How He Became The #1 Real Estate Agent in North Carolina | Jim Allen

Jim Allen and I sit down to talk about his journey from the start, to building a real estate empire worth Hundreds of Millions. 

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Hey everybody, welcome back to the episode today. Today we have a very special guest. We have Mr. Jim Allen. He created the Jim Allen Group, which is recognized as the number one real estate team here in North Carolina. So we're super excited to have you on today and kind of dive into your past, what got you started in real estate. And um yeah, thank you for taking the time.

SPEAKER_00 0:20

Well, I appreciate it. And you know, I've I'm at yet another event and and I offered this because I feel like as an entrepreneur and somebody who was also a state graduate as well, I feel like as you as you grow in your business, you need to start giving back. So I'm I'm excited to try to help today. And hopefully I can give you some things that'll help you build your career.

SPEAKER_01 0:42

Well, I do appreciate that. And I guess going off that point, take us back to the start. What originally got you into real estate?

SPEAKER_00 0:50

So I started out as an engineer. And, you know, like a lot of people, when you're young and you're in college, you have no idea what you really want to do. And my parents wanted me to be an engineer, I think, from birth. And, you know, it sounded like a good thing. I had a good aptitude for math, so I went ahead and did it. Uh, but when I was going through state, we were in kind of a transition. I'm a materials engineer, and you had to either choose to go metallurgy or polymers. And the time I graduated in '83, not a lot was being done with plastic yet. So I went metallurgy. And when I graduated, uh, unfortunately, a lot of things had already transitioned into plastics. And rather than go back, I went ahead and took a civil engineering job doing soil cement that with a company called Apax. And I did it for about a year and a half and realized it was just not for me. I was in charge of a at 21 years old, I was in charge of a road crew of guys in their mid-40s. Oh, wow. Who I thought going to college prepared me for what these guys live like. It really didn't. We were doing soil cement down at Oakra Coke Island and getting up in the morning at 4:30, working till nine at night. And after months of doing that, it kind of just broke me down taking care of these guys. And I had gotten my real estate license while I was in college, really just to learn how to buy houses for myself. I didn't really have an interest in it, didn't know that's what I wanted to do. And, you know, this other thing in engineering wasn't working out. So I came home, interviewed with a bunch of companies. All of them offered me a job. And of course, I I was young and not thinking it, but didn't even realize it was all commission-based at the time because when we were interviewing, they didn't talk about that part of it. But I took that job on and really without a safety net. I dived in. Once I realized it was all commission-based, I knew I had to make it. I didn't have an option. There wasn't a backup plan. There wasn't somebody else standing behind me with money that was going to help me get where I wanted to go. So I started attacking real estate like you should a nine to five job or any job where I put X number of hours out in front of myself to prospect every day. And I was committed and wouldn't let it go. So doing that for a few years helped me start building a base of how to do things, but I still hadn't become an entrepreneur yet. I was watching other people do things, but afraid to take leaps myself. For me, I was the top agent at the company I worked at and had been for a few years. And I went to my first national convention. And when I showed up, they had a thousand people walk across the stage that were the top thousand agents for that agency. And they had like a hundred thousand of them in the country, and I wasn't in the top 1,000. And I asked the owner of our company, I said, Hey, can you tell me what number 10? Because there were these guys walking around with these blue badges on that were the pinnacle group, and they were the top 10 in the country. And so I said, you know, can you tell me what those people did last year? And like anything else that has to inspire, this guy laughed at me, and I mean, literally laughed in my face and said, nobody from Raleigh, North Carolina can ever do something like that. And, you know, being young and and not really accepting no very well, I took that as a personal challenge. And when I came back, a friend of mine named Nancy Harner, who did those interviews you saw me on recently, um, got me the numbers for who did the most units that year and and what did number 10 look like? And then what did the GCI that that person, which is gross commission income, what did they make along with it? And what were those minimum entry points to get these pinnacles? I came home right after the convention, it was in early February, and I posted those numbers on the top of my mirror, and I started figuring out, okay, how many sales did I have to make in order to be able to get to be wherever number 10 was, you know, not thinking, hey, they may do better this year. I just, hey, here's a stagnant number. I'm gonna go attack it. And I literally did it to a point, had no assistance, nobody else helping me, but I attacked it to a point that I wasn't gonna accept not doing it. Went back to the same national convention last the next year with Prudential, having no idea where I ranked in the country, and I was number eight and number six in the country after having not having been in the top 1,000 the previous year because I would not let myself fail. And to the point that I I developed a thing called alopatia because I was working so much and and so intense all the time that I did wasn't really caring about what was doing to my health. And, you know, going through that to get you kind of kick started is is how I developed a grind and how I said, you know what, I can accomplish anything if I try these things. But I also realized, you know, you kind of need help. Doing things as an individual is a lot more difficult than when you bring on other people that'll build your skill set or can do the things you aren't really capable or not willing to do. Willing to do is more what it was for me. And at the time, there wasn't a lot of technology when I started. Um, there weren't even cell phones that first year I started in business. But, you know, as things started progressing, you had to learn and adapt to do those things, but still work hard enough to get the grind of the sales to go through, too. So I hired my first assistant at the end of that year, having no idea how I was going to pay them, not understanding that having someone else help me would multiply me. I I started out blindly, and it was one of the smartest decisions I've ever made. Even though that person was just part-time to start out with, it made me realize that there were things I was spending my time on daily that weren't creating new revenue, weren't creating business, but were essential to get the transactions done. And that was part of it. But, you know, learning with that first employee how to value people, not for what you're paying them, because unfortunately, you can't ever pay somebody what they're worth. No one can. And when people talk to you about career paths or what should you ask for a salary, the person that's on the other side has a budget for what they think they can afford to pay someone. A lot of us accept that as, okay, that's what my value is right this moment. An entrepreneur doesn't accept that that's what their value is. They say, okay, I'm going to take this portion of money right here for this period of time, but I'm going to figure a way where I get to set my own limits, my own boundaries, my own goals. And so that's kind of how I started.

SPEAKER_01 8:42

Wow. So in those early days when you were, you know, working all day and putting your health to the side, like what were you actually focusing on? Like, what did that work look like that, you know, helped build you up?

SPEAKER_00 8:54

First of all, and I'll I'll go back to this because, you know, having come straight out of college, I still had a lot of those college friends that maybe weren't necessarily the people I should be hanging out with. A lot of times they were more the people that um maybe I needed to escape from. So for me, I became singularly focused. I quit worrying about who I was going to be going out with. I quit worrying about my friends, and I really impacted and isolated myself. I I don't say that that's healthy for other people. It's what I did, and it was how I had to learn because when you don't have a basis behind you when you're starting something, your number one goal should be figuring out how do I, how do I get from here to here? And for me to make those transitions and to figure out how to get, I had to escape. So I literally cut off everybody I'd gone to college with and decided I'm gonna let them build their careers and I'm gonna build mine. Now, all these years later, I realized if I had networked better there, if I had really given those people the opportunity to grow up themselves, maybe I could have helped some of them transition as well. Because, you know, now all these years later, I'm going back and I'm I'm I'm rekindling some of those relationships and getting to see the successes they made. Some of them did it with other people. And I think, you know, one of the goals I would I would strive towards in doing anything is to realize other people's values and and what they can bring to things and and realizing nobody's an individual. We're all teams. And for me, when my company really started taking off, I was just an individual over here doing real estate transactions. Didn't matter where I was ranking in the country. Uh, that wasn't that big a deal. I mean, I I got to be number one agent in in North America with just that one assistant because I was willing to put that drive in, I couldn't have sustained that for 40 or 50 years because nobody's health could could sustain that. So I really instead of planning out the growth, and instead of planning out the people I'm going to hire, I hired by necessity, which obviously means that you're hiring after the curve of when you should be hiring. And you don't really have enough time to train those people. So it takes you a little bit longer to transition. But once I started hiring people and seeing how it multiplied me, I was able to start hiring a few more people. And my first buyer's agent I brought on to work for me, still works for me today. Uh, he's been with me 30 some years. And I met him and I decided to bring him on on my team because we were selling him a house. He inspected the house and uh he brought two sets of coveralls for his clients to go into crawl space with him to look at the interior of his house. And I'd never seen an agent take that much time or care that much, right? Or want to crawl into a crawl space that was damp and dirty. Who would, yeah. And and it impressed me enough that I decided right then I'm gonna hire him. And his name's Harry Thorpe. And that was the one of the smartest things I've ever done. And who you hire when you hire them matters. Harry's been with me all these years and has never one time said, don't hire anybody else. You know, let me be the only person here. Every time we brought somebody on new, he's accepted them, become a role model for them, and brought them into our team the same way. And that taught me what it's like to really be on a team. And the fact that, you know, everything can't just be about what you get out of it, because your collective whole grows bigger and greater if you're all working with purpose, but not selfish purpose, more of a team-oriented approach. So that, you know, if there's an open house that needs to get done on someone's listing, it may not be your listing, but you might get the buyer that would end up attracting that one.

SPEAKER_01 13:30

That's really interesting. Um, I like what you said about hiring on the curve, you know, at the point where you needed to bring someone else on. Um, I mean, I may be younger, but I've had the pleasure of of hiring people myself. And I feel like sometimes it's, hey, I could have done this work, you know. It's hiring to kind of step away instead of continuing to grow that business.

SPEAKER_00 13:54

Yeah, because if if you are doing the busy work of a business, you don't have time to think out and plan in advance how you're gonna gain things. And, you know, once you start producing, and in real estate's whether it's you're just doing it in sales, and that's where I started at, there are so many more branches that you can explore as as you start into it. But a lot of people never go to those ports, they get happy, okay, producing whatever they're producing. And then at some point in their career, they get this thing called burnout and they stop producing and can't figure out why they don't have money for the rest of their lives because they haven't really planned to it. Because most people, like I told you, when people are hiring people, they set a benchmark of what they can hire someone at. Well, when you're making money, people tend to live to whatever that level becomes. That doesn't have anything to do with saving, it doesn't have anything to do with longevity. That's living for the second. And that's what most people do. That's a mistake when they're starting careers. They start right out, oh gosh, I can afford to buy a car. Now I can afford to buy this, now I can afford to get this now. And, you know, if they haven't gotten married, they can spend money to get dates, to do whatever the other thing is. And and I understand that that's living a full life and enjoying it. But I hear this thing from all these people all the time about this well-rounded life. I hear people trying to live work-life balance. Yeah, and that that doesn't fit into really succeeding and entrepreneurship. You have to be more single-minded than that for your career to take off. Now, once it does, and and if you hold on by your bootstraps, you can't you can't catch it. It'll keep just rising. And and that's a hard thing for somebody who's young and impatient and doesn't have a lot of money to understand to give the business a chance to grow. Like I remember when I was young in real estate, I wanted to be able to sell a million-dollar house one of these days. My and my average price at the time was about $125 for me. Home prices just weren't what they are today. And I couldn't figure out how are these agents selling homes like that? Well, I wasn't, number one, I wasn't old enough to attract some of that business. And at the time, the business didn't accept young, young entrepreneurs as well. They thought, oh, well, they don't know enough about to be able to. I think today it's much easier because I think there are a lot of guys like me who had to struggle through it who now realize some of these younger people can do it at a younger age because they're either much more mature than a lot of us were when we were starting, which which is a big portion of it. And it's it's also a factor of they have technology on their side, which wasn't necessarily a thing when I was coming along as much. And that technology advantage, whether it's using AI or whether it's using anything business import-wise or or doing things like this with podcasts, you can learn so much quicker because if there's a subject you want to learn about, you can go online and find a podcast somewhere that'll kind of give you an advantage.

SPEAKER_01 17:29

Yeah, and and one thing I kind of want to highlight in everything you said. I mean, this is an extreme way to say it, but people say you have to kill that old version of yourself in order to, you know, achieve what you want to achieve and become that new version. I mean, you obviously have achieved something great, so it worked out for you. And you know, you said you maybe wanted to go back and help out some of those other people. I mean, maybe it wouldn't have turned out the way it did. So everything happens for a reason. Um I I'm curious, you started to see the success, you started to bring on other people to work with you. When did that turn into you know, you still being Jim Allen and uh doing your thing to becoming the Jim Allen group?

SPEAKER_00 18:11

So one of the things that happened along the way, um, different financial crises. You know about the 08 banking crisis because it's something historically people look at, but there was one that happened before that in 1997, and it was a mini banking crisis. Um, but an awful lot of the guys that had been entrepreneurs or developing lots for the builders I was working with at the time uh decided they were aging out or they had made all their money already, and and they really um weren't interested in taking any more financial risk. And I watched that, and all of a sudden one day, uh a piece of dirt just happened to come across my desk, and I looked at it, it wasn't super expensive. I I looked at it and said, you know, I showed it to everybody I knew, trying to get them to develop it for these builders. And I had plenty of builders who wanted to buy the lots, but no one willing to put them in the ground. So I, you know, I I guess I'm gonna have to do this one myself. I went and and talked to a bank who said, uh, no, you no chance are we ever gonna loan you money? You're not you're not credit worthy. So then I went to a building supply company of all places and started talking to a guy named Paul Casey, who was uh um the person who loaned money to a lot of builders to build houses. And I went in and talked to him, and I and I was, you know, not necessarily at an age he respected what I was saying when we first went in. But I said, you know, a lot of the guys that you're loaning money to aren't going to have a place to build soon because a lot of the old developers have kind of lost their financial courage and don't want to do things anymore. He said, Okay, I get you. Only said like three words the whole time. He said, I get you. He said, tell you what, walk downstairs, tell them how much money you want and let me know. And of course, like I didn't have a clue how much money I really needed at that time. But I walked downstairs and walked to the counter and said, Mr. Casey told me to come down here and tell you how much money I wanted. And I said, $100,000. And, you know, had never seen $100,000 at that point in my life. And they said, okay, and gave me a check a few minutes later for $100,000, and no plans, no idea how long it was going to take. It took me about a year and a half to figure out how to develop that first neighborhood. And then I put it in the ground, it was 14 lots, sold all the lots to builders, barely made any money, but started realizing if I'd have planned a little bit better, I could have made a little bit more money while I was doing this. And, you know, really, I developed like a system where since I didn't have any money anyway, and I didn't have anything to lose, I had a lot of financial courage. I mean, this guy loaned me $100,000. I knew I had to pay back somehow. If it meant I had to get eight other jobs, that's what I was going to do. But it helped me develop this financial courage. I mean, I wasn't scared of that money, and I wasn't holding any close to me because I hadn't made any yet. And, you know, that's the key element that's missing in most entrepreneurs is financial courage because that that you cannot quantify. But once you have it, you know you have it, and you know you're not afraid. Uh, because most people fear doing things. It's not that they can't do them. Their check system, they they go tell their parents about it, and their parents say, Oh. Well, you know, that's a lot of risk. Only wealthy people do things like that. Well, I wasn't wealthy and I didn't have any money. And I can tell you that I didn't listen. The biggest thing I would tell everyone is no is not even in my vocabulary. I don't hear it. I think my mom must have taken it out of the dictionary when I was a kid, because when somebody says no to me, I figure, well, they didn't really understand what I was saying. Maybe I need to rephrase what I said. Or if they say no, I just literally don't hear it and go ahead with whatever I'm planning on doing anyway. Because what you'll find as you're starting to gain success or starting to develop things, people around you are naysayers constantly, and they can't wait to doubt whatever someone else's plans are. You know, the first houses I tore down at North Hills, uh, the banker I went to to help me with that said, I hope these are the only two you're ever planning on doing here because, you know, this isn't going to work. And, you know, several thousand homes later, now I can say that person was probably wrong. Now they're the president of another bank in town now. So it didn't stop their career path, but that bank doesn't loan a lot of money out to developers and entrepreneurs and business people anymore either.

SPEAKER_01 23:27

Wow, that that really is an incredible story. What what's maybe one thing about running a number one team in the state that you know a lot of people might misunderstand?

SPEAKER_00 23:37

That it's not a 24-hour-a-day job. That as you transition and you hire people, you have to trust those people to do the roles you put them in. You can't take it all on yourself. So empowering other people to do their job means you don't micromanage those people. You give them a task, you give them a job, then you let them figure out how to do it. You don't criticize their path to do it because if they don't fail a couple of times, they're not ever going to be any use to you. You know, learning from failure and failing forward is the best way as a as a business person to do anything. Because, you know, I look back and people always say, Oh, what were your great failures? I can't tell you any because every time I thought I was failing at something, I found a way to work around that failure. And and the next thing I know from fixing the small flaw, man, I took a big leap out in front of it. And, you know, so I I think failing for it is is a success key. But when you're when you're bringing on a team, it's valuing each person for what they bring and not trying to turn them into you. Like in the beginning, when I was hiring my team, I wanted them to all be me, to have my drive, to have everything I wanted them to be. And unfortunately, they can't be you. There's only one you. And if you're trying to make someone else you, you're not gonna multiply because you're gonna attract different types of people. Each one of you have something that's a natural attraction in you that brings other people and wanting to be around you. Well, if you go hire everybody exactly the same, you're gonna sell to this limited portion of people. I was smart enough early, and I don't know if it was smart enough, dumb enough, or the people that came to me were just diverse. My platform looks like a rainbow. I have every ethnic culture, every religion, every type of person. I mean, and each one of them I value differently, and and and it's how you grow as a person and you're able to help different types of people is is by learning what they're really about. You know, I I think I think the the most important skill as an entrepreneur is learning to read other people. Um, I like to play poker. So for me, that playing poker is kind of the same thing as doing business, because you you really have to see what the person really means instead of what they're trying to portray to you that they mean. And being able to see through people's smoke screens without blowing them up is another thing I've learned from doing that, because in poker it might make me gain because I'm doing it. In in business, if I blow up this fantasy someone's creating of who they think they are, then I may strip them down and they'll be completely ineffective. So I let them fake it until they start figuring out how to take their steps in the right direction. And, you know, you can tell when they hit their stride and they figure out how to be themselves. In the beginning, nobody knows how to be themselves. They think that we all think we do. We all heard what our parents thought we were and everybody else, but we haven't figured out what we are yet. And, you know, I wish when I was in college, I wish I had studied entrepreneurship or business development a little bit more. Um, because there were things I figured out on the fly that I believe through education you can gain some of those same things, but you also got to put it at risk. And some of my early, you know, the guys I followed in my own career were two NC State professors, Jim Goodnight, who SAS Institute and developed all these things, and a guy named Arthur Sandman. And Arthur Sandman started or or owned DJ's bookstore, which was a place that people students could take their books and resell them after that semester and get back like a quarter of whatever they had paid for it originally, which those kids, the parents had paid for the books, gave them some spending money. And then he was able to resell that book for double what he had bought it from that student from to the next set of students. Then it's still half of what they had were going to pay for it if they went out and bought the book new. So he started that business and owned one little space on Hillsburgh Street, which eventually expanded and he owned all of Hillsburgh Street while he was still a professor at NC State. And he was teaching a class, and one of the kids in his class approached him and said, Hey, if you're so smart, why don't you start your own business? Because this thing, you had to plan out a business plan for a fictitious business that you were planning on doing later. He said, Okay. And Arthur decided, I'm going to start a development business. And he started a development business with a guy named Lewis Dickerson, Tom Coffey, and Arthur Salmon that became Three Blind Mice, which was the biggest development company that ever developed in Raleigh. They did a big subdivision called Stonehenge before there were any houses up on Creedmoor Road. They were developing this 2300th uh lot neighborhood. And as a young agent, I didn't do everything right, but I went to work for those guys, and that was where I started my career. And I sat there and just listened to these guys. I got to sit in their meetings and listen to them talk about what they were planning on doing. And they were just figuring their thing out, too. Hadn't really gotten there. And that that family now, the Sandman family, the most successful uh development group that's ever been in the triangle. And it all came from that one little thing. And then Jim Goodnight, similar story, professor at the same time, guy in his one of his classes said, If if you're so smart, why don't you do something? He developed a video game, and that video game he ended up putting into production and selling so many of it that they did well. And then he started this little side company uh that became SAS that had nothing to do with the video game. Now it's a a worldwide leader in um accounting programs for businesses completely different, but it was because of that one little leap, and then started investing and developing and did a subdivision called Preston and then developed a company called Preston Development Group and grew it into all these things. So me being able to watch what these other guys did before I was doing it myself or figuring out a path at least made me realize if somebody just goes for it and takes a risk, there's no telling where they can land. Both of those guys became billionaires. Uh, I think Goodnight I saw the other day is like the uh number one or two richest people in North Carolina, but I think he's 38th or 9th on the billionaire list now from just doing that and creating that wealth in one generation, which is what I'm trying to do as well, because you don't have to wait and pass it on in the next generation do it. But you can't say no to a lot of things, and you got to really weigh out things when they come to you. One of the things that once you start doing developments or building houses or selling something, if you do something one time and you really pay attention to the things you did wrong, not the things you did right, because those aren't as visible to you. The mistakes you make become glaring when you're doing something. And so if you chart out those mistakes and start trying to avoid some of those, all of a sudden you start becoming more profitable. And if you zig when other people are zagging, like in business, everybody when 2020 2008 came, all the banks stopped wanting to loan money. Everybody stopped wanting to develop business, everybody stopped wanting to develop lots. That's when my development business went crazy because I figured they said there was a six-year supply in 08 of lots in front of us, which everybody was scared of because they thought somehow having six years planned out in all these people's businesses was too long to plan out, and it really wasn't. So when everybody else stopped developing in 08, we went through six years of lots and a year and a half, and no, but with nothing being produced behind it for people to be ready. In the middle of all that, I was doing my first development on a big scale in 08, and all the builders were supposed to show up on Black Friday to close their lots. Instead, on Black Friday, all the banks that were loaning money said, nope, no thanks. We're no longer going to do that. So I got 12 phone calls that morning from each builder to saying, hey, I'm not gonna be able to make it to close. My bank won't fund the loan. Sorry, figure out what you're gonna do. And so thank goodness I hadn't been spending my money in my career. I'd been saving and preparing for a day when things weren't great. And so I took my war chest out and I went around to some local banks and said, Hey, I tell you what, how much money do I need to put in your bank for you to loan some money to a few of my builders? And they gave me a ratio. I didn't even tell those builders that I was putting my own money in to help them. Um, but I called them and said, Hey, why don't you go to this bank and why don't you go to this bank? I think they're going to be a little more friendly to you. And I realized it was taking my safety net away again for myself. It was still my money. I was backing them with, and I hadn't told them I was even backing them, but I had to leave that money parked in that bank until these projects worked. So I took that leap of faith again in 08. Like I'd already, by 08, I was I could have retired. I I'd made enough money in other people's eyes that I could have retired and been happy. But I never worked for money and I never kept scorecards that way. For me, the money you make in things is a it is a scorecard for yourself, but it's not about, oh, I got this much so I can go spend and live this way. For me, it was okay, the scorecard, each little bit of money I make, means this thing I did was successful. If this one returns 52% on cash invested, that's a good return. I want to do some more of that. If this money over here comes back and it only returns 5%, I'm probably not going to put him back out there again when I found other money that made 10 times that. So figuring out which buckets to take money out of, and but not being afraid to take all of the risk. Like I I took them on as people brought them to me. And so in 08, I'd set up this so that these certain builders could be successful and would have enough money to build just the houses in that one community. Well, I realized quickly these guys couldn't keep the people employed that they needed to build those individual houses if they weren't building multiple houses at that same time. So one of those guys approached me and said, Hey, have you ever thought about really backing a builder? He had no idea was already backing him without telling him. Um, what would that look like? And so we talked through it, and whatever the cash shortfall foot was, the bank wasn't going to loan. I agreed to take that on. If he agreed to take on the responsibility of building the house without it becoming my full-time job and just letting my money work with him, and he was going to give me half the profit for his sweat labor he put in. And it seemed to make sense, so I did it. And the next thing you know, I was back in 29 or 30 different builders doing that same thing as a sideline business, not thinking about how much that was bringing in, because real estate was my prime target, and I was making more money than most people I knew doing that. But and and you know, when I say the kinds of numbers, three or four thousand dollars, I mean million dollars a year sounds like a lot of money, but it but compared to what I started doing and all the other things I was working on, that was a good basis, and having that meant banks were willing to loan me money. But these other things I started doing created wealth without me having to be actively involved in it. So it was more of a kind of semi-a passive income. And and people talk about that, but really it was working my money and realizing turnovers in money and how that looks. And and so we could plan that thing out. And I was at a point where if we were building houses, we could build them quick enough. I could turn my money over twice a year, and that return that was coming back, which was at the time about 25 to 30 percent each time I put it out, it was bringing back, meant annually, I was bringing back 50% on the money I was putting out. Money grows rapidly when you're making it at that kind of clip because banks at the time were paying out two and a half to three and a half percent on CDs. So, you know, would you rather make that with your money that's laying around or 50%? And I chose the 50% route. And once you're an entrepreneur and you've got money out there, as long as you're not keeping a leash on it, it'll keep growing at a pace you can't hold back if you aren't scared to let it grow. If you're scared to let it grow, you're every time you make some, you're gonna be trying to rein it all back in. Well, I had this other job that I was making enough money to support my family and live and do the things I wanted to do. So I didn't have to rein in any of this money. I let it sit out there and you know, through down markets, through up markets, because the length of time my money's been in these things, we've seen highs and lows. And, you know, we'll continue to see those. But just because uh somebody says, oh, the market's in bad shape right now, um, you should stop doing everything. I've never stopped. I've left mine active in it because when other people stop, it creates scarcity for you. And scarcity, if you study any economics class, is what makes prices rise. That's where the real money is gained. So when everybody else decides, oh, it's time right, I'm gonna stop. You know, I'm scared. Let me let me stop. I either poured more in or I let it ride where it was. And then when everybody else's stuff that they're trying to give away, they sold through and they want to get started again. Now it was my time to wait for prices to return to normal and sell my things and not just return to normal most of the time, really uptick because when there's not housing available, and housing's the sector I've decided to make my money in, you know, I could study commercial architecture, I could go out and try to figure out how to do different things, but there's so much in the space of residential that I don't have to do those things. I have people bring those investment opportunities to me all the time. But two big things I promised myself when I started doing this, I was not going to do. I'm not gonna develop so far away from me that I can't drive there and drive back in the same day. Because if I ever get to the point I'm doing projects in Miami and I'm not willing to jump on a plane and get there and get back, I can't see what's going on. And like any other kind of business, when you don't have your hand on the steering wheel, somebody there can be stealing from you. They may not think they're stealing from you, but they are sometimes. And it may only be that they aren't putting the same effort in because you're not there. And I'm not talking about micromanaging people, I'm talking about holding people accountable, watching what they're doing instead of just allowing things to go crazy. So, you know, as an entrepreneur, you have to be able to be willing to take risk, but it has to be controlled risk. And controlled risk for me, my my picture of it looks like I got to be able to drive there and get back and look at it. Doesn't mean I'm going every day, but if I needed to go, I could go and get back. So that was one of my thought processes. The other things I decided not to do, and a lot of people do it. A lot of people build big apartment buildings, a lot of people go into uh different flex spaces. But for me, the reason I don't do that, I don't want to do any project that's a ship-sinking project. Now, I developed a neighborhood in Wake Forest that has 1,500 lots. You know, it was a $50 some million dollar original investment. It it sounds scary as the heck to think I would have the risk to do that, but it wasn't an all-in thing because even when I scale and I start looking at something that's bigger than what I normally want to do, I'll look out at my friends who are also entrepreneurs and give them a chance to invest in my space. And they've never been in a space that returns the kind of returns that we can return. And so, you know, when I do a huge project like that, I might bring in nine other people to help me do it. So now I've reduced my risk. I'm only 10% of this gigantic thing, and it enables me to do bigger things. But what I haven't done is build condominium projects. I did one, a small one. It was only 18 units. But I realized from that, from day one, I got to sell all 18 or I'm dead. Now, the difference in that and having 18 individual houses built, if the market's not selling great, I could build three of them and then put the other ones on hold. When you build a condominium building, you got to build the whole building at one time to be able to sell one unit. That's a All-in thing. There are people who do that and do it fine, but there are also people that do that. They do one that's super successful and they can't wait to do 10 more. They go invest in those other 10 with the new money they found. Two of them fail and they're completely out. And next thing you know, they bankrupted this company and started a new company to go forward again. I've never done that. Nothing I've ever touched is file bankruptcy, nothing I've ever looked at, got taken back by somebody or anything like that. And I don't want to put myself in that position. So, you know, I've tried to manage risk. If I decide I'm going to take on something that looks bigger than what I should go attack, then I bring in other people. And it's really easy for me to find other people to invest with me because I've always told them the exact truth. I've always prepared them for the worst case scenario. And every time delivered better than what they thought we were going to be delivering to them. And that's important. Your track record matters. I didn't realize it when I didn't have a track record, but once I got one, I realized how many people around me said no sometimes. They got in the middle of something, decided they were scared, pulled out, and everybody invested with them got hurt. I didn't have to do that myself to learn from other people's mistakes. I just decided when I do something, no matter what it takes, if everybody else here pulls out, I'm going back all in and I'm going to make it successful. And I I think, you know, people are always asking me when I'm starting new projects, you know, what are you going to do if this doesn't work? That's called preparing to fail. I don't prepare to fail. I don't even think down that channel of what could happen if I do fail. Because I think once you let doubt creep in, you start doubting your project yourself. You shouldn't even do it. Stop right now, before the money's invested. The best deals you can do are the ones you say no to that you're going to be afraid in the middle of. So just stop before you get in it and get afraid. If you're looking at the numbers on something and it doesn't return what your goals are, why would you want to do it? Like the guy who called me on the phone when we were walking in, he's developed two small neighborhoods on his own. I always try to encourage him. This was another one he could do. I just told him what values of lots were right around the corner from him, what he's paying for the land and what the development costs are going to be. If something goes sideways, he's not going to make a profit at all. He's going to be developing for fun so that somebody else can make a profit building houses, and he may end up having to build out those this project himself and sync himself. So I say prepare, but don't prepare to fail. Prepare. Make sure the numbers look right on the front end. Which, if you don't know the answers, hire a good attorney, a good accountant, and a good engineer. Those people can help you figure out, make them give you their worst case. And tell them going into it, look, I want you to give me your numbers based on what you think it can do at a minimum. That's what I don't want you to look at what we can do out of it because one of the things is you're developing property or doing anything else, there's this thing called appreciation that's happening over here on the sidelines, separate from where you're at. Like I want to figure things out to make them work for today. It may be five years before this project's ready to hit the ground. I'm not projecting what's going to happen in five years. I'm prepared for whatever's going to happen today. What's that going to look like? And now, five years later, with appreciation added to it, and the reason I don't sell my lots in advance, like banks want you to have them under contract with someone before you start developing them. What happens if they go up in value? And I've agreed to this lower number. I don't get to go back and say, hey, by the way, would you pay me some more because I think they're worth more today? I instead ride that out till I'm really know what my real costs are. And I try to keep it as close to when I'm going to be preparing those lots and still be ready for when the bank needs their money back. And, you know, that's one of the things I've learned too. Um as I've been doing this, people said, well, once you got where you could do everything in cash, why don't you do everything in cash instead? Well, if I'm doing a project and let's say that project's making 20%, and I have 100% of my capital in it, my return's 20%, right? If I borrow the money from the bank for 80% of that number and only have 20% of it, my own capital invested in it, and it still makes that same 20%, my return on my cash is 100%, not 20%. And I prefer to get my money to work at a higher level. Now, when I do my deals, I do with builders out there, I'm only getting 50% of the profit they're putting up. But I'm putting 100% of the money up when we're doing it. So in that case, instead of me making a hundred percent return on my money, I'm making a 50% return on my money. You you got any banks that'll give you 50% on your money? Neither is anybody else. That's still a pretty good investment. Now, I like getting 100, but why would I not take 50 if I can get it too? I'm gonna let both of those things collect. And and and you know, that's that's what I'm learning as I go as a business person. Okay, the other thing I would tell you uh uh to that everybody needs to realize, when you're young and you have some success, it can go to your head sometimes. And you think you're this, you think you're that, and and you know, you're really not any of those things because you're one transaction away from completely falling apart. Because as your ego builds in this, the people around you recognize that your ego is building. You're not necessarily somebody other people want to get around anymore. And you know, a lot of entrepreneurs get to a point they've made all this money. I mean, I I don't want to criticize others, but look in the news today at a guy like Bill Gates, who built Microsoft, who built as much wealth as somebody could possibly build, and originally built it with the intentions of helping all these other people. Well, when your success starts going to your head, you forget about all those other people you were helping. And it, I don't care how big you built a nest, it can come back. I'm not saying he's gonna lose everything he's got, but he's certainly not viewed the same way today he was five years ago. So, and and part of that is you stop helping other people. For me, what we do in our business now is we figure out each quarter who can we give back to and help out there. Who are the people that are worthy of us trying to go help them so that they can build something for the next generation? That's that's what one of our goals are. So I got involved with a group called the Boys and Girls Club uh about now 16, 17 years ago, and how I got involved, I just had my first two kids, and I volunteered to give them a snow cone machine one day, just got a snow cone truck to drive up there. There's 300 kids there, didn't cost me a whole lot of money, but I got to watch these kids interacting with each other and how instead of fighting to get in line, and some of them had never had snow cones before in their lives, instead of fighting to get in line, they were all like working together to say, hey, you can go do this. And I was playing different games with them that day when we were there, and I was paying attention to the fact that, you know, this person had just won it this game, but instead of hogging the court and wanting to do it, he reached out to a little kid that's a little bit younger and said, Hey, do you want to do it next? And I watched how these people were sharing with, I mean, like as a collective, kids that were from a better background or or maybe had more funds, they'd be there killing each other to see not wanting to let go of the Game Boy or whatever it is. And these kids couldn't wait to share them with each other. And the day that I went, and it, and it, and and I, this is no criticism of any of those parents or anything else that happened, but the day that I went, uh, they were they were showing artwork that they'd been doing for like six months. These kids had been working on these art projects, and the parents were all supposed to come to lunch to view this stuff. And so we went right at lunchtime because you know, the snow cones were going to be there at dessert. Not one parent came. 300 kids there, not one parent showed up. And I went in the car after it was over with, and I was shook up. I was like, man, this just isn't right or fair. You know, everybody deserves a better ending than this. So, you know, that first time I talked to the girl who ran the business that day or who was in charge. I said, you know, what time are you supposed to show up every day? And she said, Well, I'm supposed to get here at seven, but I try to get here at 6:30 or 6 because people just start dropping off kids and you know, I can't just let them be out front. I said, Well, what time do you get off in the afternoon? And she said, Well, like I don't ever know because every day different people forget they've left their kids here, and I got to wait till there's only enough left that I can drive them all home in my car. So some nights it might be nine, it might be 11. I don't know what it's gonna look like until I can figure out who's who's gonna be on staff at that day. And I went back and I sat in my car afterward, and you know, I was at a point in my life I could really help other people. So I went and bought a school bus and took it and gave it to them. And, you know, didn't pay a fortune for it. It was a used school bus. But the great thing about it, uh, and there's a girl named Nora Shell right now that uh was one of those first kids. So the following week at my sales meeting, that lady drove the bus up to the office for us to see the bus with all the kids, or not all the kids, but a lot of them in there. And they had thank you in the windows of the bus spelled out. I mean, some of them had their letters sideways. It was cute, really cute. We did a video of it while we were there, but one of the little girls that was holding one of those original signs, and she, I think she was five at the time, her name was Nora, um, was holding this shell. Well, years later, as I decided different ways to try and help the Boys and Girls Club, I developed a scholarship in my mom's name, the Boots Allen Memorial Scholarship, that Nora was the first winner of and is at ECU, and she's a senior this year. So we've only been doing it for four years. Uh, but each of those kids that have won, when they came in and presented to our group and told me why they thought they should win, or or when they shared what had been their national thesis, and she had won one of the big national awards. Um, when they came in and shared their stories with us, it was so incredible to hear, right? That that I was like, man, how do I not just help these kids? So we made, I was doing it one time, we made it an annual thing. And the young guy I I gave the scholarship to last year uh was a guy that um started thrifting, if you know what thrifting means, to when he was in school, didn't have the money to do the things he wanted to do. So he was providing outfits to other students in his school, giving them their swag and their cool look. He was buying the stuff at thrift stores and reselling it to them and made a living and a business out of it. I mean, incredible business out of it. So he's a freshman this year at Appalachian, made straight A's, uh, came home. So I promised him if he made straight A's this year, I would give him the same scholarship again next year because my scholarship comes with no strings. They get to spend it for spending money, anything they want to spend it for. It's not just about the school, because most of these kids are getting academic scholarships because they've really worked hard to get to that point. Uh, and he had, and I all I said was, hey, if you you make straight A's, come back, I'll give you another one the next year. So he's already called me and let me know, and he wants to go to work for us this summer uh as an intern to kind of learn what we're doing because he's already an entrepreneur doing much better at his young age than I ever thought of doing. But you know, the Boys and Girls Club doesn't sound like a big deal, but it's something I got involved in and now I care about. And 20 years later, I built a library for him last year. And, you know, I didn't have the capital to do that years ago, but this time I did. And then the last time I brought them in and I was giving away one of my scholarships, she mentioned a need while we were there. And she told me, you know, we're gonna build this outdoor play area and it's gonna cost. I said, What do you think it's gonna cost? She gave me a budget. So that day when she left, I gave her a check for that too. Because the reward I'm getting is investing in these people. He might be the first one that works for me long term. Nora already interned with me on her first break from from college, and I follow her on social media, so I've watched her growth as a person and what she's done and how cool it is. And then I can go pull out that picture and look back at the five-year-old Nora holding the the T and the sign when they said thank you that first time. Sorry, it chokes me up even thinking about it, and and realize maybe what our company did to help that person. Now, it didn't make us more money or anything else, but it made the people that work for us care more about other people. So when we start doing things, we're doing it as a united team that really cares about people sometimes. And that's that's that's more exciting than all the rest of it put together. And then from that, one of my first clients, a girl named Susan Bowers, runs a company called the Helene Foundation. And the Helene Foundation provides money and opportunity for ladies that have children that have cancer, that the ladies have cancer and they need to go get treatments or they need to do other things, and they can't take their children off to other places. So they have to hire people to do it. Well, the Helene Foundation steps in and helps with those moms. Or if it's just preparing a meal for that family that night and they're not able to do it, the Helene Foundation will do it. They only got one employee, and it's Susan. So all the money really goes back. And then this other group uh called All In Poker started raising money to help them too. So they have this big poker tournament that my team will all go sponsor and get involved in, and so do a lot of other businesses. Another way to raise money for these people, we do golf tournaments for them and et cetera. You know, once you start helping a charity, you become a part of what they do, and you you can't say no anymore. You know, you have to keep on doing it. And then, you know, even in my own business, from that type of helping others, I started recognizing, you know what, the Home Builders Association, all these other companies and businesses out there that need to do things, those companies and businesses don't have all the assets and the money sitting around that they need to do things. And and all these organizations like the Home Builders Association, the MAME Awards, the Parade of Homes, all these other things need funding. And so it's not my responsibility to be everybody's funding source. But guess what? I've realized I've had success in the space. If I don't do it, who else is going to do it? And then so I started being the primary sponsor for the Parade of Homes each year and for the MAME awards each year who that are industry give back awards in my business. And I've done that, and I went from being a complete outsider to all those things that now I'm an integral part in them. You know, outsiders sometimes complain and whine about why me? Why does anybody let me be a part of this or that or the other? Well, because they don't think you're going to bring anything to the table. Once you prove you do, and it may still take years to do it, you become an insider even though you weren't born somewhere. Like when I first came to Raleigh, one of the things that challenged me most, this other really successful realtor in the triangle told me I could never sell houses inside the belt line, that I could not ever be an inside Raleigh guy. Yep. He said, you know, you won't make it there. Well, all that did was make me realize, remember, I told you I don't recognize no, I'm going to go sell those houses and I'm going to sell the biggest ones of them. I'm going to build the big and I'm going to go tear down some of those biggest ones. Like I did one last year at Carolina Country Club, which recognized one of the better neighborhoods, right? And we tore down this million and a half dollar house to build the six million dollar house we put back in place of it. I took a lot of extra little pride in that because that was one of those areas this person told me I could never be successful in. And now this year for the parade, I've got three $5 million plus houses that are going to be in this year's parade in that neighborhood for other lots we tore down because those other people, when they were thinking about selling their old house that couldn't bring the value they wanted to get, they reached out to me and said, Well, you bought this one. Have you got any interest in buying mine? Absolutely. And then we just have to figure out what I can pay for it because it's a math equation. What I can pay them is determined by what I can sell this next house for. And who I'm what builder I'm working with that can produce a house that can be at that level. Like in this year's parade, one of the houses we're working on is going to be an eight and a half million dollar spec. Biggest spec anybody's taken a risk on for the parade of homes so far. And I I chose Dixon Kirby to work with, who's a really well-known builder in our marketplace, thinking there's no way they'll agree to partner with anybody. They don't need anybody else. That's the best partners to have sometimes is when two people don't need each other, but they can partner together. What they can build is so much better than people doing things when they don't know what they're doing on that end of it. So, you know, I know I'm getting a little off there.

SPEAKER_01 1:05:04

I mean, I really wanted to dive into kind of what's led you to have such a reputation here in Raleigh. And I mean, you just covered all of that. I mean, I was at I have the pleasure of working with one of your agents right now on uh the lending side for a couple properties, and we were meeting the other week and he had to leave early to go to one of your sales meetings, and later that day I see on your social media the video of you at the top of the room and then a hundred plus agents sitting there listening to what you were saying. I mean, that's so powerful. And now I I can see, and I hope the viewers can see where you've built that reputation and and I assume that helps lead you to where you are today.

SPEAKER_00 1:05:45

It does, and you don't realize it when you start out doing it. You think you're just helping this one person, and the next thing you know, helping that one person leads you to be able to help all these other people. And if what you're doing in life is Helping someone else, you prosper by it. I mean, it's it's incredible the growth that takes place. One of the other things, and I and I will say this is a benchmark and what's happened in my life, and I can't speak to other people's lives, but I can tell you in mine, I went to this lady's house. I won't mention a name, but she was a sister-in-law of another successful real estate agent here in the triangle, and she called me to come list her house. And, you know, when I found out who her sister-in-law was, I said, Well, you know, I like I'm curious, why'd you call me instead of your sister? So, well, I really didn't want to do business with family. I felt like it would be a little more difficult. And I said, Okay. So, but while we were there, that what it wasn't the importance of me getting that listing or anything. She gave me this daily read Bible. I didn't think much of it, didn't didn't pre-plan it, didn't, you know, oh gosh, I, you know, I'm going to use this every day. I put it in a bag, took it to my house, not even thinking about it. Next day I played golf with a a friend of mine, and we were at Northridge Country Club. We were on number four hole uh on the Lakes course, and I hit my drive, and when I did, I felt something just not okay in my stomach. And he ran up and his hate, he thank goodness lived on that hole. He went inside and got me a bunch of Tums and I took them and I and then I took my second swing and I like something's not okay. And I got in my car, started driving to the uh ER, and on the way I kind of passed out on the side of the road because I I didn't realize it, but my esophagus and my stomach had detached, and I was all that acid was pouring out and eating a hole in my diaphragm, and I was bleeding out internally without knowing it. And so I I go to the I I someone called me on the phone. Thank God we did have a cell phone by then. It woke me up. I got when I got to the ER, my blood pressure was 60 over 40, and I was literally about to die. They started giving me IVs and blood right away because I I was down on both. And then they took me in an ambulance to the hospital, and you know, no idea what's wrong with me or anything else. And later on that night, when they figured out what was going on with me, um, my wife had to bring my clothes in a bag to the hospital for us to be able to stay. And she brought them in that same bag, not knowing what was in the bottom of it, not planning any of this out. And I had a tube down my throat so that they could suck all this stuff out so that they could get me healthy enough to operate on me or try to, because at that time nobody in the world had ever lived whose esophagus and stomach had detached. No one. So I'm the person sitting there and I'm talking to our surgeon. I couldn't talk because I had a tube down my throat. So I'm writing a note. Am I gonna live? And he said, I don't really know if you are or not, because I've never done this before. You know, this will be the first time I've ever tried this surgery. And if you do live, we don't know if you'll be on a feeding tube. We don't know if you'll, we don't know if you'll be able to swallow again, because we're gonna sew your esophagus back your stomach and hope that it works again, but we don't, we don't know what's gonna happen. So, anyway, long story short, later on that night, my mother-in-law fell down the steps at at my house and broke her arm. And my father-in-law had to take her to the emergency room. So my wife had to go home to be, we had a a one-year-old and a two-year-old at the time. She had to go home to take care of them and left me there by myself. And because of this tube, I couldn't, I couldn't look up and see the TV because it choked me every time I did. I couldn't find anything else to read. I was about to go insane because my brain was working, even though I was as sick as I was. I reached in that bag and I pulled out that Daily Read Bible. It was the only thing I had to read. And it had a Old Testament, New Testament, proverb, and psalm each day. I read through it in two weeks while I was there waiting to have my surgery. And when I got through, I think, you know, I hope not everybody God has to go attack that way to get them to believe, but that's what it took for me. And now I give out that daily read Bible to every person I bring on my team. And I gave out two yesterday to a friend of mine who's struggling with what he's gonna do in his life a little bit. And I told him, I said, read the proverb for today. We had been talking for four or five hours yesterday. Like we were gonna meet for 30 minutes to talk about something else. And I realized he had a deeper need. And I canceled everything else from my calendar to meet with him for a few hours. And when we got through at the end, I decided, I'm I want to give you one of these Bibles. And he read that day's proverb, which was yesterday's proverb. And it answered it, it was exactly what we have been talking about for four hours. I mean, like, you couldn't script this, it was exactly what we were talking about in two sentences. And he got it, and then he asked me, would I could give him one to give to his girlfriend? So I gave both of them one. But like my second year into giving these Bibles out, the company I was working with at the time, that's a big national brand, I won't say their name, sent me a letter and said I had to quit giving these things out because someone said that I made them swear on a Bible when they went to work for me. This guy started with this workforce for two weeks. Second weekend, I was headed to a national convention and I gave him a listing. And on Saturday, I called him on the phone and I said, Hey, listen, I need you to put a sign in a lockbox out at this house. And he said, Well, I've got my kids today. I can't do that. He said, I'm taking them to Frankie's. I said, Well, that's great because it's only a block from Frankie's. And he said, Well, I don't care that it's only a block from Frankie's. I'm not going to let my kids be in the car while I put a sign in. It takes 10 seconds. I mean, this wouldn't have taken any time. I said, So you don't want your kids to see you working? I mean, like, why not? And he he laughed at me a couple of times. I said, I'll tell you what, when I get back Monday, if that sign and lockbox aren't there, please don't be there at my office because you're going to be let go that day. Well, I came back figuring he would have done it, right? Come back Monday, no sign, no lockbox got put out, and he wasn't there. So he fired himself. Well, he didn't just fire himself, he sent a letter to our national team telling them I made him swear on a Bible to go to workforce, which absolutely wasn't true. But they sent me this letter and said, you got to stop doing this. So I met with my whole team at my next Thursday morning meeting, and I said, you know, this is really cool because now this national franchise is telling me I can't give out Bibles to the people that work for me anymore. I think I'm gonna double down. I'm gonna try to give them to other people. Like this is an encouragement. Instead of taking it negative, I if if y'all all disagree, y'all vote. And whoever votes no, y'all can leave. If you're okay with it, I don't plan on stopping. We're we're gonna move forward permanently with this. And we did. And I can tell you that our culture changed as a result of it. Everything improved as a result of it. I mean, I like you can you can you're you're looking for these earth-shattering moments. That was one of them. You know, one of the other things that happened just crazy that everybody else isn't prepared for is COVID. The COVID year, anybody that was doing business in the real estate zone, I can't tell you they'll ever see that kind of returns again because people decided I want to live in a space I feel safe in. I want to live further out. Companies decided, hey, we're not gonna make people come into the office anymore. We're gonna let them work from home. And so those people were buying bigger houses that had a space that they could put things in. It created an explosion. Like during my real estate path, every time everybody else said, this is when you shouldn't, this one is gonna be horrible. That's when all mine took off every single time. Like we used to think a million-dollar house was an expensive house in Raleigh. I mean, truthfully, I remember when $500 was more than anybody would spend. And then when we crossed that million-dollar bridge, I thought we'll never cross any other plateau. COVID year, $5 million became the entry level at the luxury market. And the most productive today, the easiest place to sell a house is $5 million plus. Yeah, because there's not as many people building them, and there's a huge need for them right now. And we just happen to be the ones doing them first and got lucky. And I, you know, everybody I know tells me I'm the luckiest person they ever met. And you know what? I'm I am, but guess what? When you prepare properly, you become lucky. I don't ever like when so, oh man, if I had the horseshoe you've got, I'd be so let them think that. Yep, like everybody that thinks that about you, why would you ever argue that? Like, because truthfully, there are an awful lot of people I know that work really hard and never have success in their lives. One of the reasons they don't have success is that success becomes their God instead of God becoming their God. They are preparing for this so hard they don't care about anything else. And God sees how hard they're working, but why is he going to bless it when it's in spite of him, not because of him, those things happen. You know, I I don't care what someone's foundation is, I don't care what they believe. I know God's real. And and I've seen things that have happened in my life that I can try to look for explanations. The guy I was meeting with yesterday, I was trying to explain to him how God started giving me these opportunities with people to uh like help them. I mean, like I was trying to explain to him like how I can read people a little bit and start seeing what their needs are. And while I'm sitting there doing it, a lady walked up and was sitting at the counter that I knew, and I looked there and she was a coach that helped one of my kids when he was young. But she looked so old and and and had really gained, I didn't recognize her. I wasn't sure who she really was. Well, I'd love to tell you, I jumped up, went over there to help her. I didn't, but I saw her. But while we were walking out, this other lady from across the room yelled my name and ran outside to talk to me, who was going through a divorce with her husband, who happened to be a guy I went to college with. And I had been talking to him and trying to help them both figure out what to do with their lives. And she didn't think I was going to recognize her, but her child had played baseball with my kid when we were kids. And so I sat there and talked to her. And next thing I know, she started pouring her heart out and crying. Wow. And this guy got to see it. So this one I helped, the other one I didn't help. So we were back in my office talking when I was giving him this Bible. I said, you know, here's the bad news. I fail as many times as I succeeded, much more than I succeed. But God keeps giving me opportunities to succeed. I don't always take advantage of them. He plants it, puts it right in front of me to do, and I don't do it. I had the chance to the lady sitting at the bar, and I didn't do anything about it. The other one came and attacked me. It's the only reason I helped her. But helping her was an example for this guy. Exactly what we were talking about. He got to watch both of them. And then that proverb I told you was talking about exactly this. And it was talking about leading humbly. Yeah. We read two days. He read the 26th and the 27th, because the proverb was at the top of one page, and it was actually the day before the first one we read. And I didn't realize it until I read it. Oh, well, let's read this. They both ended up. I mean, you couldn't script what they said. One of them talked about leading humbly, the other one talked about helping people when you get this opportunity to help them and what that should look like. I mean, you couldn't script it. I really, right? And that's how powerful it is.

SPEAKER_01 1:19:45

So starting out, from what you've seen, what separates the people that make it in real estate versus those that don't?

SPEAKER_00 1:19:53

Effort and stick to it. Like I would say, most people who don't make it is they don't wait long enough to know whether they made it or didn't make it. They're dining in, they think they're going to make a ton of money. And even if they do make that ton of money, once they make it, they're they're wanting to go spend it so quick that there wasn't any point in making it. So they got to go make a new nest of money to replace what they just lost. That's that's the biggest thing. The other thing is they just don't have the financial courage to stay. They're wanting the reward to come so quickly that they aren't willing to invest the time to let it happen.

SPEAKER_01 1:20:38

Wow. And I mean, someone like yourself, I mean you're you're worth nine figures. Why are you still working?

SPEAKER_00 1:20:45

Because I want to be worth 12 figures. Like, there's not, I mean, to be honest with you, I don't sit around and keep score of what I'm worth and what I'm not worth. Like when I was young, I thought nine figures was a lot. I don't think nine figures is a lot, and I don't think 12 is a whole lot anymore either. I mean, it's all relative to where you're at. But like when you're in the middle of a game, you don't keep score and try to figure out where you sit in the game right then. Uh people ask me every day, why don't I go retire? Why would I retire when I just got really good at what I do? I I'm I can figure things out now in 10 minutes instead of it taking me five weeks to understand the same thing. Like if you're playing tennis and you get really good at playing tennis, the moment you get good, are you gonna just quit playing? You're never gonna want to play anymore. Or if you're if you're playing pickleball and now you learn how to control center court and you really get start getting into it, you're gonna quit once you learn how to not have to move all over the court and still kill your friends, 11-0. No, you're gonna start playing better people, right? I mean, like there is no quit. In the Bible, there's no retirement plan. God didn't say, Hey, uh when you're 99, go retire. Instead, he used Abraham as an example that had his first child at 99 and said, Hey, now you're ready to lead a nation. Yep. Okay, like people retire because they're ready to die, apparently. That's what I think. And I don't, if you can find a retirement plan in the Bible and bring it to me, then I'll agree to you. The only thing I see in the Bible that talks about work at all is in Genesis, it says, Work six and rest one. It doesn't say anything about ever rest six and work one. Yeah, that's never there. And when people deviate from that work six and rest one, when they start resting five and and working two, all of a sudden, this business they thought they had, they thought was self-perpetuating, everybody else is watching what they're doing. And the their most trusted employees are gonna start. I don't think I'm gonna give you any more today. You know, you only work two days, I'm only gonna work two. Yeah, but I'm already that matter. Got to lead by example.

SPEAKER_01 1:23:19

What would you tell a young professional today who wants to build something the way you did?

SPEAKER_00 1:23:24

I would say first, watch what somebody else is doing. Find mentors in your life who are willing to give back and go to work for one of them, even if it's for free. Even if you walk up to that person you admire and say, Hey, look, I want a job with you. If you can't afford to pay me right now, I'm gonna show you my value. I'm gonna show you that you can't afford not to pay me. That's how I would approach a job. If I went on a job interview and a person said, Hey, uh, you know, I'm willing to pay this. I don't even care what you're paying. I'm gonna be honest with you, let's don't talk about that. Because I plan on coming here and showing you that my worth is gonna be more than anything you could ever pay me. And then we'll figure out in a year or two how we deal with each other. How's that work for you? That's a better job interview than the ones I have people approaching me with. Now, people come in, I've I've seen their skill set, I kind of like them. I'm thinking I'm gonna hire them. And then they come in and they say, Hey, you know what? Um, I'm uh planning on going to a wedding this day, and I'm gonna go on vacation this day, and I've got these four days in October that I can't work, and I've got these 12 in December I can't, and I've got these in next January. And by the way, the following year, I've got this and I've got these three annual trips I go on, and I've got this, and I got that, and I got the other. And I like, well, eventually you say, Hey, is there a day you can work? Is there like one you can give me? Because like I'm hearing what you can't give me. I ain't heard one thing about what days you are gonna work. And then they walk out thinking they've gotten the job. And I turn to Aaron or whoever else is interviewing with me, and next, because this person isn't somebody that's gonna build something. This is somebody that's gonna tear down what we've built. Because if everybody else thinks we're on perpetual vacation here, we'll never get anything accomplished. Work needs to become fun, something you enjoy, something you love. I love working, I love what I do. It is who I am. Creating, like I can ride through Raleigh, and I've developed hundreds of neighborhoods now. And so I can ride through and see things that I did 30 years ago, and it's successful, the sign still looks good out front, the houses look cool. That's the reward right there. You know, that's not a retirement plan. That's a, or most of the time, what I find I do is I go look and say, I could have done this and it would have been better. Or what if I'd have built it this way instead? And then I get to go do that next one. I'm doing a neighborhood called Brixley right now, that the least expensive home in there is going to be 3 million. And the most will probably be six or seven. That entrance is going to be spectacular because I've done some bad ones. I've done some okay ones, I've done some good ones, but I know to get that one to ring the register the way it needs to, I've got to make it look great. And someone wanted to live there so bad recently that they were willing to pay, overpay for a lot that was already sold to another builder to be able to build the house they wanted to build. And that other builder said, okay, and let one of the other builders on our team step in and build that one, took his profit away without having to build a house, and now the new person is. And I mean, that's exciting to watch in something that you build. And, you know, when your first neighborhood you ever did, people were building $80,000 homes in. To now I develop things sometimes that five and six million dollar things are done in. It's not about the price that's there, it's about the journey that we went on to get there.

SPEAKER_01 1:27:29

That's neat. And and you talking about selling the properties in the six or seven, you know, million dollar price range. People from all over the country are leaving to come and plant their roots here in North Carolina.

SPEAKER_00 1:27:41

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 1:27:41

What is it about the state that keeps drawing people in?

SPEAKER_00 1:27:44

The biggest thing is diversity of industry. Like there's no occupation you could think of. Like going to NC State right now, Centennial Campus is the headquarters for world headquarters for hundreds of different businesses. And employ thousands of people worldwide. And then you got RTP that has over a thousand different companies with over a hundred employees just in RTP. So I don't care what the specialty, if you want to go in the pharmaceutical field, there's a drug manufacturer out there. If you want to go into clinical trials and testing, there's another company for that. Whatever you can think of, whether it's computers, banking, whatever it is, is available here in the triangle in an incredible climate. The mountains are two and a half hours away, and the beach is an hour and 45 minutes. Like, where could you go and get that? And at the same time, be in an area that doesn't have a whole lot of traffic, where people seem to all kind of like each other and getting to watch the hockey right now and seeing how our whole city is banded around the Canes while they're in the hockey playoffs. Like, why would Raleigh not be the choice? I mean, I get why some people go to Charlotte, but I wouldn't go to Charlotte versus Raleigh because Charlotte's got more traffic. Charlotte, it might be a bigger city, but it comes with those big city needs. Raleigh is the biggest small town there is in the world. People treat you well here. I mean, like when people come from other parts of the country, one of the things they comment on to me when they're in my car is how nice everybody was. Even the people at the airport were nice to me. When I was downstairs, the guy saw me eating breakfast yesterday, Jim, and he came back up to me this morning and said, Hey, do you want the same thing? Like he only saw me once in my life, and he was being that nice. I said, Well, doesn't that happen at home? He's absolutely not. I'm escaping California to come here.

SPEAKER_01 1:30:00

Where do you see the Raleigh real estate market heading in the next five to 10 years?

SPEAKER_00 1:30:04

So we have just begun having a luxury market. You know, when we're talking five to $10 million homes, other big cities around the company, that's a starter home. You go to California, San Diego, you can buy 1,700 square foot townhouse for $2.5 million with a one-car garage that's 25 years old. You can come here with that same $2 million, and I can sell you a five to six thousand square foot house with a three or a four-car garage on a half acre lot. I don't think our luxury market's going to stop. Or you go to Miami and Shaq sells his 10,000 square foot house for $125 million, and you can go build that same house here and be $20 million. I don't know. I think there's going to be a lot more people that want to move here. If you start paying attention, a lot of these professional athletes that retire move here. A lot of these super successful people in film and other places are moving here. Nash County, believe it or not, which is a not a great spectacular place to live yet, has a new movie studio being built right this moment because it it's they had enough space to have big studios that they can leave sets in place to have for multiple different movies all the time. And it's only a 30-minute drive to downtown Raleigh. So the person can live the way they want to live, but do the business the way they want to do it. So why, Raleigh? Why not, Raleigh? What where else could you go that there's still land available? There's still a place that you can start a business tomorrow and have it be successful. And if you don't know how to start it, there are other entrepreneurs that can help you start it. Like I, where else would you go?

SPEAKER_01 1:32:08

What would you tell a young college student or professional who wants to drop everything today and bet on themselves?

SPEAKER_00 1:32:15

I would tell them first, hang in there, get the education, because you can work while you're getting that education. I would say walk out, start looking at the business you want to be in. Look and see who are the most successful people in that space. And then go call them and say, hey, look, uh, I'm going to come interview, even if it's not to really put on a podcast or put on a news program or something else, tell them that's what your purpose and coming is. Bring your camera, set it up, film them while you're sitting there. They're going to give you all the keys to the kingdom, all the success quotients you want to look at. Why would they hide anything from you? You're not a competition to them. You don't have the wherewithal to go do it, but they might spur on somebody that might be the next person. Because not everybody's going to have people challenge them like I had happen to me. And that's why I'm successful now is people told me, no, you can't be this. No, you're not good enough to do that. And because my early life was growing up uh sharing a bedroom with my parents. My parents and my sister and I lived in a one-bedroom little duplex that had 640 square feet. And my aunt lived next door in one that had two bedrooms instead of ours. They we thought they were the rich people. And that was the funnest time I ever had in my life. You know, the the safest I ever felt. Nothing wrong with it. I can go back to that any time. So why am I worried about risking anything?

SPEAKER_01 1:34:00

In your whole career, I mean, throughout this conversation, it seems like there have been multiple pivotal points that have helped get you to where you are. What's the one bet you've made on yourself that's changed everything?

SPEAKER_00 1:34:16

Probably that original hiring that first person to go to work for me when I didn't know how I was going to pay them. And then being able to see how that having that one person work part-time for me freed me up to be able to do so many more things. And then thinking to myself, well, gosh, if hiring one person part-time let me do that, what if I hired 10? What would that let me do? And each time I've done that, I've continued to grow on faith. Like now I don't go try to find people to come work for me. If somebody's got the guts to come up and something and ask me, then I interview them the next day and I figure they got to have a place somewhere on my team. If they're willing to come, I'll sit down and talk to them. So I took an update class about two weeks ago at State at the McKinnon Center. While I was there, two other realtors in the crowd walked up to me and started telling me about the struggles they're having in their business. But look, the fact that you came up to me, why don't you come to my office next week and interview with me? One of them was there yesterday. Everybody else on my team said, Oh my God, this guy's gonna be incredible. So glad. Like, what did I do to get him? I would I just sat in a class. While I was there, the instructor kept asking me stuff. You know, there's nothing bad about being recognized. As long as you realize when they recognize you you're not special, everybody puts their pants on the same way. When you get where you think you put yours on different, that's where the problems all start. Yep.

SPEAKER_01 1:35:55

Um, what habits have been non-negotiable for you that have helped get you to where you are today?

SPEAKER_00 1:36:03

Going to church, going to Bible study. Uh, those are non-negotiable things in my life. Um taking time to reach out and try to find those charities that we can help. Those are non-negotiables in my business platform. No matter how low we start getting on funds, that's in the budget. Like that's the easiest thing to cut out. We're not cutting that out because that's why we're where we are, is because we do those things. It's not we and we don't do it for publicity because nobody knows where like when I went and started sponsoring the Boys and Girls Club, they get national sponsors, but they didn't have an individual sponsor at the one in Wake Forest. Some of the other ones might, but that one didn't until I decided to go in there. And so when I saw them, you know, keeping score in one of their basketball games, they were flipping over this little turn card thing. I bought them a scoreboard because, you know, I could spend $3,500 buying that scoreboard and make them have a better time playing basketball and other people be able to see how many points they were scoring. Like, why wouldn't you do that? Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:37:15

It really is cool to see how you're giving back to those groups and communities and how it helps your own team. It rewards me.

SPEAKER_00 1:37:22

Man, I get what you you don't know it when you start, but when you start doing stuff to help other people, you get so much more out of it than the people you're helping, you can't even explain it. I mean, and and I know that that's how God works. He trusts people with money that are gonna help other people. I'm not saying everybody that has money helps everybody else, but they're not happy. You know, there's something that's got them. Like for me, happiness is this. Happiness is I know I got a place, I get to go work, and every Thursday I'm gonna have a meeting that about a hundred people are gonna come listen to whatever I gotta say. And when I was starting out, I didn't even get to talk because nobody wanted to listen to what I had to say. Over time, like that that feels good that people will come just hear what you want to pour into those people. Like that's very rewarding and also humbling, and you got to prepare for it. And each week I sit there and think, I don't know what I can give them this week. And then after every meeting, somebody will walk up to me and say, Man, I can't believe you took the time to give up. I like you took the same amount of time I took. You know, you had to sit here and listen. You could have been up here talking too. You were, you know, you were just part of the audience. That's part of it. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:38:52

Um, one one thing that kind of came to mind. Um, you know, I know a decent amount of younger real estate agents who are new, and you know, with social media and everything today, you know, people are trying to figure out what they need to do to start getting business in today's day and age. Um, a lot of people are worried about what AI is gonna come in and affect. Well, what is your advice to a young real estate agent who's struggling with all these things that are going on? Like, what do they need to focus on to be successful?

SPEAKER_00 1:39:21

Number one, you can't do everything. All these people, unless you're gonna be an expert in one thing, don't even start doing it because it's gonna be a time occupier that you're not gonna use somewhere else. Do things every day that create an opportunity to do business. If you are not calling clients, if you are not knocking on doors, if you are not doing open houses, if you're not taking, if you're not doing things, when you go eat lunch today, if you hear somebody else talking about real estate, if you don't walk up and introduce yourself and take the chance right then, then all this other junk you're preparing to do, like what I find in life and why I was successful, I watched all these other people preparing to succeed, and I just went and did it. They were all getting ready, their stuff all looked prettier than mine. It all looked like, wow, how long. But I sold four houses while they were getting ready to go sell their first one. And when I got listings, instead of making it the most beautiful flyer in the world, I just told all the details of that house. And I typed them myself, and I couldn't type. And there was probably gonna be errors in it. But guess what? The people that picked it up saw something there that interested them and they had to go inside that house. Other people spent hundreds of dollars to put a brochure in front of a house that you don't know if somebody's gonna pick it up or they're not gonna pick it up, and it didn't tell anything about the house. And the picture sitting on the outside of it was the same house they were sitting there looking at. Why'd you give them that? Like they can already see it. Why are you gonna give it to them? And they're gonna take it home and show it to their spouse. What if they don't like that picture? They're not going back and looking. So, like, tell them what's in words. One of the things I realized early in my career is women read a lot more often than men do. And they do because they possess this visualization skill that men don't necessarily always have. And so when I write these words, that mom or that woman that looks at this is gonna picture her what she wants, right? The only way she's gonna prove it's not there is go look at it. If I give her a picture of it and then she goes and it doesn't match, you know, she's not gonna be excited. But she's already formed her own. When she gets there, if it doesn't match, she's in the house already. She can buy it because she's looked at it. If she's at home and makes a decision not to buy, she never even gave me a shot. That's the kind of thing that happens. People start doing all this preparation. I'm gonna go become an AI expert so that then I can sell to people and I'll know how to talk to people. It's okay to get scripts from doing that. It's okay. But when you're sitting down talking to somebody, if they can tell you're canned, if they can tell that you memorize, because you're gonna forget part of what you're talking about. The minute they ask you something and knocks you off course, you're going to a new topic, you're going to forget what you came to talk about. You're not going to be prepared anymore. What I say is be yourself wherever it is. Who doesn't want to help a young kid? Like if I'm right out of college and and I'm these people are in their 70s and they're looking for their house, they'd rather look at it with me than they would another 70-year-old. That 70-year-old they look with is it going to change that person's life? No. But buying one from me when I'm 20 might change my life. Like, I've got kids, I got a guy on my team right now that when he was 19 joined my team, first house he sold was a $5.2 million home. Like, he thinks that's normal. He thinks, oh, you can go anywhere and that can happen. We create that environment within our culture. I don't keep anybody from doing what they can go do right the second. I don't say, oh, well, you're not ready to go do that yet. So I won't let you try. Because the minute I say that to them, they're never going to get ready. They're going to prepare for the next 30 years to go set and never sell one.

SPEAKER_01 1:43:37

Well, that really is powerful. And I think um I fear that a lot of people that watch this aren't going to realize some of the knowledge that that you left. I mean, especially a little 10 to 15 minute span we had there towards the middle, you know, talking about your reputation and you starting to fund these deals. I mean, that really is incredible. And I can't thank you enough for sharing that here. Um, and I don't have any questions left for you.

SPEAKER_00 1:44:07

Do you have any any words of advice for maybe from my side, the fact that you asked me to do the podcast means I know you're already going to be super successful in everything that you touch. There's no question in my mind. But also the fact that you're doing this to try to help other real estate entrepreneurs get started. You're in the lending field right now. You don't think all those guys aren't going to appreciate it and come back to you to try to give you all their business as they're starting and y'all can grow together. And you you and whoever your little band ends up being will be the guys that replace me one day because somebody's gonna do it. You know, I had a lady. This the only thing I'll say, and this is the last thing, a lady named Phyllis Waborski was my first hero in real estate. And I went, I remember the first time I sold nine houses in a day, I was two of them were hers. And at the time there were no fax machines, there was nothing. You had to go hand deliver the offers. So I had to go to her house twice that day. And the second time I went, she said, That's the second house you sold mine today. I said, It's the ninth one I sold today. She said, You'll be the one that knocks me off one day. I was 23, no clue that she was telling me, you know, some, but I believed her right that second. I said, Okay, I'm and and then I started my career to try to do that, not to disappoint her, because one person told me I could do something, it enabled me to create a whole career. If she hadn't said it, I'd have thought I was just like everybody else. But she was reaching from up here and looking down at me and telling me that it was okay to be me. I get to do that now. You don't know how cool that is. Like you're gonna be one of those. Like, I can see it in the other, and I try not to say just one anymore because I think being just one standing up here ain't much fun. If I climb a mountain and I'm up there on top by myself, cheerleading, nobody's gonna see it but me. But if I get up there and then I can grab somebody else and pull them up and they get to see the same thing I'm seeing, now I've done something. And then they're gonna pull up the next guy, and they're gonna, and that's how you create things. Nobody does anything by themselves, no matter what they say, no matter how hard they say they worked, they did, they did all. There's other people that helped them somewhere along the line. Even if it wasn't anything but the person who sold them the pair of shoes they bought so that they could walk further or whatever. There are people that help us every day in ways we can't repay. One of my favorite places to go, and this is good advice, I love going to the Waffle House and eating breakfast in the morning and talking to those people that that are employed there. And at Christmas and Thanksgiving, I go in and give them a $100 tip. It and they get to pass it out amongst everybody else that's in there. And and then when they get where they can buy a house or do something else in their life, I'm the first person they're gonna call. And I got one of them working for me right now in sales. I haven't told anybody else on my team that's where I got recruited them from. But I did. And Chipotle, I go to all the time to eat lunch. One of the guys that's one of the managers there is getting his real estate license right now so he can go to work for me because I do the same thing there. Like I talk to those people, and when I see somebody in there that's outperforming everybody else, but they're over hanging in the corner and nobody's paying attention to it. I go over to him, I said, Look, nobody else is watching. You're sweeping the floor when nobody cares. You're doing the stuff, you're gonna be a superstar. It's just a matter of time. And then I'll go to their manager and say, I don't have you watched this person. And sometimes they hadn't even seen them yet. And then they see them, and the next thing you know, they're the assistant manager or they're whatever. We have that responsibility as humans. That's what I would say to you. Start right now doing that with your friends today. By the time you're my age, how many people are you gonna have helped? And how many of them are gonna you need blood, something in your life, you need they're all gonna be in line waiting. Right now, if I want to go raise a bunch of money to do something, I got a line of people that'll put anything you can imagine behind it, but I don't go ask them. Why are they willing to put it behind? Because I've never asked. Not one time, and I'm never going to. If they come and they want to, it's great. But I'm not gonna invite 'em. They have to come ask.

SPEAKER_01 1:49:06

What a way to sum it up. And I mean, I I truly do appreciate the words you said.

SPEAKER_00 1:49:10

Uh, me too, man. Thank you for asking me to come.

SPEAKER_01 1:49:13

Of course.