Welcome to The Accelerated Investor Podcast with Josh Cantwell, if you love entrepreneurship and investing in real estate then you are in the right place. Josh is the CEO of Freeland Ventures Real Estate Private Equity and has personally invested in well over 500 properties all across the country. He’s also made hundreds of private lender loans and owns over 1,000 units of apartments. Josh is an expert at raising private money for deals and he prides himself on never having had a boss in his entire adult life. Josh and his team also mentor investors and entrepreneurs from all over the world. He doesn’t dream about doing deals, he actually does them and so do his listeners and students. Now sit back, listen, learn, and accelerate your business, your life, and you’re investing with The Accelerated Investor Podcast.

Josh: So hey, welcome back. Welcome back. This is Josh with Accelerated Investor. Thanks so much for joining me. And for those of you that have been sharing with the world that you’re listening to Accelerated Investor, you’re enjoying our guests in the solo cast that I do, sharing things on the social media platforms, asking questions, leaving reviews up. So excited that this is hitting home with you. I’m so excited that this is being impactful to your life as a real estate professional entrepreneur and also in your personal life. I’m hoping gotten a ton out of our past series that we’ve done from the funding equals freedom series. I’m going to be soon recording the Traits of Titans series and really excited to be with all of you and share that. And honestly, again, I’d love to bring on guests that allow me to grow, that allow me to become more, do more, be more successful, have more influence.

Josh: And as I interview them and talk with them, I hope it’s having a massive impact on your life and your investing. Today I’m with a friend of mine. His name is Sam Khorramian. Now, Sam is the CEO and founder of big block realty. They have been for the past three years in a row in the top 35 number of growing companies on the INC 500 lists. So in the top 35 fastest growing companies on the INC 500 list Big Block Realty has seen an 8000% growth over the last three years and did over two point $4 billion in gross real estate sales in 2018. Sam also is the owner and cofounder of eight other businesses that all work around and support the real estate transaction. He’s also a real estate investor. He was also the MC on the main stage at Traffic and Conversion summit with over 7,000 attendees. And I want to welcome to Accelerated Investor Sam Khorramian. Sam, how you doing? Thanks so much for joining me.

Sam: What’s up Josh, I’m doing great, man. I got to tell you, I’m super, super excited to be on this podcast with you. Been a big fan and when watching you just kill it for all these years and it’s a, it’s cool to be on and be able to get to share it.

Josh: Yeah, you bet. You bet, Sam. So let’s jump in real quick and just and talk about, give us a little bit of immediate color around Big Block Realty. We’ll kind of start with where you’re at today and what you’re focused on as an entrepreneur and building your business. And then we’ll reverse engineer a little bit more about your journey and tell us more about your background. So tell us what is Big Block Realty? What are you guys doing to dominate your market?

Sam: Awesome. Happy to do it. Thanks for asking. So Big Block, it’s a real estate brokerage. We do things quite different than the average brokerage. We pay our agents a hundred percent commission. They have monthly dues and transactional fees, but we’re primarily a hundred percent shop. And that’s given us the ability to not only grow really quickly, but really created what we think is a true win win scenario in the space that we play in. So today we have about a thousand agents that work with us. We did two point $4 billion in volume last year.

Sam: And we’re really excited to start right now kind of national expansion into some different states and franchising and cool things like that. And what we’ve built to, to kind of make things more exciting for us is not only do we run the brokerage with all the transactions and agents we’ve built and now own eight different businesses around the real estate transaction, which helps us not only be more profitable and execute on more opportunity but it also gives us the ability to create more of a streamlined cleaner, frictionless transaction for our clients and our agents.

Josh: That’s fantastic. So Sam, I know you’re offering agents a hundred percent commissions is very attractive, but in order to even attract people to want to interview at your shop, come into your shop and then have a great experience and stay at your shop, there’s a difference maker there, right. Because a lot of people are offering, you know, 90%, 95% splits 100% commission. So tell us a little bit more about your philosophy about building culture and about bringing in and retaining a great sales team. And I think, again, this can impact anybody, whether you’re building a mortgage office, a real estate investment office, a brokerage office, or even a sales team outside of real estate. Attracting them with compensation is just one of many factors. You’ve got to attract somebody and keeps them. So what is your philosophy around that?

Sam: Dude, that’s such a good question. And I tell people all the time, Especially like when I’m on interviews talking with even my competitors that the a 100% percent commission just gets them to pay attention. It gets them to listen, but it’s to everything else that converts and keeps. So what I like to say is, what we’ve done really well is we focused on two things and these two things laid on top of each other is what really gives us our culture and our competitive advantage. Number one is our client experience. and what I mean by that is we really try our best to give our agents who we believe to be our customer, a Ritz Carlton experience. And we do it on a target budget. We have agent concierge, we have a ton of events. We’re anticipating their needs. For us in the company, one of our mottos is love is always the answer, right?

Sam: If we can just all come in the position of loving on our customers, supporting and wanting the best for them it’s going to always make us want to be more creative and create new things to keep them happy. So in one circle we have your customer experience and the next you have your employee experience and your employee experience is are you empowering and loving your, are you creating an environment and a culture that they’re coming to just as much because of the money as the fact that they love where they work? Like in our office, we have foosball tables, we have an open environment. We really empower our people. And then for some people might sound crazy. We empower them to make mistakes. We want to break shit. We want them to try and, and know that if we give them something to do, we trust that they can kill it in either direction.

Sam: Like they can brutally hurt it or not. But we’re okay with that because that’s how we all learn. So we’ve created these two awesome experiences. Our customers love it, our staff loves it. And when you lay those two things on top of each other, that’s what gives you your competitive advantage and your culture. So for us, culture is what we do to convert them and what we do to keep them. But I think the most important thing for us is if we didn’t have a strong sales and marketing effort to attract these agents to us in the first place, the greatest culture for your staff and your agents would mean nothing if you didn’t know how to market them and sell to them. So earlier you said, let’s talk about your sales efforts. Do you want to dive into that real quick.

Josh: Yeah. Yeah. So tell us a little bit about that because, right you’ve got to have a culture is amazing. And it’s important that people really love to where they love, where they go to work, love who they represent, feel like they’re included and feel like they’re on a team, but they have to have some sort of sales process to run on some sort of sales scripts and dialogues and be, you know, kind of pre ready, predisposed answer objections, those kinds of things. And I know that’s a big part of your building culture is that people feel like they’re learning more, they’re making progress. And that just a lot of times done through sales training. So what are your thoughts around that?

Sam: Yeah, so for us, we’re training two sets of people were obviously training our agents, but for us to attract agents, we focused on three things. So when I talk about sales, for us, a sale for me is recruiting an agent. And then the way I service them is by training them how to go sell and do more deals. So we’re trying to attract agents and recruit, do our sales, we focus on three things. When we started, the large majority of our agents came from a traditional sales force. And what we did is we took Chet Holmes hiring process from the Ultimate Sales Machine of it and we started to recruit just really bad ass hungry, smart telemarketers recruiters, and they would hit the phone. We had about 10 people, they were on very, very little salary or hourly plus draw or commission, whatever’s greater.

Sam: So we gave them scripts, we gave them objection handlers, and they were just hitting the phone all day long, making sales. The interesting thing about this is I see this all the time. If I’m in an investor seminar, if I’m in a brokerage seminar an agent seminar, everybody knows that the backbone of your business is sales and your sales team, but it’s interesting how many people don’t actually have a sales force. They don’t have a sales effort, they don’t have a real focus group of people that are designed to generate attention. So we spent a lot of time in that specific area early on.

Josh: That’s great man. And then you know, every organization needs sort of a champion that’s going to drive that sales effort that’s going to just be wearing the sales hat 24/7 VP of sales or whatever you want to call it. Tell me about that person in your business. Is that you? Is that somebody else who’s at a couple of different guys and how do they keep their energy up, right? How do they keep their motivation up to keep it going? Because you know, real estate can be fairly transactional, right? So it’s like we close a deal today. Okay, what are we doing next, right. As soon as one sale happens, the next sale has to be around the corner. And you know, for any of us who have been in sales or in real estate for a long time, unless you just have a massive passive portfolio, it can be fairly transactional. So how do they keep that energy up? How do they keep the sales team motivated? And how do you, you know, motivate your leadership team?

Sam: That’s a great question. So our VP today runs our sales department. He started as a $1,500 an hour position in the sales floor doing recruiting any worked his way up. Now I’ll tell you finding the perfect person is always a challenge. And the answer to that is you have to hire slow and fire fast. And there’s, you know, tons of different strategies to fire, I mean, to find the right people. And I’ll tell you that for us knowing that every position you’re hiring for has the perfect avatar. Following Chet Holmes Ultimate Sales Machine. You know, his idea is that the person that is perfect in a sales floor is like the high school football jock, the super confident person that like always wins and has that mindset. So from the beginning, our ads and everything we’re doing for that position are focused on trying to find that right one.

Sam: And I can go deeper there if you have questions, but I’ll tell you quickly, when Corey started to work for us, I named him one speed and you know, the guys or the girls that just only have one speed, right? They’re always on. And this guy just doesn’t stop. He’s just like, give me more, give me more. What’s next, what’s next? And that’s just his DNA. And the moment we realized this is one speed, right? This is, the guy just doesn’t stop.

Sam: We said, okay, well now you’re going to start managing the sales floor, and he didn’t stop managing them. And he’s just, you know, enough is never enough. We give him a lot of training. We have a coach for him. We send them to masterminds. We’re always making him better and elevating the way he thinks, you know. When he started, he just wanted to get to 500 agents, putting them in the environment with guys like you and other people. The guy thinks bigger, he wants more. So I’d say look for your one speed. If you want someone to run your sales environment, look for your one speed. And I’ll make an analogy. Do you watch the show Billions at all?

Josh: Oh, I don’t actually, I’ve been wanting to catch it, man. Three small kids I haven’t caught it yet. So tell me about it.

Sam: Those of us that are fans of the show. There’s a main guy, Axelrod. He’s the billionaire.

Josh: X Capital.

Sam: Yeah, X Capital. He has his right hand guy and his name is Wags, Wags is my one speed. And if you watch Billions, you know, take the Hollywood factor out of it. Like we’re not doing all that crazy shit, but uh, Wags is DNA is one that’s just like go, go, go. I got your back. Let’s make this happen. So you got to you have to be able to empower people to be who they are so you can see what role you can put them in. You know, oftentimes we bring people in on one seat and let them blossom. Let them be them and say, hey, you know what? Like we hired you for this but you probably really be good here. And we found that the wheels move faster when you put people on the right seats of the bus.

Josh: Yeah, that’s great. So Wags one speed, right? Sam, what are your thoughts, what do you teach your team? What are you working on with your team about prospecting, right? Because in real estate, it doesn’t matter if you own a title company or you’re a mortgage loan officer or you’re a real estate investor or an agent, it all comes down to gaining market share more prospects, more transactions. So what are your thoughts around prospecting in today’s market to find motivated sellers that are looking to sell their properties? And also of course Sam, you bought and sold lots of properties. You’ve got lots of investments. So this does, you know, pivot over to real estate investors as well but attitude about prospecting. How much time are you guys spending prospecting? What kind of tools are you giving them in order to prospect at a higher level?

Sam: Great question. So I think that for us to be successful at prospecting, there’s four basic things that have to be present. And everything else to me is what sharpens the axe tools, widgets, leads, wherever you’re getting them. We can touch on that. But what I, what I teach about prospecting is you have to learn how to control the conversation before you start trying to scale your sales efforts. What controlling the conversation means to me is giving the customer the experience and the communication that they’re looking for and they don’t know what that is, but I broken it down into four things that I think are critical. Number one, we are paid as salespeople for the questions that we ask, not what we say. So rule number one is ask a lot of questions. Why is this important?

Sam: When I ask good strong questions, it does a couple, it does a lot of things where the two primary things it does for me. Number one, it tells my client what they’re, the client tells me, excuse me, what their real motivation is and what their true concerns are. And the more I ask questions, the more they’re giving me what they want and what they’re worried about. And in sales I have to help them find what they want and remove the tension around what they’re worried about. The moment I start to know what that is, the easier it becomes for me to give them what they want and help them take the next step. So you have to ask a lot of questions. Now when you ask questions or when you get objections, the way you handle that is the most critical part of the sales process. So number two is every time your client either answers your question or gives you an objection, I want you to repeat what they say.

Sam: So if they say, you know what, we don’t want to sell right now. We want to wait till the new year. You repeat, you don’t want to sell right now. You want to wait till the new year. And I’ll tell you why we do that. But before I do. You immediately back it up with number three, which is give them words of approval. You don’t want to wait till you don’t want to sell right now. You want to wait till the new year, repeat what they say and then give them words of approval. I completely understand where you’re coming from. And a lot of my clients initially feel the same way. So what happens when I repeat what they say, Josh is it tells a customer on listening and you have to remember that people want to work with someone that makes them feel heard and understood. They want to feel comfortable and confident.

Sam: So when I repeat what they say, it’s saying to them, man, Sam’s listening. And then when I back it up with words of approval, it motivates them to keep talking. This is where most sales people go wrong is when they handle an objection. They’ll say, no, Josh, you don’t want to do that you want to do this. And the moment I suggest something like that in the mind of the prospect I have made them wrong. The moment I create…

Josh: You’ve created tension, right? You’ve created your own tension between you and your potential prospect, not less, which makes you further from the sale.

Sam: That’s exactly it. So I say, hey, I hear you. It’s okay that you feel that way. And then I ask another question to help me get them back on track. So I might say, if we go back to that, I want to wait until the new year to sell. You want to wait till the new year sell. I completely understand. Good for you. A lot of people initially feel those same way. Let me ask you another question. Is it okay if I explain to you the problem that that might create for you? Or may give you another perspective to look at that can possibly help you net more money on the sale of your home. When I position it that way, one, I’ve asked a sales question that’s permission-based. So when I’m asking them for permission to tell them something, who do they think is in control? They think they’re in control. The whole time I’m asking questions, I take them exactly where I want them to go.

Josh: So by asking questions your in control.

Sam: Exactly. So the answer again for me, prospecting all of it, I don’t care if you’re buying leads, if you’re straight, cold calling, anything that you’re doing face to face at the table, ask questions, repeat, approve, ask another question that gets them towards the, you know, the close. And remember this, I think this is an important step for investors and agents. I’m sure it’s a little bit different, but statistics say that 80% of appointments are made or conversions happen after the sixth objection is handled.

Sam: Now think about this, Josh. If we know that 80% of appointments or conversions are made after the sixth objection is handled, the question then becomes what percentage of investors or agents do you believe have the skillset and the wherewithal to go that far to handle six or seven objections? My guess is going to be maybe 5%, 10% of people know what to say have the skill set to stay on the phone long enough, handle enough objections. So when you look at it, we have 90% of agents playing in the 20% pool and we have 10% of agents playing in the 80% pool or investors. And when you look at it that way, is it really any wonder why small percentage of people do the large percentage of business?

Josh: Right. That’s amazing. That way. I love the questions because I’m such a, when I teach my people about handling objections, talking to motivated sellers, we talked so much about asking questions because it’s about, you know, asking questions and trying to take them on a specific path. But the person who asks the questions is always in control. The more you talk about you and your business and your offer, whatever that is, people start to tune out, you know? And when you, especially when you’ve got it down pat asking question, I’m amazed at how many people get sales or get a client that hardly talk about themselves or hardly talk about their company. And people are like, well, I like him because he asked me lots of questions. It makes me feel good, it’s about emotion not about what you have to offer, right?

Josh: Not about the sale transactions, about the emotion, how do you make me feel, right? So really, really big around that. So Sam, pivoting into social media, right? So when you have a sales organization, again, investor, mortgage loan officer, real estate agent so many people getting into real estate, obviously real estate has been on a 10 year run. So you have institutions, you have huge, you know, corporations all entering the real estate space and we’re competing over the same properties and the same clients and that pool property is getting smaller and smaller because inventory is going down. How are you teaching your people to set themselves apart, primarily using social media to tee up their relationship, tee up how people feel about them using social strategies?

Sam: Man, I love this question because I’ve been on a rampage around this lately in our own business. I’m going to share two quotes or conversations that I read or heard that really transformed the way I see the opportunity. First let me say the answer is media. Media solves all of your problems and social media is obviously the ability to create media. But back to the point at, Gary Vaynerchuck’s event 2021 he said the person that’s really good at what they do, if you’re the best damn investor or agent, you will always remain the person that has to go chase deals and fight over opportunity. The moment you become a somebody, the business chases you. So I would look at that like the agents on Million Dollar Listing. Do you honestly think Josh Altman is calling expireds and notice of trustee sales? No man, people are calling him like, you, will you come listen this $4 million house I have.

Sam: Why? Because now he is a somebody, he’s been fortunate to have the media of Bravo TV. But with everything that we have from Facebook and Instagram and retargeting, like retargeting is your ability to be Bravo TV, right? So that really started to make me think, and then Grant Cardone said, I think it was in a conversation with Frank Kern, he tells, Frank says, bro, you got to remember this. People give into the person that they see the most. They give into the person that they see the most.

Sam: So how do you become the somebody that Gary talks about is you do what Grant talks about be the person that they see the most. Just the other day I saw Gary do a post that said, I really think you should be putting out a hundred pieces of content a day. Clearly that’s like more than probably he even does but the point is, I’m seeing this all come together that the more you create media, the more you put it out there more you’re doing stuff like you’re doing here Josh, and you’re creating content. Dude, people are watching and they’re watching in such a big way that it makes everything become easier.

Josh: That’s phenomenal man. Sam, some great nuggets here man. Fantastic. We’ve been trying to get this on the books for awhile. Your bringing it, I love it. Hey, so just got a couple more minutes left, but I’ve got to ask. You know, I was one of the original members of the war room mastermind. Ryan and Perry put on Traffic and Conversion Summit and there were 200 people in Austin, Texas. I was there, I signed up and there was a bunch of ballers there who now are just amazing entrepreneurs. Guys like Ryan Moran and Mark Jenny and Benny Fisher and just all these guys came on back then it was 20 of us. And fast forward to now they have a huge organization, 7,000 people attend their events.

Josh: You are one of the key members of their mastermind. So tell us about a couple things. One, tell us about the mastermind that you’re running specifically for real estate investors. That’s kind of part of War Room. I’ll talk about the importance of that in your life and the people that you’re impacting. I also know secondly that you run a massive Facebook of my massive private Facebook group called Real Closers. Tell our audience about that so they can jump in and join. And then lastly we’ll talk about your experience and seeing the Trafficking Conversion Summit. So just talk about mastermind. Tell us a little bit about your War Room experience and what’s that like for you? What does it mean to you?

Sam: Yeah. I’ll tell you, I don’t know if this was when we were live or before we talked. I told you that I’ve done everything that we’ve done with dropping out of college, right? I went to college for a few months and quickly realized it just wasn’t for me. And I’m not saying it’s not for everybody. It would have taught me a lot of things that maybe I don’t know, but it wasn’t for me. What’s my point? Instead of being in college, I put myself in masterminds and seminars with guys like you. I put myself in the environment that I wanted to be in my future. So what I’ll tell you is this is my biggest take away. I get interviewed all the time because of INC 500 and great guys like you and they say, how did you do it? What did you do? Well, we did a lot of things.

Sam: But when I look in the rear view and think, why did all we do all of these things and why are we where we are? It’s because we put ourselves in the environments that forced us to think and act differently. I mean, I can’t say it any other way, dude. When you’re hanging around with people that are running billion dollar, a hundred million dollar organizations and it just changes the way you think, dude. Like even now when I leave Closing Table or War Room, you know, we did great last year more than you know, I thought we would do a few years ago, but I still leave and I’m driving home or flying home.

Sam: And I’ll tell you what I think Josh, all the time with all the winning that we’re doing, my overwhelming thought is, man, what the hell am I doing with my life? Think about that dude, like that’s environment. It causes you to be grateful but not satisfied. It causes you to think different and then you’re in the room with the smartest people, which gives you the shortcuts, the only shortcuts and success or relationships. It’s Josh saying yo, like we did this and this and that’s what helped us raise this much money and own this many doors. So it’s the intellectual, what’s the word? The brain.

Josh: Capital, probably. Intellectual capital, right.

Sam: Yeah. Intellectual capital dude. Like that’s the only shortcut to success. So I’ll say if you’re not putting yourself in rooms like people like with Josh, you are, you’re just leaving Lamborghini’s on the table left and right because that’s where it starts in an environment starts and ends all success in my opinion. So we run a real estate mastermind with the guys that run War Room called Closing Table Mastermind. And really it’s just a room for the best of the best to get together a few times a year. We network together, we bring in awesome, successful entrepreneurs to talk about how they’ve built billion dollar businesses. We network, we have fun, and we all grow our businesses together. So if anyone’s interested Josh can get us connected.

Josh: Yeah. And I was talking to Sam before we got started. I said, you know, you got to you got a proper education. You know, the seminar world, the mastermind world. You know, I have a formal education, four years of college and my dad told me, you know what Josh, like everything, this is his way of basically telling me that masterminds and seminars and things like that was really the right way to go. Though he was more of a traditionalist. He said, Josh, everything that you need to know about your future career in business, you’re actually going to learn on the job. So actually just get your degree, get it in and out in four years. Because just get really, that whole education, the investment in college was about getting your first job and then from there you learn everything you needed to know, you know, in the real world.

Josh: And so my dad was like, oh my God, I can’t believe Josh. He graduated from four years with honors and then he went into a full all commission sales position. It’s like, oh my God, son, are you nuts? I said, well Dad, I’ve learned from the best cause my dad was already an entrepreneur running a employee benefits company. You know, he started that when I was in college. So I’m like, Dad, man, if you wanted me to really learn about business, you should’ve sent me to like seminar world. That’s where it’s at. Probably would save a lot of money too and got a proper education. So Sam, tell us a little bit about your private Facebook group, right? A Real Closers, I believe is what it’s called, you know, 60,000 or 70,000 members, huge organization, huge group in Facebook. So what’s that all about?

Sam: Yeah, so Real Closers is really just a, it’s a free group where we bring awesome people like Josh and different, I don’t even want to say like gurus. These are like real practitioners, thought leaders that are killing it in their own respective, right? And they’re consistently putting on trainings and, and, and bringing value to the group. So if you’re an agent or an investor or if you’re in the real estate space and you want to learn new ninja marketing tactics, if you want to network, if you want to learn how to increase your sales skills, if you want to learn how to take down more doors we bring together the best of the best and just provide a lot of value we never charged. It’s just a place for us to give back and bring value to our industry. So, um, we’ll be having Josh in there a lot more and we’d love to have you a part of it. So just go to Real Closers and, you know, submit a request to join and we’ll get you in there.

Josh: Awesome. Fantastic. So Sam things have happened for us, you know, very, very quickly, Big Block, about five, six, seven years old, billions of dollars worth of sales. But I don’t care what you do as an entrepreneur, there’s very little that can prepare you to be the main mc on the main stage of an event with 7,000 attendees, all the eyeballs on you to kick off that event, keep the energy high. So tell us what it was like, like when did you find out you were going to be the mc? What’s it like steering 7,000 people in the eyeballs we’re all looking back at you and how did you prepare for it mentally to be ready for that?

Sam: Great question. Well, I’ll tell you, I think it’s important to say this and I didn’t even saw you, but, six years ago when I attended my first Traffic and Conversion Summit, there was maybe a couple of hundred people and then it went to like 2,000 or 3,000. It was the big show. And I looked at my business partner, Oliver. I was like, dude, I’m mc this stage one day. I don’t know how, but it’s going to happen. So it’s kind of always been in the thought process, but about a month before they reached out and said, hey, we’re looking for an mc. We think you’d be great. We already work together in so many ways. You know, us, you know, our culture. So just common be you. And I definitely had hesitation a little bit because the crowd was so big, but I kind of enjoy that.

Sam: I’m a special type of wacko like that, but I wanted to do the job that the guys wanted me to do, right? So to prepare, I really, I asked Roland, I asked Ryan, I asked Deanna, I asked Rich, I asked Perry, I said, look like, what’s the perfect mc? Like what do you want? And they said, well, we want is this? And they want that. And what I realized is they just wanted someone to come out and be present with the group without their own agenda. And if you’ve ever seen mc’s at other events, they want to talk about how awesome they are and they want to push their Instagram and they want to do all these things. So I said, look, I’m just going to come out and I’m going to do the job and I’m not going to make it about me.

Sam: I’m going to make it about the crowd. I’m going to bring the energy, I’m going to bring the heat, I’m going to do my best to highlight the speakers that are coming up. And that’s what I did. And I’ll tell you, it was a way different experience than I thought it would be. Like just seeing a show that big happen from the back end and how everything is planned to the second Josh, they even had a person that was in charge of just me. Like this guy’s was just to make sure that Sam was where Sam was supposed to be. Like we both do events. Like that’s a whole other level of running a show and I got to meet awesome people and open up opportunities like this.

Josh: Very cool man. So Sam, as we kind of ran through and had for home, you know, what sort of personal advice would you give somebody who’s maybe at the beginning of their journey? You know, you’re maybe in the middle of your journey, you know, you and I have, we’re not, certainly not new to this entrepreneur game anymore. Been around for a while. If had successful businesses, we’ve had total dumpster fires, we’ve been through it all. And certainly we’ve got a lot more time and value to bring to the market for years and years to come. But whether it’s a new agent or new real estate entrepreneur investor, looking back at your journey, what kind of advice would you pass back to them getting going?

Sam: I love that question, Dude there’s a lot I would say, but I’m going to start with what I wish more people would’ve said when I was there. And that’s two things. One, it always, always, always, always, always takes longer and cost more than you think it will. Man, like you, you know, you listen to a great speaker and you try to think that you can shortcut the curve, the average curve and that’s playing the lotto dude. Like it doesn’t happen that way. So I’d say reframe your expectations because if I’m new as a real estate professional, I want to go from doing zero deals to 50 deals your first year, a hundred deals your first year. That sure sounds nice, but like you’re going to be wondering in six months saying, while your only two deals in? And that’s just going to start to mess with your brain.

Sam: Now I’ll say, I definitely think you have to think big. I’m a really, really a big thinker, but you also just be real with the fact guys that it takes longer than you want. So when you’re real with that, I think you’ll get frustrated less. Second thing that’s just been really heavy in my head in the past couple of years, and I’m sure you think about this too, Josh, I really haven’t met an entrepreneur that doesn’t. Earlier I wanted to become successful or rich or have money or have a big business or staff because not only everything that we talk about in the events, but I thought that it made life easier, right? And I thought that everything becomes simpler if you have more money and more people and it doesn’t man like it doesn’t, the game changes. More money, more problems. I’m not saying this to scare you away from growing a large business.

Sam: I’m saying this because I want to frame in your brain like you got to be mentally tough and you have to stop looking for shortcuts and magic wands. Like just play the long game, play the damn long game and be patient and be mentally tough and strong and know, just know that it’s going to work as long as you never stop. It might not work today or tomorrow, but like literally, I forget who I heard say this. He’s like, think about it. How could you ever lose if you don’t have the ability to stop. So like just don’t stop, right. But be patient man.

Josh: Man that’s killer.

Sam: I’ve got a bunch of stuff. I don’t how much of your time we have, but I’d say those are my top two thoughts for you.

Josh: That is fantastic Sam. Well listen, I really appreciate all the insight. I’m sure we could talk more. I’d love to have you back on in a few months. We’ll continue the conversation. And so if you know folks that are listening to this, want to reach out to you, maybe want to join your firm, learn more about you are Big Block Realty. Is there a website or a contact person that they should reach out to?

Sam: Well, I’ll give you two places. One, I’m really active on my Instagram. You can DM me there. It’s just the nine zero number nine th and then spell out zero, The9thZero. You can search my name or you can just reach us at BigBlockRealty.com and, and say you want to talk to Sam and they’ll connect you over.

Josh: Fantastic. Sam, listen, awesome to have you on. Lots of great nuggets in there. Look forward to connecting with you again really, really soon.

Sam: Josh, this was awesome, dude. You’re super good at what you do and thank you for having me on. You’re an inspiration to a lot of people, including myself, so thanks for being awesome my dude.

Josh: You bet, man. Thanks a lot. Thanks for providing so much value and we’ll talk to you soon.

Sam: All right, take care

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