes. You’re not You’re not at risk, because you’re not a bob and weave, you’re not a pivot, you know how to structure the deal after the deal. And you know how to be keyword adaptable. That’s it. It’s not the strongest, it’s not that smart. It’s the most adaptable. And then how do you do that? How do you mitigate that that risk? How do you get in that mode? My opinion, you find someone that’s been through at least two or three storms to use your word, and then you lean on them? Constantly. There were two times in my career, I didn’t have that person 1994 ish in 2008. And the only times I had a headache. So every other time in life, I’ve had a mentor that I could call up and go, Hey, Darren, what do you think about this? What would you do here? I’m a little a little perplexed. That mitigates your risk, and that lets you be more adaptable.

J Darrin Gross 33:05

No, that’s that’s definitely a kernel of knowledge there. And based on experience, I love that. That’s a great, great input there. Chris, where can listeners go if they would like to learn more or connect with you?

Chris Prefontaine 33:20

I’ve got two things I mentioned wanting to begin and as we’re talking, I’m thinking I’ll give you two avenues. They’re both free. I’m big on free. I want you to be able to look at what we’re doing. And if you if you get excited about a great I can’t wait to talk to you if you don’t, it’s okay. You spent a little time and resources. So the first one as we put together just for this audience, a free book, you probably get a couple but it’s our best selling hardcopy hardcover book. You don’t have to go to Amazon we will give it to you you won’t put in a credit card even for shipping. We’ll ship it totally free. Just go to wicked smart books wicked smart books.com/crepn. CR e PN so it’s easy to connect it to the show where it gets my books.com forward slash CR e pn, you got a nice package give us five or 10 days it will get out. The next thing is if you don’t want to would not if you don’t want to if you want to fill the gap before it gets there, and you don’t mind listening to me babble for 55 minutes we have a free mashes class, it’ll let you know what we do in the trenches. Just go to smart real estate coach.com/masters class. That’s it simple.

J Darrin Gross 34:28

Chris can’t say thanks enough for taking the time to talk today. I’ve enjoyed it thoroughly, and learned a lot. And I look forward to doing it again soon.

Chris Prefontaine 34:38

I love it. Thanks for having me. Thanks for having the family. I appreciate it.

J Darrin Gross 34:40

You got it. 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.

Announcer 35:00

You’re listening to CRE PN Radio for influential commercial real estate professionals for more information on this or any of our guests like us on Facebook CRE PN Radio.

Make Setbacks Your Rocket Fuel with Mike C-Roc – CRE PN # 281

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.

Announcer 36:12

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CREPN #153 – Building Your Multifamily Syndication Team with Vinney Chopra

Multifamily Syndication is a team sport. You will multiply your success when you create a winning team.

Vinney Chopra has successfully purchased over 26 multifamily properties through syndication. In this interview he describes the members you need on your multifamily syndication team for success.

Relations at all levels are key to your success in all real estate investing. For newer syndicators, you can overcome a lot when you have experienced professionals on your team.

Once you have selected an emerging market to invest in, you need to find the following members for your team.

Partner: this is the person you identify with that shares your vision and can share in doing the work that needs to get done. Someone with a different skill set that compliments you tends to work best. There are numerous jobs that need to be taken care of and together you can divide the work and conquer. One thing to consider is a partner with strong financials. Chose your partner wisely because you will likely be working together for multiple years.

Multifamily Acquisition Team

Commercial Real Estate Brokers are essential to success. Due to the nature of commercial real estate, having relationships with multiple brokers can pay dividends. Brokers have the relations with the local property owners, know the market, the properties, owners and who is a potential seller. You will do best if you present your specific buying criteria so they know exactly what you are looking for.

Loan Broker is your source of funding. The amount you will qualify is dictated by the networth of your general partners. An experienced loan broker will know the various programs available and be able to find you the best funding.

Attorneys are critical to the legal structure needed for your success. The attorneys will form the LLC entity for the property and your operating company. You also need a securities attorney to prepare the private placement memorandum, operating agreement and subscription agreement. Each of these are critical your ability to raise money and stay out of trouble.

Multifamily Due Diligence Team

Property Manager has the critical needed experience managing multifamily properties. The property manager will also help recognize issues during your inspection that need to be addressed with the seller. An experienced property manager has will convey confidence to lenders and your investors. A good property manager has relations with contractors, knows the laws and has systems to deal with most situations. Their experience is key to the profitable operation of your property.

Investors: Start talking to everyone as soon as you decide you will be investing using syndication model. You must have a prior relationship with your investors who invest in your syndication. Without investors, you will never buy a property.

CPA: Your CPA will prepare the annual financials you need to communicate the property’s performance to your investors. Your investors will expect your numbers to be presented in a standard accounting format.

Contractors of all types. The good news is that with multiple units, you have the chance to achieve economies of scale. When you find a quality contractor that provides the best service and price, add them to your “preferred vendors” list. These are your go to solutions when a problem arises. Let the contractors know that there will be additional work in the future and see if they can recognize this future work in their pricing.

For more go to:

www.vinneychopra.com

For your FREE Multifamily Syndication Underwriting tool

TEXT “Syndication” to 4747

Prior episodes with Vinney Chopra