The Exchanges

Q Okay, so Mrs. Lepresti. So a few questions here. First off, how did you decide which street to go door knocking on?

A Uh, so I went on, I just, I, it wasn't, I said door knocking, but it was really, uh, Mrs. Manisi, who was my social studies teacher in high school, just always saw that I was energetic, and she was also a real estate agent, so she would just give me leads nonstop of people that had a house that maybe wasn't selling, and she goes, you know, maybe, she was a great mentor. She was awesome lady. She was about 70 when I was in my early, you know, before 20, um, and she suggested Miss Mrs. Lopresti, along with probably 20 other people that couldn't sell, and maybe they'd do a creative deal. So I just kept asking. I'd be honest and say, I don't have money up front, but I'm a hard worker. I'll pay the payments every month, and kind of figured out that if you can, if you, you know, the people buy from you, learn from you, love you, adore you, if they feel understood. And what I learned at that young age was when I went and listened, and they told me what they were looking for, what their problems were, if I could solve their problems, and Mrs. Lopresti just wanted out of the house, she wanted to move to Florida, And I could solve that by giving her enough money each month for the house to get her condo down in Florida. We did it. It worked out perfect.

AI assessment note: “she would just give me leads nonstop of people that had a house”

Q Yep. Makes a lot of sense. Dean, let's wrap up here. Well, hold on. Before I get into the famous five, you launched a new thing called growth.com, and I think you've partnered with a few people. What's this business, and why are you launching it?

A Okay, growth is amazing. Growth is just for people who have the ability to find success trainers that are qualified. We kind of vet the best success trainers. So we create courses and we also have high performance coaching. So we're doing about 300 coaching sessions a week with hour long. It's, it's all high performance. It's not money, how to make more money. It's not personal. It's not life coaching where it's like, how was your week? It's, it's step by step. How do you become a high achiever? How do you be, what are the ingredients of a high performer? And we take people through this path. It's, it's really awesome. We just broke last week. We broke 220,000 in sales for the week. Um, so that company's growing and it's on its way. Uh, I think that's going to be one of the biggest things we've ever created.

AI assessment note: “We kind of vet the best success trainers. So we create courses and we also have high performance coaching.”

Q That's great. So, so you're doing these books, by the way, when you did go the advanced route, I mean, did you ever go with these major publishers and just trying to negotiate a big upfront advance just to see what you can do? You always negotiated for more percentage on the sales.

A I did. I did because I had faith I was going to sell the book. And here's the thing. If they give you a big upfront and you don't sell any books, you got to give it back. A lot of cases you got to give it back. So it's like, I'd rather bet on me And, you know, cause it's cool to say I got a million bucks up front and I think I could get a million up front because of all the books I sold really easy, but it's like, I still have to do the work. So I know that I produce a book like, so if you get millionaire success habits, it's a hard cover. It's not an ebook that just a lead gen. It's the best book I ever written and it's a hard cover. It's amazing. And I still ship it that way, but with, with Facebook and the opportunity with social media to touch people that are in that group that want to be more successful, want to make more money, want success habits. You know, we could target them and offer them that book, and I don't have to, I don't have to get two, three bucks a book. I can keep the whole thing.

AI assessment note: “I did. I did because I had faith I was going to sell the book.”

Q I'll eventually have about, you know, 203 hundred grand in that specific account where I'll go do like my next deal on. Right. Um, how did you like, what were the kickers of that sped up your flywheel? Was it increasing rents? Was it doing renovations so that appraised values came in higher, which allowed you to pull more equity out? Like what accelerants on your flywheel did you use?

A Dude, all, all great questions. So, uh, no, I wasn't that detailed back then, especially. I mean, I could tell you where I'm at now, right? That's a different world. But back then, as I evolved, it was really just hustling for the next deal, pulling out as much cash as I could and taking that cash and making creative deals. I didn't have a lot of money. I didn't have people that backed me. The bank was really doing great for me, but I was building up the cred to walk in and just ask for money. Right. So I would just, and, and so the one thing I would suggest that For anybody listening, Nathan, and even you is there's always creative deals. You know, everybody right now, real estate's hot. I know we're going to talk about other stuff. Real estate's hot right now. So if you go after your buddy or a friend or someone, you know, who's a real estate agent and say, send me cheap deals, you're kind of screwed because everybody's doing that. So it's really about finding off market deals. And there's some cool ways to do that. We've been doing, I've been doing it for 25 years. I would just say, uh, bandit signs, stupid little signs on the side of the road. I have them all over the country right now that say I buy houses for cash. Any condition. Call me. People hate doing it. It seems like it's, we hire, I don't do it personally. I hire someone off Craigslist to put them out for me. And …

AI assessment note: “it was really just hustling for the next deal, pulling out as much cash”