The Titanium Vault hosted by RJ Bates III

Nick Aalerud: Shut Up & Do It

• Nick Aalerud • Episode 267

Share episode

A former banker turned best selling author, speaker, a mindset and real estate coach, Nick Aalerud has 18 years of experience – in both UP and DOWN markets – across all strategies and asset classes.  Having run a multi-state wholesale, fix & flip and rental operation where the team would do 100+ deals a year in seven states, his firms have syndicated, bought and sold over $100M in real estate, and currently has $20M in assets under management through RV Parks, Multifamily Portfolios and Self Storage portfolios up and down the East Coast. 
A vertically integrated operation, they have an in-house Property Management firm Peak Performance Property Management that works to add significant value to the portfolios, a Short Sale Firm Short Sale Mitigation that helps agents get homeowners out from their heavy debt, a licensed real estate broker under REAL and licensed educator for continuing education for both agents and attorneys, a host of the “Shut Up And Do It” Real Estate Podcast where he shares stories of other business owners who overcame their own challenges, and a coaching division (REI Ignition and REI Accelerated) with weekly coachings and live “evolution-based” events where the focus is to create 100 Financially Free Families each year, while showing them how to HAVE IT ALL in their finances, in their relationships, and in their LIFE.   
Having been through his own short sales, a foreclosure, crawling back from $400K in bad debt, losing hundreds of thousands in rehab lessons, and even a brush with the SEC when he aligned with the wrong people on large multifamily syndications… and two divorces which left him homeless and even in the hospital…
He’s learned what ultimately is the key to success.
His new mission is to profoundly IMPACT as many people as he can through his business ventures, through his coaching programs, through his charity and service work, and through his efforts at being the best Dad, soulmate, creator, leader, mindset rebuilder and team leader he can be.

Learn how to close like The King Closer at https://thekingcloser.com/

With over 800 Videos, this is the #1 channel on YouTube for all things Virtual Wholesaling. SUBSCRIBE NOW! https://youtube.com/@RJBatesIII

Buy the replay of the Closers Olympics at https://closersolympics.com/rj

Learn more about the systems I use to virtually wholesale nationwide using the links below!

LeadZolo YouTube Leads: https://www.leadzolo.com/titanium

The Most Powerful Dispo Tool: https://get.investorlift.com/titanium/

Close 30% More Deals Using Our Preferred Transaction Coordinator: https://titaniumtc.com

BatchLeads 1,000 Seller Leads: https://batchleads.io/titanium

Save 20% on Privy (Nationwide Comping Tool). Use Promo Code TITANIUM: https://www.privy.pro/

Propstream Free Trial: http://trial.propstreampro.com/titanium/

#rjbatesiii #kingcloser #closersformula #wholesalehouses #wholesalingrealestate #realestateinvesting

Support the show

RJ Bates III:

Hey guys, welcome to the titanium vault. I'm your host, rj base, the third, and today I'm sitting down with Nick Alarood. And see, just because I pronounce his name correctly, I'm already a better podcast host than Steve train in there. Heymakers, right out of the gate, baby Jesus.

Nick Aalerud:

Christ. So to be fair, steve actually said my name totally correctly. It was his editing team that posted it incorrectly one time, but they fixed it. It's all good.

RJ Bates III:

It's okay, steve, we all forgive you. We all know that you're the 33rd best podcast host when it comes to wholesaling real estate, so it's good. Oh my god, oh my god, enough making fun of Steve. You love you, steve. Nick, how are you doing today, man?

Nick Aalerud:

I'm well, dude. It's a beautiful day here in Boston. It's a beautiful 38 degrees. I've got some geese outside and I am in a t-shirt. I'm excited.

RJ Bates III:

There you go 38 degrees in a t-shirt, that means you're from New England. 70 degrees and I'm wearing long sleeves here in Texas there it is. So I'm looking over your bio here. I'm excited for today's episode. You have done so many things over what appears to be the last 18 years. I mean almost everything. Give a Concise rundown of all the things that you've done in real estate over the past 18 years.

Nick Aalerud:

Concise concise would be. I lost all my hair and that pretty much sums it up. But now I started out with a really, really rough start. Happy to share that with your listeners too. But with my first reset I ended up starting in wholesaling and moved from wholesaling which is what taught me everything about knocking on doors and talking to sellers Then moved into rehabbing and condo conversions and like small development and then went into rentals in a cash flow market, but it's all. It's a haul. The story is not as exciting as like the bumps and bruises along the way, right, so happy to chat about where you want me to go through one by one, or if you want?

RJ Bates III:

Yeah, let's, because you talk about these reset buttons that you had to hit and I think that stands out about your story over the majority of people out there. Most people don't want to talk about any failures that they've had. It's just like hey, I've been in the business for 18 years and you know I've made X amount of millions of dollars. One of my favorites is when we use the total of Property value amount as the amount of the millions of dollars. Yeah, I've done like hundred million dollars in real estate. Okay, sure, how much money did you make? So let's not have a hundred dollars.

RJ Bates III:

What, what are, what are these reset buttons that you're talking about that you had during your career?

Nick Aalerud:

All right, cool. So I'll bring you and your listeners through my journey. Some of them might have heard a couple things, but starting out in real estate 2004 and five, I was a corporate big shot banker here in Boston and they were working me to the bone. I was working 60 hours a week. They promoted me like three, three different times. I was overseeing 25 people, got to go to India for like a few months and I was making under $50,000 a year.

Nick Aalerud:

It was. It was a board game. Have you heard a risk, rj? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Nick Aalerud:

So playing risk with some buddies upstairs because I was a politics major dude, I had no future whatsoever. No one wanted to. You know who wants to be an attorney and all that. So we're playing upstairs for global domination like a nerd game and they all bump up and get me out first, like all five of them ganged up on me, and it's my house I'm hosting, so I got it. I'm the one now watching infomercials until these jerks leave, right? So pop on the infomercials and there's the first one right, buy real estate pennies on the dollar, john Beck's tax-leaning, free and clear system. And I was like huh, and as a joke to my buddies over here. I bought a $50 binder in the mail and I'm and I'm like, be careful, guys, you put me out of a you know a Board game. I'm gonna be buying shit.

Nick Aalerud:

So that that happened. And it came in the mail. I said, if you're serious about real estate, call this number. I was like, yes, I've just paid 50 bucks. I suppose I'm serious. And the absolute best salesperson in the world talked into my very first over the phone like coaching, boot camp, right, $6,000 boot camp. And that specific one didn't teach me a bunch, but it got me off the the table. It got me to start like setting up direct mail, doing some marketing. But I was pissed because after like six months later, I didn't even do my first deal yet and I started going like course, happy, right. I went to the learning annex and Boston Trump was there, kia sake was there, the OG's, like all these people, and I just went nuts. I bought everything because that's what I did, right and I still hadn't done a deal yet. So, while I'm finally pushing myself and there's a whole story about when I actually had a chair in a shampoo bottle and accountability partner, all that bullshit, but you don't have to worry about that on. I'm handy Morse, no one believes me anyway.

Nick Aalerud:

There's a guy out in Minnesota that saw me hustling. He's like, hey, listen, I have access to undervalued real estate. This is in 2005, right, undervalued real estate here in Minnesota. We're gonna line up rent to own buyers that'll pay 20% above market rent, so we'll make money on their cash flow for three years and then they're gonna sign a P&S agreement to cash us out three years later 20% above what we pay now. And there's a third way we got paid back. Then you could actually close you contract for like $500,000 for a single family house. The seller would give you a check for 50,000 at closing. You would finance that 90 to 100% Finance back in the day, right, and the seller would give you this $50,000 checks and hey, thanks, good luck. So I'm like no shit, I'm gonna get all my money back on my first closing at the closing table for all these courses I just bought. I'm gonna have done a deal. I'm gonna learn from this guy like this is a huge no-brainer. Let's not close on one, let's close on five at once in one week. Let's do this site unseen.

Nick Aalerud:

And we had our call with them set up the next week to like next steps and roll in the tenants and get the cash flow going. And he didn't show up to the call. Well, I do like. So we started emailing them like, bro, where are you? Like? We got to get these things lined up. He took his portion of that upfront money 40%. I signed on all the loans. He took that money and he peased out. There were no tenant applications. They were all fraudulent. There was no P&S agreements to resell. But you know what was real, rj, was the mortgages 10 mortgages. Yeah, that's my properties and you can only float that for so long. And six months later I had an attorney to chase him and property manager to try to manage these things.

Nick Aalerud:

My first five deals in real estate went down the toilet four short sales and a foreclosure and that put me out of the credit game until 2016. Because it didn't take till 2016 to even hit my credit report, and then 10 years passed that. So that was my first big reset and I literally thought my financial life was completely over in my 20s. I'm like, oh my God, and all my buddies are still going out Friday nights like hanging out. I'm like this is fuck right, like what happens now and I remember thinking to myself it's six months later, this is still my way out of the corporate grind.

Nick Aalerud:

But now I can't afford to lose any money. I didn't have any credit and I had to restart with 400,000 in debt on my credit report to all these banks, these unsecured notes. So I had still taken or paid for a course in wholesaling and you, mr, 50 Deals in 50 States, all about that. So I said, okay, how do I set up my rules where I can't lose money? And that became my new MO and I just knew I had to put in the time and overcome the fear of my phone, which was used once against me Like collections agents were calling me every 38 seconds. I had to put my phone in the drawer. I had to overcome that fear of picking up that phone and calling sellers acting like I knew what the fuck I was talking about and knocking on doors, which became a beautiful re-lesson right and to how to structure deals, how to find value and find a good cash buyer at a local rea club. And that was my first big reset. I've had seven more. So you tell me what we have time for.

RJ Bates III:

Well, I want to touch on that. I talked to a gentleman yesterday and he was talking about he's in a tough spot right now. He's at that, one of those make or break moments where he has to reset. And he was talking about I just don't know if I could do it, because I feel so disingenuous when I'm talking to someone because I know that I'm not successful right now. I know I can't actually buy their house right Cause he's just gonna wholesale. So talk about that on the mindset of, hey, you just got into real estate, you basically got scammed. You lost everything for a decade. You lost your credit for a decade. How did you get over the fact that internally you could feel like a loser, but then you had to get on the bones and or doorknock and talk to sellers and act like you're an expert.

Nick Aalerud:

Yeah, yeah, well, it started with taking responsibility and I had paid for, like I don't know if you heard a guy named Marshall Silver out of California. So he's a hypnotist, big, biggest hypnotist guy, and I had already paid for his course at that learning annex that I'd never gone to. So I go to this thing anyway and I'm like I can't get it in ties so I'll fuck it, I'll just go and I'd have paid for it. And I remember laying on the ground of the hotel and I remember, like, cause it's distinctly like a fight, I'm fighting with myself like of two voices, right, like you know, yeah, that's easy for them to do, but they didn't just get, you know, screwed by this other guy. And the other guy is like you know, are you, are you fucking done yet? Are you done complaining? Are you done like saying it's someone else's fault? Like get the fuck up. And can I, by the way, can I just wear your podcast? Sorry?

Nick Aalerud:

Yeah, I don't know if you know me or not, but I do Didn't know if your marketing team was gonna bleep you and me at the same time.

RJ Bates III:

No, yeah, I'm just gonna throw this out there. I actually won the Closers Olympics by saying 39 fucks to the seller. That's actually how you become the king closer. I don't know if you know that or not. You actually just pass out a seller. Hey, he actually said 4,000 fucks, so I was on the low side. We're good. Yeah, we're good.

Nick Aalerud:

Because, speaking of which, there is a belt behind you. Just want everybody to be aware of the belt.

Nick Aalerud:

So many belts, so many belts. Love that. Closers Olympics, love that. You threw that in there. Yes, amen. I had my entire acquisitions team watch those Closers Olympics. It's amazing. Thank you for that.

Nick Aalerud:

But it started. It started there. It started like literally having that other voice say get the fuck up. Are you done complaining? Are you done making excuses? This was not his fault, this was your fault. You didn't do due diligence, you didn't know what the hell you were doing, you just jumped in.

Nick Aalerud:

So with that responsibility, and then getting out to in-person clubs was really hard because I had just failed. I'm now that guy and I gotta tell you I was invited, I was speaking very privately to somebody about everything that happened and I was very, very private about the whole thing, cause failure, all that shit. And that one of the ladies was like hey, why don't you come speak to the Rio Club About what just happened? I'm like are you crazy? I'm not gonna do that. Like, everybody's gonna know I'm a fucking failure and I'm not gonna get any deals in this and that, but she's like, you're gonna be surprised. Like and it was my first ever speaking engagement I didn't know what the hell I was doing, but I put together a few slides as to the five deals and I just shared hey, this can be a learning lesson for anybody. I take full responsibility.

Nick Aalerud:

And I stood up there. I released like some sort of emotion and at the end of that meeting, after telling everybody how I just massively fucked up, I had three cash buyers approached me looking for deals. I had two private money investors. I had a hard money lender come up and wanna fund my deals. It was just because of the authenticity, because I was willing to share.

Nick Aalerud:

So I wanna share your you know your listener. Like if anyone here is going through a reset button like that, you can take your time to lick your wounds, but the faster you can come out of it and the faster you can just admit it and tell the world right, the most powerful person in the room is the one with nothing to hide. So if you just come out and just share your stories, everyone is craving that authenticity. So how did I talk to sellers? And then I had a cash buyer that said hey, this is what I'm looking for. If you can go out and find that, I'll pay you $5,000 a contract, which, by the time, is probably worth $25,000 a contract. But you know what the hell did? I know Right. So I went out and just door knocked and talked to sellers, knowing that I had you know someone. I was working with someone that was gonna be able to take all those down.

RJ Bates III:

The key point here authenticity. Good, you had to take responsibility at the beginning, though. If you had gotten up there and been real and raw and authentic and just blame the other person, everyone would have been like, ah man, come on Like, you made the decision to do this. That's why, when you know, we've had two day boot camps now for three years, people come into our office and one of the things that we give them well, outside of everyone gets a bracelet that says create your own reality.

Nick Aalerud:

Okay, yes.

RJ Bates III:

Second, they get a copy of Extreme Ownership and I tell them you need to read the book, because every decision that you make moving forward is your decision. You have to take ownership of that. So I think that, right there is what enabled the results that you got from that first speaking engagement, cause if you had not taken ownership, bro, they would have looked at you like I want nothing to do with this guy, adam. He is never gonna take ownership for his own actions. So I think that's a huge thing. Now you're in the wholesaling how, what's the next reset? How do you mess that up? Cause that's like that's the easy one, baby, that's the one we all default back to.

Nick Aalerud:

That's the easy one. So I did. I got it took me three to four months to get the wholesaling machine up and running. I had that one buyer that moved into a few weathers and just knocking on doors, talking to a lot of people who didn't speak English, learning the ropes. That way a lot of you know F-offs, a lot of everything that you go through right. And I remember nine months later I had enough money and finally now I knew what a hard money lender was right and I'm like, okay, I have enough money to put a down payment down on my first rehab.

Nick Aalerud:

Same triple-decker, same exact thing I was doing here in the Boston area and bought the three family, moved it into condos and I broke even on the deal, which to me was the biggest win of my entire life I don't have to lose everything by taking title to a property. That's awesome and that moved me into like SOPs, checklist procedures on how to have a rehab company, how to work with contractors, how to assess all that stuff. So I became like the rehabber right, using only hard money for the next X amount of years. And then three years later I'm like, okay, this is a really good active income business, but I have to start moving some of this into rentals, like I knew in my like I gotta start doing some passive stuff too.

Nick Aalerud:

So I wasn't financeable. So I started building like a small rental portfolio out in a place, western Pennsylvania, because can't buy anything here for cash. So they've shown me, like an Amish community out there, like an old steel mill, that you could buy a property for like 15,000 bucks, put 15,000 into it and rent it for 600 bucks a month. Now that means the 1% rule all day long. What I didn't know at the time, right, is that okay, I can cash flow that for two years, but if a roof goes your two or three years out of cash flow.

RJ Bates III:

Exactly, yeah, so. I did that. No one wants to talk about that part of being a landlord. Here's what I thought. I bought it for 15,000. I'm renting it out for 600 a month. Woo, I just want you to know. As a nationwide virtual wholesaler, all of Western Pennsylvania is still selling for $15,000 and renting out for $600 a month. There's been zero appreciation and changing the rent rates out there.

Nick Aalerud:

That's it. That's it. I bought it in 2009 and we're selling for the exact same price we bought Right.

RJ Bates III:

That's the truth, If anything actually they've gone down a little bit. It's like you know, I think we've done several like four, five $6,000 properties out there. So you take these down, you're back to buying properties again. Yep, is that where the roof started going out? Ac? Oh, no, no, no, now I'm the shit though.

Nick Aalerud:

No, crj, now that I have rentals and a big rehab company and a wholesale company, now I'm becoming the shit in my market, right Like I'm the dude. So I took another course from another national guru that said, hey, listen, just jump into national apartments indications, right, so I can be a big shot. I can be the guy that goes around and buys the 500 unit buildings. So I'm like, all right, we're gonna systemize this. I got these rentals out here. I don't even have good credit yet. So, 2010, I started out at Hustlin and I find, like the first one I find is in Ashford, north Carolina. It's 144 unit building and I'm working my butt off to like put the funding together and do the due diligence and like talk to the seller and renegotiate and we find the craziest thing happened the seller actually lied about their expenses on the property.

RJ Bates III:

I know that never happens, right? Yeah, no, sellers don't lie. What are you talking about, bro?

Nick Aalerud:

I couldn't believe it, so it like broke my heart. I had to walk away from that deal. But then I had three and I'm gonna apologize St Glycys, you've ever heard this story, but this is a good one. I had three local coaches for that national guru that were here in Boston, saw me at Hustlin. They're like hey, why don't you come help us raise equity, raise some cash, we'll show you operations, we'll show you asset management, we'll show you how, like you can see what we already do in our portfolios and you don't have to pay us any coaching. I'm like that sounds like a great deal to me, let's go. So I started working for these three GPs and in the meantime I started putting money with that national guru. I had money in his deals, I had my own money now in these three guys' deals, and I brought in like another 250,000 of friends at Family Capital. And I was working for them for like three weeks and I got a call from one of them saying hey, nick, not a big deal, just got a call from the SEC. We're cooperating, we're answering the questions. We don't really know where they're calling, so they're gonna call you next, though. So I mean good luck, and he hangs up the phone Good luck.

Nick Aalerud:

Meanwhile I'm still in my late 20s. I'm like, oh, all right, there's more here, coming right out of my head here. So I take that call and I remember pacing. I'm in my real estate office upstairs my old agency office and I'm walking back and forth for three hours with these three attorneys on the phone who's asking me like where did you get this flyer and how did you get this information, and where's this return coming from, and this and that. And I'm just answering and I'm like point of like I thought they had an attorney. Like why don't you talk to them? And finally I'm like do I need an attorney? And they said do you feel you need an attorney, mr Elorad?

Nick Aalerud:

And that's when I was like I locked up, called the first overly expensive attorney I could ever find and we, we lawyer it up and for a whole 14 months I was deposed, subpainted. I had already bought my first house hack, which was also a huge mess, and it was selling it to my ex-wife. It's a whole nother story. And we, a whole year of my life was taken by having to print off every single email like I've ever sent anybody we had. I had an edible arrangement store with my mom and they were like making me go into all of those archives like everything I'd ever done, and it cost me my first marriage. I was married to my high school sweetheart, and what happens when you're not paying any attention to her? It was a really, really rough year.

RJ Bates III:

So what were they worried about? They were just worried that you weren't raising capital the right way.

Nick Aalerud:

So they don't tell you. That's the problem they don't tell you. So 14 months later we finally read the court documents and you know what happened was right Is they had an investor complaint, which is how it all starts, and that launches an investigation. If they feel it's worth, it worth the wee of it and with they do an investigation, they've got to find something right. So there was evidence that they, when asset wasn't doing as well as another, so they took money from this one and funded that one. That's a no-no there was. Then there was evidence that they may or may not have taken some investor money to buy a personal vehicle for one of the GPS.

Nick Aalerud:

Oh geez, also a big no-no, right. And one of them was an attorney, right. So it becomes a really big deal when 14 months, you have no idea, you have no idea why, and they're bringing everybody to the table. I was just a witness. I was just a witness is what they said at the end of the day. But that witness cost me over $80,000 in legal fees, a whole year of non-production and my first wife.

RJ Bates III:

So it was a rough one. So what's funny about this is? Well, there's not that really funny about it, but we can laugh now.

Nick Aalerud:

We can laugh, we can laugh now.

RJ Bates III:

But I mean, when you look at this, I preach this the hedgehog concept have something, be good at it, become great at it and then if you want to start another business, go start another business. Do you feel the broken focus from hey, we're making all this money wholesaling, and the set of saying, let's be honest, nick, you were making money. You weren't making like just Gobs of money that you just didn't know what to do with, right? I mean, wasn't like you were running some hundred million dollar company, you were just making a lot of money for Nick, right at the time.

RJ Bates III:

Yeah, there's like two of us at that time, yeah so do you think the broken focus from wholesaling to then let's become a flipper and then the landlord and then an apartment syndicator, do you think that is really kind of the moral here, of like a don't just keep chasing the next Shiny object?

Nick Aalerud:

syndrome. Oh, what a great lesson. But wait, you know what? We haven't even begun that yet, because let me keep going.

Nick Aalerud:

So now that this all happened, I'm like I have massive control issues. I will never part with anybody again, especially with the Minnesota stuff, like I'm attracting the wrong people. So I'm like you know what's gonna happen. I want to make sure I know if I get my hands dirty, if an asset starts to go down a multi-family Fort three, four, fan five or 150, it doesn't matter. I have to have my ABC checklist Getting my hands dirty, how to take this back up and running. So that then became a whole new set of checklist and procedures for a property management company and at the same time, right to be a property manager in Massachusetts. I mean, you have to be a broker. So became a real estate broker.

Nick Aalerud:

I was a broker for three years and I also made a really smart decision for anybody thinking about becoming a real estate broker. Let me say a couple more things. I Was like there's no investor friendly brokerages here in my area at the time. So I'm like this is gonna be brilliant. I'm gonna be a broker and I'm gonna say go up to all my rea clubs and be like hey, I have the first investor friendly brokerage. Come on in right. And this happened in. That was 2011 and I had zero to 40 agents in one week and I had no back office. I had no systems. I didn't know what the hell. I never even put anything on MLS before because I'm an investor right never needed to do that. And all these people wanted coaching and guidance and leadership and I was not the one to give it to him.

RJ Bates III:

Yeah, so could you? You never done it.

Nick Aalerud:

No, no, well, they're all investors too. I could teach investors right, but like I don't know MLS, I don't know all this stuff. So Huge lesson right doing that for the wrong reasons and I make I became, say, the broke we had to let go. And the hard money lender at the time was like you know, you don't pay these people, you can let them go. Oh, shit, I guess that's right. So I had like conversations with 37 of the 40 and I restarted with just three, and that was another journey.

Nick Aalerud:

So now, with all of these things and in the time this is all getting to my big midlife crisis, right at the time, all of these vertically integrated companies we're supplementing, right, like the wholesale rehab and rental business, like, oh, I have a brokerage now so I can save money on Dispo. Oh, we got a property management company so we can obviously manage our own entities and get access to off-market multi-family for later. Right, like we can do all these things. And as we continue to grow and vertically integrate with I, my team started to get bigger and bigger and then we started, you know, really scaling up. We had not yet scale the acquisitions team like you had, right. So we finally get to the point where, okay, let's go and scale. We have these eight companies. Let's take our acquisitions, you know, to seven different states across the country, of course, and let's bring our team up to you know, we went from three people to ten people to then 30 people on salary.

RJ Bates III:

Oh, I want to guess what your next move was. I'm just gonna say, because you had everything else going on, you said, hey, that politics degree, let's put it to good use, and you went to law school so you can also be the closing attorney for you.

Nick Aalerud:

My third wife's my real estate attorney. But besides that, no, and that was um, that was. It was just 2021. Now, so let's, let's fast forward. There's a bunch of resets to, but we're I know we're short on time 2021.

Nick Aalerud:

I'm about ready to go to Kilimanjaro, the mountain in Africa, and I'm like I remember, like something's wrong, Something's off and I hated my life. I completely I was locked into 22 zoom meetings, a week of accountability, of management, of motivating, and I just remember, like all of I'm on the top of that mountain, I'm like this is, this is not why I fucking got into this business. And I like went all the way back to me watching that stupid Informers. So I'm like they said something about financial and time freedom. Like what the fuck was that about? Let me go back to what that was. And instead of saying to my local groups and they're going on podcasts and saying, look at me, I got 35 people and we're in seven different states and we have all these in the verdict we're like how much of that was ego Versus? How much of that was me actually going to the shit, doing what I wanted to do, doing?

Nick Aalerud:

what I set out to do in the first place, and I had a massive, massive shift just in June of last year, 2022, where I had this like vision of seven Castles like melting into the ground, and I didn't even know what it meant. And it turned out like in July I'm just like this this doesn't serve me anymore. Shut it down property management. Shut it down. Sell the brokerage. Shut it down, like I just started going through little by little no, no, no. And now, if it's not a hell, yes, it's a fuck, no, in my life.

RJ Bates III:

Hey, I want to say something. You're the first person that's fast forwarded a story to. I was standing on top of Mount Kilimanjaro. I mean Casually threw that out. You know the mountain in Africa. I'm just standing on Mount Kilimanjaro.

Nick Aalerud:

Alliance.

RJ Bates III:

Yeah, I mean it could have been better if it was Mount Everest, but whatever you know, in my underwear. Yeah, so so what today? What is the business look like? What are you doing today?

Nick Aalerud:

Totally so. I found it wasn't just me that had this disease, right, I know you had Brad Chandler on your podcast a few weeks ago. He and I both had our midlife crisis at the same time, I feel, and it was this beautiful reawakening. So, um, you know, even now We've we've been a coach in that field. Some of you I mean I've been a coach since 2012,. Right, I was. I've been doing it all wrong, right, like coaching people how to Scale and how to get to this massive big company that has a ton of overhead where they still have to hold people accountable, but it's okay because you can say you've got all the stuff. So now we there's a huge focus on Bringing them to financial freedom within five years or less, but doing it in the right way.

Nick Aalerud:

The biggest, one of the biggest resets that wasn't even real estate related. It was when I made a massive mistake with my second wife. I Wanted and I've said this to her since like I wanted kids almost more than I wanted a wife at the time, and it was a horrible, horrible thing that happened. We thought we loved each other, right, like we got into it, right, and when that ultimately happened, you know, there was never really any love there. So we have the two kids and, of course, the big, big, big breakup came, and I'll share that with you too, rj. So we go ahead and to you and I are part of a bunch of masterminds, right? So I'm heading to. At the time it was a collective genius mastermind and I had won my belt three times in a row at the time. So we have that in common. I just they've kept taking my belt back. Unfortunately I don't, yeah, but I had won three of the belts in a row, which is that this is CG right, top 1% of investors across the country. They all go. There's a big give for 15 minutes and I had set up this, you know, setting up my evening and morning for massive success personally and for my business. And I had this big give to give away from my routines and habits.

Nick Aalerud:

And I'm in, I'm driving to the airport when I get a call from my then wife's attorney and says so you know, I'm calling to find out when you're playing and moving out. You have seven days to vacate your home, you don't. You have to pay for everything. Still, you're not gonna see your kids, you and I'm gonna. Just, you know, let us know what date you'll be moving out. While you're going, you're going away. And I realized, as I'm flying down, I'm like I'm fucking homeless. Yeah, like I. You know 15, 20, 25 million assets under management and I'm fucking homeless.

Nick Aalerud:

And I started going back through all these decisions and stuff, like all I wanted was just to be an impact on my kids, right, it's all I wanted, right. And I remember like that night trying to get through this presentation, and it was the first time I had my first big, big ego death. So I'm going there to share, try to share. And I remember like just melting down into tears right under the ground and like I literally couldn't even speak. And you know, medley was there and Corey Boehrite was there and a whole bunch of people were there. I just remember like I couldn't get through the presentation. I was just a ball of tears and I didn't mean for this to happen. But I did get a sympathy vote, so I did get the fourth belt in a row.

RJ Bates III:

I was going to say, I mean, just bro, just for the spirit of the game, I mean if you just got out there and cried for 15 minutes, they're giving you the fourth belt in the row.

Nick Aalerud:

I mean wasn't my intent, right, wasn't my intent, but that was the biggest moment, I think, in my life where my ego had its first big death that it's so needed, you know, and since then it's like what's ego and what is what we are looking to do? And going back to Brad's talk right, how much of the shit are we doing to prove ego or prove our worth to someone from our childhood versus what's actually getting us to the time, financial and spiritual freedom that we're seeking?

RJ Bates III:

I think sometimes we don't even know why we're doing things Like just, and it's so cliche. But I think that was the problem. People used to talk about what is your why? And then it became well, that's cliche. So we stopped talking about it. You know, we rise well, we just do a lot of stuff that we don't even we can't even explain ourselves. But we don't even have a lie that we tell ourselves why we're doing it.

RJ Bates III:

Like you said, the property management. Well, because we're already doing it. So why not breathe that in house? And then you know the brokerage and all these other things. Well, sure, have a brokerage. You don't have 40 fucking agents. You know, there's a lot of different things that just don't serve our end goal because we don't even know what we want. You know, I mean, dude, let's be real, you were making less than 50 grand for a bank and you saw an infomercial and then from there it was just fucking chaos. I mean, it's the same thing, I mean for me. I mean I spent, I borrowed, $65,000 on my mom's credit card to learn real estate and, right out of the gates, year one, $750,000 in assignments.

Nick Aalerud:

There it is Dude.

RJ Bates III:

I had never made more than 30 grand in a year. Like well, I guess as an entrepreneur there were some good years. But that's hard to actually allocate how much money you're making. You know it's like all right, we did $500,000 in revenue. How much of that was actually RJ's money? You know $750,000 in assignments and it's like well, hold on, there were no contractors, there was no material. Maybe this was just holy shit. We were doing off the MLS. This was like we didn't even have marketing.

RJ Bates III:

But the chaos came in. The exact same thing, dude. We started buying properties bought all over the country. I had more houses than you had agents in freaking Alaska, like oh, I mean, and so same thing hard resets, short sells, lost properties. I'll never forget having zero emotion when I got the call that one of our houses in Hawaii was devastated because a tree fell from above and wiped out the entire house, and I had zero emotion. You know why I had zero emotion? Because I was like we were going to lose on that one anyways. It was already a loser in my mind. So follow the insurance claim and hey, one less loss.

RJ Bates III:

We got to like the Cleveland Browns, when we accidentally win. All right. Well, we got one win.

Nick Aalerud:

That's not your business model, though. I know me too. Some of the insurance deals are our best deals we've ever done. That's not our actual business model, though, just like you, right yeah.

RJ Bates III:

Exactly so I want to ask you your podcast, shut up and do it. That's what we named the episode. Why did you choose that name, or what do you mean by it?

Nick Aalerud:

Sure, and it's a timely that you should ask that question, because we did just rebrand and shut up and do it was. The voice that I need is going back to my very first call to a seller right. My reset after my five deals went bad and I remember sitting at like my little desk in my apartment and I had all my coaching scripts out. Right, like, okay, and make sure I say that, and I have to get my lucky little pen over here. If I have my lucky pen, I feel better about it and I might, like you know, laptop over here with my notes and like, okay, you know what, maybe if I print out the public record, I'll have the paper copy that will help me really assess, because I didn't have the tools back then. Right, like, okay, I'm like you know what, what if they owe something on the property, I'm going to actually print off the masslandrecordscom, the registry page, just to make sure I know who their lender is and how much they roughly owe on the property. Okay, cool, all right. So what else would I need for this fucking shut up and call Right? And for me, so it became like for me, my brain would do anything it could to procrastinate doing the shit that was required, yeah, and that became and it's not just me, I found right, and you, the people you teach, it's not just me, it's all of us.

Nick Aalerud:

So it wasn't built for. And it also became really effective too, when I put it all on my shirts and I started going to job sites and I just point to the contractor crews like dude, that's our tagline. But it's all about silencing up here, right, like the mind trying to protect you, trying to get you to stay in your comfort zone, trying to like, oh, that's uncomfortable, don't do that. Like shut up and do it, don't think, just go, just move. And that became everything. We had the tagline on our laptops, we had it on our swag bags, we had it in big, big, big frames in the office and it became just a mantra, just a mantra for everything we did, and it was just silence our brain whenever we felt a little uncomfortable.

RJ Bates III:

No, that's important, go move, move towards that, right, yeah, and that's listen when you talk about talking to sellers and the actions that are needed, especially when you're talking about wholesaling. I mean it needs to. I call it become a machine where you know when you turn on a machine the machine doesn't say, but hold on, let's think about it. We need to pull the records to see what the mortgage is going to be.

RJ Bates III:

The machine just goes yeah, the machine just repeats its process over and over and over and over again. And if you could get to that level where you know every time you talk to a seller, it's a repeatable process. You're having the same conversation, you're asking the same questions. It should be the same questions. I mean you're doing the same thing I'm buying Nick's house, or if I'm buying you know grandpa, you know Bill in Wyoming, or I'm talking to an 85 year old lady, I still need to know the exact same information. It shouldn't be different. You just got to talk a little bit differently. So I love that man. That's why that listen you and I taught back in 2020. Yeah, I got a deal in in mass and we were Facebook brands. I reached out to you about that deal was in North Adams. I love, I can't believe you remember that. That's so funny. Yeah, north Adams, and I remember all the details about that deal, baby.

Nick Aalerud:

That's a sick memory, dude, not going to lie. How many deals have you done? A lot.

RJ Bates III:

I've got a lot of deals, but I'm normally salty about the ones that don't make it to the finish line. So basically, what happened there is is I bought the day, I sold the day and I just never got paid. The seller and buyer decided they wanted to work together and say what do we need RJ for?

Nick Aalerud:

Yeah, Love that. I wasn't the buyer on that, to be fair.

RJ Bates III:

They basically just told me hey, north Adams is way out there.

Nick Aalerud:

We call that dragon country. Out there that's like two and a half hours from civilization.

RJ Bates III:

I remember I was like what do you, how do you feel about North Adams? And you're like I don't ever think about North Adams. That's way out there, rj. So anyways, but when we talked I immediately felt the connection to you because I think a lot of we didn't talk about the resets, we didn't talk about the failures, but I can tell there was a similarity in our mindset about like the shut up and just do it, take the action.

RJ Bates III:

You know you were talking about. You know you had people on your team watching my lives and different things like that, and it's fun to see you know someone say, hey, I've had a ton of success, but I've also had these failures. I mean to our listeners right now that might be going through something like what you're talking about, whether it's business related hey, they made a mistake. Or whether it's personal hey, they're going through a divorce, they can't see their kids how do they just shut up and do it? How do they get over the fact that, hey, I've got all this going on but I still gotta pick up the phone and talk to that seller? How do they do that?

Nick Aalerud:

The length of time. That might start with years. It might start to shrink down to one year, then six months, then two days, where you can stop feeling bad and sorry for yourself, like if you can start to shrink that down to what you mentioned the machine. You shrink it down to the point where there's always something to be taken from every single decision and action that happens in our lives. Right? Not only that, I mean if you get really fucking deep, like I'm in, I mean, brad, are deep now. Right, we might have actually signed contracts before we came into this body as to all this shit we were gonna have to go through and learn. So we already made the agreements to get through them. It's just a matter of when we get through them. Do we take the learning and how quickly can we move forward with that new learning? So you can shrink and become that machine like you mentioned. Right, like with what you do.

Nick Aalerud:

And it's funny because even my acquisition spokes at their peak, like if they were getting sworn at by a seller, they'd always like, oh, they'd have to shake that off. And it's funny because watching the machine, watching you, right, like you were onto the next fuck you back onto the next. It was beautiful. It was beautiful. So, I think, getting our hearts and our minds into that one little machine like, okay, take the hit, let's feel it, let's assess what needs to be done and move forward right, how can I become a better leader? How can I become a better father? How can I become a better business person? How can I become? And using that to make me better, versus wallowing in that shit.

RJ Bates III:

So you bring up being a better father. Let's just use that for an example, because you could do it with husband, you could do it with leader, you could do it with anything. Let's just talk about kids, okay. Every time, every night, I come home, my children ask me how was my day? Now imagine if, when I came home, I gave them a brutally honest answer where they say how was your day, dada? And I say well, son, at 11 am this morning, some toothless hillbilly said fuck you, and so I decided to sit in my feels for the rest of the day and I didn't call anybody else and I basically just jacked around on fucking Facebook and Instagram. That's how my day was. How was your day, son? Don't you want to be just like me, like that is kind of where I'm at, where it's like bro, like I'm gonna use another example, an actual example. That just happened this past weekend.

RJ Bates III:

Okay, yes, my son playing a hockey game, first game of the tournament against a team from St Louis. Defenseman shoots the puck. My son plays center Goalie, goes to save it with the glove. It bounces off the glove and goes straight down. Him and his teammate died for it and they pushed the puck into the net. The defenseman cross checks my son in the back, he falls down, he's on his butt, celebrate the goal. He raises his hand, he stands up and all I see is, as he stands up, he instantaneously goes for smiling to cringe. Pain grabs his knee and falls as hard as he could, as if like he had broken his leg. And I'm freaking out because I played sports, watched sports my whole life. He wasn't in pain on the ground, he was only in pain until he put his weight on his leg and I was like, oh my God, he's actually hurt. Like this isn't one of those. He's 10 years old, 11 years old. He's hurt. So I have to walk all the way around the glass to get back to their bench and his teammates are essentially carrying him off. He can put no weight on it.

RJ Bates III:

So I stopped to watch his teammates carry him off just to make sure, like I don't need to go out on the ice, and I stopped right in front of the other team's parents and they started cheering number one was hurt, he was in the crease, yeah, the rest said no goal. And they all cheered and they were saying number one, he was hurt and I lost it Full dead end mode, grizzly Bear came out. I was like how are y'all gonna cheer? I'm a 10 year old getting hurt, who cares about the game? So I go around and I look at my son and I squeezed his knee and he said yeah, that hurts, moved the knee. He says no, said what happened and he said I think a stick or a skate. Well, come to find out. I've video. I've ever seen one of the shifts. That big defenseman that pushed him down as he was standing up, took his stick and whacked him right in the back of the knee. Well, I didn't catch that because I was staring at his face.

RJ Bates III:

I was enjoying that moment of them scoring the goal. So I looked at my son as a tie game. They disallowed the goal and I looked at him and this is one of those moments. Right, I told him about embrace moments. This is also like that moment where we talking about talking to a seller and the seller says fuck you, okay, you can sit in your feels. I told my son son, there's eight minutes to go in the game. They disallowed the goal. Do you wanna go out there and win the game? And I see he's making that decision. I looked right at him and I said ever seen one of those parents cheered because you were hurt? Why don't you go score a goal and tell them all to go fuck themselves? Then he goes on it. Face mask on bro. Before I could get back around he was on the ice getting the game-winning assist for them to win the game.

RJ Bates III:

Oh wow, bro, I swear to God, I lost my vocal cords. I haven't been able to talk until the day. But again, this goes back to the business side of things. Man, we have moments, we have choices that we can make. You can sit in your feels hey why I've left you All right. Hey you out. The deal got cancelled. North Adams buyer and seller decide to work together. Do we sit there, do we cry about it, or do we move on and we shut up and just do it? Man, that's why you and I connected a long time ago and I feel like we've always. We don't talk very often, but I've always felt like we're kind of kindred spirits when it came to that mentality.

RJ Bates III:

so Just what I appreciate you letting me share that story, man.

RJ Bates III:

I'm like tearing up, that was really good, hey, hey you know it's real when it's like, hey, there's so much emotion in that moment. And I looked at my son and I was like man, I couldn't be more proud of you because he could have made that choice. And if you're setting that foundation for your kids, where they make those types of choices at 10, 11 years old, imagine what they're going to be able to do when they're our age and we're every day, bro, we have a reason not to do what we do Every day. So, yes, yes, how can people find out more about you? I know you have a coaching program out there, so talk about that so they can find out more about you and your stuff.

Nick Aalerud:

Oh sure, yeah, it's really interesting because we did just pivot. The podcast itself, Shut up and do. It is still going to be our mantra forever. But there's also a point where you know, we just rebranded it to the journey to freedom podcast for obvious reasons, because you don't need to scale to a 30 or 40 person company, right? You don't need to have vertically integrated companies all over the place, and you certainly shouldn't do it at the cost of being a poor father, poor partner, poor spouse, poor leader, poor all that stuff, or even like me and you just for your hair.

RJ Bates III:

I mean, imagine if we still had hair, bro, at best decision.

Nick Aalerud:

I ever made RJ listen. I spend way less time in the shower. I don't even have to invest in shampoo. You don't even know I don't have a bedhead anymore.

RJ Bates III:

Fucking amazing, hey one of my employees asked me the other day I shaved my head and so because I still got a little, you know, in certain spots I'm the weird kind of bald. My bald is like not attractive whatsoever. I can't do the whole rot. Look like you guys going on. And so he asked me he goes. So do you soap the head or do you? That was one of my positions. Guys, who fucking thinks of these questions? I still put shampoo on there. All right, it's still an honor. Okay, it is.

Nick Aalerud:

Yeah, rip, I need to a little bit, just a little bit. Usually it's for the beard and I'm going to set that up. Oh, man.

RJ Bates III:

Oh, it's awesome. I can people find out more about you, and where can they? Where's the best way for them to follow you?

Nick Aalerud:

Just totally appreciate that. Yeah, so you guys can check me out. Instagram, the Graham Nick, just Nick Allerud, my first and last name. Facebook's also good, I'm old, so I'm actually usually on Facebook more than Instagram. You guys can all connect with me on there. But yeah, we do. You know, if you want to jump up to the peak of Kilimanjaro or you know we do have RII Accelerated is our coaching program, which is really all about coaching freedom within five years or less, right, using specific frameworks that aren't all real estate focused. That's the whole point is like, how do we get to the freedom that we sought out to begin with? But and yeah, thanks, man, journey to Freedom podcast, we're going to have RJ Bates as a guest with our he doesn't know this yet, by the way, I'm just saying this right now RJ is going to be a guest on the podcast. He's also going to be supplying a fantastic module for for all of our community. Thank you so much.

RJ Bates III:

I appreciate that so much. I'm glad that my agent signed me up for that without me going. Hey, I suggest everyone to go sign up for for Nick's program, rii Accelerated there. Do it before you're on the peak of Mount Kilimanjaro. Okay, that's the goal. You do it before you get to that. Make a great moment. Nick had a great time with you today and, steve, I know you're still listening out there. That's how you fucking host the podcast right there. That's why I only get five star reviews, unlike your three star reviews, steve. Oh my god.

Nick Aalerud:

He really loves you. I know for deep down, deep, deep down, like you had a real deep deep down.

RJ Bates III:

This is like when you have your little brother that can't play any sports. Well, but you know, one day he's going to find something that he's going to do, and that's you, steve. One day you're going to figure it out. Buddy, I'm going to be right there and be like I always supported you along the way. All right, guys had a blast Hope you did too. We'll see you all next week. See you.