Strength in Numbers with Marcus Crigler

Episode 81: The Missing Step Between Hustling and Financial Freedom with Leon Barnes

• Marcus Crigler

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In this episode, Marcus Crigler joins the Collective Genius podcast live from Dallas, Texas, to share the financial principles that separate successful real estate entrepreneurs from those who stay stuck in the hustle cycle.

Drawing from years of working with top investors across the country, Marcus explains why building wealth isn't just about doing more deals but about managing your money the right way.

He introduces the "Straight Line Wealth Formula" and shares why securing your financial foundation is the step many entrepreneurs skip before trying to scale.


You'll Learn How To:

  • Build financial stability before scaling
  • Stop confusing revenue with real profit
  • Understand the difference between hustling and building wealth
  • Focus on net profit instead of just growing revenue


What You'll Learn in This Episode:

(02:04) Translating deals into profit

(02:24) Financial peace vs. financial freedom

(03:47) Why so many people struggle with the basics as an entrepreneur

(04:15) Why entrepreneurs overcomplicate business

(05:37) Money creates financial peace

(06:43) The importance of staying lean

(08:13) The Straight Line Wealth Formula

(09:02) The missing step between hustling and scaling


Who This Episode Is For:

  • Real estate business owners who are looking to scale
  • Entrepreneurs who are struggling with cash flow
  • Business owners who are focused on long-term wealth
  • Anyone who wants to build a financially healthy business




Why You Should Listen:

If you are ready to move beyond the hustle and build a business that truly supports your life, this conversation is worth listening to.


Connect with Marcus Crigler:


SPEAKER_01

And I think so many times early on, we get that dollar and we feel like we need to go put it back out into marketing or go hire another person. But really, what the best do is they put that dollar in their pocket. And then they get another dollar and they put that dollar in their pocket. And then they wait until they're stable.

SPEAKER_00

Welcome to Strength in Numbers, the podcast for real estate entrepreneurs who are tired of being broke and not having control of their finances. If you're ready to finally take control of your money, slash your taxes, and start building real wealth, you're in the right place. And now here's your host, Marcus Krigler.

SPEAKER_02

Welcome back into the Collective Genius Podcast, the live version. We're here in Dallas, Texas for RCG Select. And our next guest is going on stage real soon to drop some knowledge to our Select and Elevate groups, Mr. Marcus Krigler, friend of the show. This isn't your first time. Welcome in. Good to see you. So Marcus flew in from Springfield, Missouri, just to present to the Select group. We love this when our premier and longtime members come down to our Select and Elevate group and give as much wisdom and knowledge as they possibly can. I know our Select level and elevate levels uh love it. Give us a preview of what you'll be talking about on the main stage today.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, well, I think today it's going to be a very similar presentation that I actually did before the select group was even created. So this was back in 2020. I did a very similar presentation and actually won this belt right here. I maybe not that exact one, but a belt very similar to it. And that presentation was all about the 10 financial principles that are helping real estate entrepreneurs succeed in today's market. And that was 2020, 2021. But the shocker about that is it hasn't really changed that much. I know the market has changed a lot, but what is creating successful real estate entrepreneurs has not changed. And so that process we're going to talk about today because the reality is this. And what I've figured out is I'm going through and as an accountant, so a little background, I'm an accountant. So I get to see a lot of the numbers. Like we talk about deals, we come in these rooms, we talk about all the deals that they're doing, but what really matters is translating that to profit. And so what I found is as I've worked with so many of these people and seen which ones are actually making the most amount of profits and not, is there's a process to it. And it's not a process based on the economy, it's a process based on your economy. And so if you get an understanding of how to manage your economy, it doesn't really matter the rest of the economy. And you can just make that uh financial peace goal that you're looking for, that everybody's looking for. I like the, you know, a lot of people talk about financial uh freedom. I like financial peace, right? Like, let's just get to some sort of peace in our finances. And I think that process is what we're going to talk about today.

SPEAKER_02

That presentation that won the belt, you turned it into a training call as well, an hour-long presentation. I like to call it the Ten Commandments for real estate investors. When I am onboarding new members at any level, I always say to them, here's a presentation in the portal that just add it to your to-do list. A presentation to watch. Here's why I love it. It's a formula from a financial guy that does the books for the top real estate investors in the industry. And part of that is here are 10 things that I see that are common. Like people come to these rooms to learn what others are doing at a high level. And to me, there's no better blueprint in all of the presentations that have ever been done. If I had to boil it down to one presentation, if you don't, if you didn't watch no others, watch this particular one. And maybe you're not able to answer this question. Why is it that so many people struggle with the basics, the Ten Commandments of that presentation? Why do you think people struggle so much as an entrepreneur with that?

SPEAKER_01

Well, I think first off, most people are in their own way as an entrepreneur, right? And so, and I think Tom Kroll says this, and I like Tom a lot, but you know, he talks about how running a business is not complicated. It's the people with inside the business that make it way more complicated than it has to be, right? And we can prove that, right? I mean, how difficult is it to wholesale one property? It's really not that complicated. But when you add a team and when you add a bunch of people to the process, now we used to be able to make 30,000 wholesaling one property, and now we're struggling to make $30,000 for the month, right? Because we've got all these people and all these processes. And so I think what people do and entrepreneurs in general, not just in the real estate space, but they overcomplicate the simple. And I think the more we can get back to the basics, the blocking, the tackling, doing the simple things right, the more complicated things get a whole lot more easier.

SPEAKER_02

Do you mind giving a preview of some of those like two or three of the blocking and tackle financials that you'll cover today in your presentation?

SPEAKER_01

Yeah. So I think it all comes back down to how you handle money as an entrepreneur. See, we talk about deals, we talk about acquisitions, we talk about leads, we talk about all these things, but really, those are all side effects of what we're really trying to do, which is get money. Right. Like, and so, but we don't talk about money that much in our organizations. And quite honestly, in life, we don't really talk about money that much. I don't know how you you were brought up, but I know in my family it was kind of we just didn't really talk money, taboo to talk money. And so, what I think the simple thing is first off, you got to just respect money, you got to understand that this is the thing that whether you like it or not, it is the thing that creates the financial peace that you're looking for. So you've got to attack it. And so, how do you do that? How do you treat money the right way? Well, first off, you take care of it, right? When you have a dollar, you don't just get rid of that dollar, you got to make a decision on what the best use of that dollar is. And I think so many times early on, we get that dollar and we feel like we need to go put it back out into marketing or go hire another person. But really, what the best do is they put that dollar in their pocket. And then they get another dollar and they put that dollar in their pocket, and then they wait until they're stable, right? And once they get stable, that's when they have the ability to start investing in their business. And that's when they can start doing step two and step three, which is hey, I can invest in this person, I can invest in this marketing channel, I can take a chance on something that may or may not work because I've got the stability, the foundation to be able to take that chance.

SPEAKER_02

It sounds to me like it's a formula to the real estate entrepreneur that stays slim, uh, thin, lean is the word I was looking for. Used all of them but lean. The entrepreneur that wants to stay lean for a long period of time until they've gotten the stability to get to that point to truly scale. Yeah. This level that we're at today, these are people that are generally in the business, you know, roughly five years on the average, usually a million to two million in that range of gross profit. The net, that's the biggest difference. And a lot of that's because some have tried to scale faster than others. But I will say one thing that has made me proud just in the short amount of time that we've been today, uh, first day of CG Select and Elevate. You know how many times I've heard the word net at this meeting already? Like people are starting to get it and understand to your point earlier of I'm in business to make money. Yep. Not just have revenue showing. I'm in the business of actually netting it. Did you happen to see Dustin Singer's presentation? Great presentation. Did you see his chart of where his numbers are? Out of all of those numbers, the one that I was most proud of him for was that net, well, beyond all the personal stuff. The business one was all the net difference. It's crazy. That impact that he can have with his team, his community makes a massive difference when you focus on the right things.

SPEAKER_01

You're exactly right. And you laid out the process, and I'm gonna lay out this process that I'm gonna call Steve Train. We love Steve Train, right? Steve says you got to name everything. And so I named this as I was doing the presentation. This process I've talked about before, I've named it a hundred different things, but I named it for this presentation the straight line wealth formula. And you just hit it hustle, secure, expand, exit. Right. And so, what I'm gonna teach on stage today, and what I'm gonna talk about, is navigating those realms. And what what you talked about, what I've seen so many entrepreneurs do, is that straight line formula. There's a reason why it's a straight line. What's the fastest thing between two points? It's a straight line, right? And so what we're gonna talk about is hey, when you start in this business, you're gonna start as a hustler. We don't have a choice, it just is what it is. That's the 800 hour weeks that we have to grind through, but that's not a forever. That's not a forever sentence unless you skip an important part. And that important part that you're skipping, and that so many of us are skipping, is the secure. See, what we do is we go from hustling to expansion, and then we end back up in hustling and we end up in this cycle. Well, that cycle is not a straight line. And what the best do, and a lot of times it takes 10, 15, 20 years to figure this out, is hey, wait a minute. I've hustled like a long time now. How do I get past this? Oh, I gotta secure my business, I gotta set this foundation up, I gotta do all the boring stuff first, and then I can tap on top of that and scale and grow. And now it's much easier. And I don't have the headache, I don't have the stress, I don't have to hire cheap people to get bad results, right? All that kind of stuff.

SPEAKER_02

We saw that breakthrough today from the stage. Dustin, who was our last guest on the pod here, it was beautiful to see. It doesn't happen overnight. Sometimes as an entrepreneur, you have to be beat over the head for three years, like Dustin was. Dustin's been a part of this community for three years. And he said from the stage that every meeting I come to these meetings and I hear the same things that are all the fundamentals that I should be doing, all the things I should be tracking, building leaders, all the core things that you need in order to grow and scale responsibly. The key word there, responsibly. I saw that breakthrough today, and I'm thinking to myself, he's gonna impact somebody today. Someone's gonna see that presentation and say, you know what? I've also been in here for three years and I'm stuck still. Or I've gone back to hustling. I've seen it. It's a vicious cycle where people grow, grow, grow, grow, grow, and they go, all right, I'm gonna do this other thing and focus on something else and take away my focus of actually continuing to move up to a point where you're getting to the next part of being a business owner versus that hustler. Yeah. You talk about this, and I'm so happy for it, proud of you, man. You just launched your own podcast, love to support it. And I know that if you're a real estate entrepreneur, you have to make his pod part of your daily routine, your weekly routine.

SPEAKER_01

So we talk about numbers, right? So I'm not gonna give you the fluff and all of the great things that go on and doing a bunch of deals and all that stuff. I'm gonna give you the numbers. And if you follow me on social media at all, you're gonna know that I don't really uh beat around the bush. I'm gonna tell you like it is, and that's what I feel like my job is. And so we have strength in numbers for me to be able to relay that information and what's going on in the market, but also we're bringing on guests that will come in and talk about their numbers and how they're having success and some of their failures as well.

SPEAKER_02

It is super important to have someone like Marcus in your corner. Thank you for sitting in with us today. Again, we'll we love having you on the pod. In addition to that, I know you're going to bring a ton of value and inspire multiple tons of people uh in that room here later. I can't wait to see that presentation. Awesome. Appreciate it, Leon.

SPEAKER_00

Thanks for listening to Strength in Numbers. If you're ready to take control of your finances and start building real wealth in your business, be sure to schedule your free discovery call with markets at BECCFO.com to get started. Thanks for listening, and we'll see you on the next episode.