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 your investing with The Accelerated Investor Podcast. 

Josh: So hey, welcome back to Accelerated Investor. I am so excited to be with you once again. Be inside your ears, inside your car or wherever you’re at the gym, going for a walk. I just want to tell you how much I appreciate you engaging with us at Accelerated Investor. We have had some amazing guests on the show recently. Today’s guest is no different. His name is Mike Hambright. He is the owner and founder of the FlipNerd podcast, the award winning FlipNerd real estate investing show. He has reached millions of listeners with his message. He’s been flipping properties and investing in real estate for a long, long time, over 10 years. I was actually on his podcast over four years ago. Has an amazing podcast of his own. He owns multi-family properties valued at over $30 million. His name is Mike Hambright. Mike, welcome to Accelerated Investor. 

Mike: Hey Josh. Great to be here.

Josh: Fantastic man. So listen, Mike and I were kind of getting prepped for this and what we really wanted to talk about was some of Mike’s insights on elite investors. So Mike, why don’t you just, instead of talking tactics today, why don’t we talk a little bit more about your mastermind. You were in a mastermind called Investor Fuel. I know a lot of guys that are in it, so you’ve been around elite investors and guys who’ve gone from new to kind of intermediate to advanced. So just give us a little bit more foundation about you and tell us a little bit more about what is Investor Fuel. 

Mike: Yeah. So, you know, I’ve been an investor for about 12 years now and I’ve done a lot of volume over the years and you know, just at the end of the day, I think we all get to a  Page | 2 point to where it’s like, I don’t, I’m not excited about the transactions anymore. The transactional nature. When you get to a point where your business is stable. Like financially, you know, you don’t have to worry, I’m not in survival mode anymore. Like I’m in growth mode, right. So you just get to a point, and I’m sure you felt this too, where it’s hard to be around other people like you. Because there’s not, we’re weird. We’re like, not only are we entrepreneurs we’re like, you know, it’s different if you own a restaurant and your business might be up or down a little bit every day. 

Mike: And you know, our business is like dead and then it’s like through the roof and dead through the roof. It’s very transactional, right? Big transactions. And so there’s not a lot of people like us. And so, you know, it got to the point to where, truthfully that’s one of the reasons I started my podcast is like it was a networking tool for me to start meeting guys like you and other people that are, have been through the same struggles that I’ve been through and we kind of get each other right? And it just was a natural progression to say, how do I get around people more often? How can I serve them and in the process, how can I surround myself with a bunch of people that I consider good friends? So that really is kind of the foundation of how Investor Fuel started is I had this amazing network and I’m like, you know, there were one off relationships. 

Mike: I know this person, I know you, I know other people, how can I pull them all together so they can get to know each other? That’s really kind of how it started. Just a little bit over two years ago now, so. Now we have… 

Josh: Tell us about it. Yeah. How many people, members.

Mike: Our average, our typical events. We have, you know, 150 members there. So, you know,  it’s grown pretty fast for sure. No doubt. 

Josh: And the members are, how would you classify them generally? I know there’s a mix of  everything, but intermediate, advanced, residential, commercial. 

Mike: We have two groups. Yeah, we have two groups and we’re mostly single family based I would say. But you know, I think that’s been a natural tendency over the past couple of years for single-family people to be focused on multi-family. There’s been a movement there as you know, to kind of move into more like commercial and bigger deals. And I think there’s a lot of people that are doing things that they weren’t like, they really have been a single family person, but now they’re spending a lot of resources and effort on a short term rentals like Airbnbs and stuff like that. And so, you know, when you’re around entrepreneurs that are kind of, at the end of the day, we’re real estate guys. But as I often say, we’re in the opportunity business. 

Mike: Like we’re looking for any opportunity that we can in the real estate space to make money and arbitrage a little bit. . But for the most part, we’re single family based and we actually are a little different. We have two groups. So we have what we call our platinum group, which is for people that are doing 50 deals a year or more or kind of equivalent in holdings multi-family or rental portfolios or whatever. And then people that are doing between 10 and 50 deals a year that are kind of progressing. So it’s  Page | 3 actually been cool because there’s a lot more people that are in that space that are doing a deal or two a month. And so we have a lot of members that came in and they were doing 15 deals and a year later they’re doing 40 and they’re already talking about moving up to the platinum levels just progressing. 

Josh: Nice. So kind of that intermediate to advanced level, not necessarily new. And I know when we were getting ready for this, we talked about some of the traits, the characteristics of some of these elite guys that are doing, you know, 50, a 100, 150 transactions a year. Like you said you were doing, you’re in the middle of a thousand transactions a year. When you were involved in more of a franchise type business. But your business was involved in all these different transactions. It takes a different business to do 10 transactions a year versus 50 versus a hundred. And so let’s start talking a little bit more about these traits and characteristics. I’ve been around a lot of the lead entrepreneurs you have to, so I’m interested to hear your take about what are some of the traits and characteristics that you think of the guys that are killing it. What are some of the things they have in common? 

Mike: Yeah. And you know, you’ve done a lot of coaching too. I’ve done a lot of coaching for new investors and I still do that. And in contrast to them, these are like the traits that I see. And you know, for a lot of new investors, a lot of the time is spent trying to convince them that yes, this actually works, you know. Yes you should bet on yourself, like all those things. So if I had to kind of name the five characteristics, I would say the first one is that elite real estate investors, people that are in our Investor Fuel mastermind, they’re all in, they’re all in they don’t question does this work anymore? They’re willing to pivot from one day to the next, but they’re all in. They’re not just going to quit one day. 

Mike: Even though we think about it every other day, you know how it works. Like you’re wanting to be like, I’m going to 10 X this thing and then lunchtime, you’re like, I’m going to shut it down. But we don’t. We don’t though. You know, we don’t, we find ways to pivot or make it work or go get a margarita or whatever it takes to kind of pass that. So I would say that’s the first trade is we’re kind of all in. We’re like not questioning anything anymore. We’re not questioning our ability to do things, but we’re all in. We’re not going to pull back 

Josh: And to that point, Mike, I think everybody has doubts, it doesn’t matter of what level of entrepreneurship you’re at. If a huge business, a small business, you know, it is kind of lonely sometimes to run a company. That’s why I, you know, I absolutely can identify with you and creating Investor Fuel, but at the same time, like once you’ve got a taste of entrepreneurship and especially real estate entrepreneurship, you’d know you can do it even though you have your doubts. There’s not been one day where I said I’d rather be doing something else. 

Mike: I’m going to go work for somebody else again. That’s, no, I’m unemployable. And that’s a  good thing. 

Josh: Totally. Yeah. So you’re all in, right? That’s characteristic number one. Unemployable’s another great way to say it, you know, and even though we have doubts, we’re not  Page | 4 going to quit, we’re not going to go, you know, cash in our chips and go sell medical supplies or you know, go, you know, start an ECOMM business. You know, real estate is where it’s at. So man, that’s an amazing one. They’re all in. So any other comments on that or do you want to move on to number two? 

Mike: Yeah, let’s move on to number two. So I’d say the second one is that they, you realize that you’re in the marketing and operations business. So it’s we’re in the, you know, single-family investors were in the house business, but it has nothing to do with the house. The house just happens to be the widget. But at the end of the day, it’s about lead generation. How do I effectively generate and continuously generate leads to feed my business? And how do I operate this business like a business, right? So in contrast to newer investors, they’re usually having to do all the work. You know, they’re the CEO and they’re the acquisitions person and they’re the bookkeeper and they’re doing everything. And so at the end of the day, all those things have to happen. But they realize that their time and effort is best spent on kind of sales and marketing and business operations to run it like a business and create processes and systems to run efficiently. 

Josh: Yeah. One of my favorite quotes, I love that, you know, realizing that we’re in the marketing and operations business. One of my favorite quotes, actually, one of my favorite books is Work The System by Sam Carpenter. I believe that’s available online somewhere in a free eBook, but it’s all about just growing, growing a real business around systems. But he talks about, one of my favorite quotes is around leadership. And he says, leadership must focus on improving the process, not undoing the work. Leadership must focus on improving the process, not putting out brush fires all day. And you know, like you said, your group, those elite investors intermediate to advanced, realize that they’re in the kind of the leadership business, the marketing and the operations business, not necessarily in the transactional day to day work. 

Mike: And you got to you get pulled into it. I mean it’s going to happen, but you realize that like if that repeats itself, if you keep getting pulled into something and you’re like, I have to create a process for that because I shouldn’t be doing this, right. 

Josh: Right, right. Yeah. There’s always going to be something to do. Because I think people think, well, I’m going to build this business. I’m going to systemize the whole thing. I’m going to hang on a beach all day and Island all day. When you’re the CEO, right? You don’t need to be in the weeds, but you do need to be out promoting your business, gaining market share, recruiting more capital. 

Josh: You know, if you look at CEOs of big fortune 500 companies, right? If you watch MSNBC or Squawk Box or one of those talking head shows, the CEOs are there. What are they doing there? They’re casting the message for their business. And do you want to get more PR and get more investors, right? Convince people to invest in their business or get eyeballs pointed to their business. So if you, even if you do nail it in all the marketing and operations is optimized and doing well, eventually something breaks. You know, something’s always broken. There’s always something you got to fix. And always something to get out and promote, right? So a big part of what we do…  Page | 5

Mike: And the truth is you can’t grow if you’re in the weeds all the time, you’re self-employed.  You’re not a business owner. A job owns you. 

Josh: Right. Fantastic. That’s an awesome one. Marketing and operations business. How  about number three? 

Mike: So the third one, and a lot of these go hand in hand as you’ll see, is they, there’s no badge. They don’t have a badge of honor for a hustle, right? So you see it all over the place. And especially in social media, guys like Gary V and I like Gary V I like him like every other day it kind of depends, you know, they’re just like, he literally has this kind of cool, he probably has a bunch of famous quotes but the one that always sticks in my mind is around working your face off. Now when you first start, you got to work your face off. 

Mike: And I still work hard. I know you still work hard. We work hard, but it’s not like we don’t celebrate the hustle. I work hard because I have to and I have to get over certain humps and then, you know, stuff like that. But my goal is not the hustle, right? You might have to do it. And if you’re starting a new business or you’re pivoting or you’re doing things, there’s going to be these extended periods where you have to work harder than usual, but that is not the goal. The goal isn’t to hustle, right? 

Josh: Yeah. Guys that wear that badge, like I’m hustling all the time is great. It’s maybe good for them. Maybe that’s how they’re built, but does anybody really build a business? Just to say that they continue to hustle. We build businesses for freedom, right? The whole idea of entrepreneurship is really the pursuit of personal freedom. It’s not the pursuit of more hustle. 

Mike: Right? And I see people, you’ve seen it too on social media. They’re like, hey, I’m out at 2:00 AM putting out bandit signs, and they’re like, it’s like a pride thing and I’m not taking anything away from anybody that’s doing that. I’m taken away from like that. They’re celebrating that because when I see that, I’m like, that’s sad. Like, that’s a $6 an hour job and this person is running their company and he’s celebrating that he’s doing a $6 an hour job. So I’m not faulting newer people from getting there, but it’s not about that. Like celebrate the deal that you got and you say, I work my tail off to get this deal and I made $20,000 grand or whatever. But don’t say, here’s, here’s a picture of me doing a $6 an hour job. 

Josh: Right? Yeah. No thanks for that man. No thanks. I’ll celebrate the hustle to go get a million dollar investor. Celebrate the hustle to buy a $10 million apartment. But I’m not celebrating $6 dollar an hour bandit signs, brother. That’s great man. That’s a fantastic one. I love that. How about number four? 

Mike: So they’re givers, we in our group, especially in Investor Fuel, because I’ve been a part of other masterminds. We’re very big on giving, helping one another, sharing what we know, not holding back. An I honestly believe that a lot of part of it is because this is a lonely business and it can be a lonely business, real estate investing and entrepreneurs. Is that we all want to give. And I think we, you’re not that we don’t give to everybody or  Page | 6 aren’t willing to give to everybody, but I think when you get in a room of peers that have kind of, we know have a lot of war wounds, have a lot of scars from getting there is that we want to give to one another and unusually high amount if we’re in the right if we’re in the right room that kind of has that as part of its culture of giving. 

Mike: And so I think anyway, I think a lot of us have worked really hard and we value being able to give back and share with other people what we’ve learned because there’s just a place in our heart that like, I have a pride of how I got here. Like you didn’t get to where you are without people helping you. And I didn’t get here, right you either. And so I want to give back. And I think, you know, the people that are in our mastermind and a lot of really highly successful real estate investors have that as part of their core is giving. 

Josh: And to that point, Mike, let’s just take that one a little deeper, right? So I hear a lot of businesses that talk about, well, we have a passion, we have a core mission, we have our why. There’s all these things. And I think a lot of people really struggle when they get outside of their nuclear family outside of their immediate, like, I want to provide for my wife and kids. Okay, well you sort of got married and had children, you’re sort of obligated to that one. That’s not, that’s everyone’s why. So let’s get a little bit deeper than that. And you know there’s been times throughout my investing career, struggled to think like, what am I really passionate for? Why am I really doing this? Because real estate can be something where you buy an asset. It’s got a lot of equity, it’s got a lot of cashflow, awesome. 

Josh: Add that to the balance sheet, but it’s just a widget. It’s just a thing. So do you guys have any discussions inside of your group about, you know, finding a way to like pull out the why, pull out the passion, pull out like what are we giving towards? And really this is based around creating a culture for your business. Because if you have, you know, lots of staff or employees, some of them are acquisitions managers, some of them are raising money, some of them are leasing agents, some of them might be doing your audio video. They all kind of have different roles. But really finding one mantra, one why for the organization or something to give back to kind of now can bond everyone together. So do you do anything to try to pull that out or do you guys… 

Mike: We do things, like we have some charity events and where people can where we have, you know, do some like casino night and stuff like that. We have fun and we donate to different members that are in the organization. We did this over this past year. Is several of our members actually have charities and so we had a chance to like donate to their causes and stuff. And so I would say, you know, you know, for example, one of the things that we do is we have what are, you know, a lot of masterminds have is effectively are called a hot seat presentation. And where basically somebody gets up and they share ultimately, you know, two main things. One is the challenges that they’re having in their business and asking for help from the group. The group acts as like advisors to one another to say, hey, I know somebody can help you with that or let’s schedule a call because I went through that recently or whatever it might be. 

Mike: But we actually start these presentations with a give. They have to give something first, they have to give before they get. So we start, it could be sharing a software, a tool, a  Page | 7 connection, a life lesson. I mean, people have gotten up and talked about, I know you’ve had some issues before, health issues. Like, man, I took this for granted and, and something went south here and I have this lesson that I learned from that I need to share it. And so, but so much of what happens in a group like ours is the giving that happens outside of the confines of the structure of the event. You just hear like people like somebody flew over here and help me with this or they spent like two hours on the phone with me and helped me through this issue. And so it’s just, we’ve kind of laid the foundation of being a giver and people want to help one another. 

Mike: It’s been fairly common that we have a new member that comes into the group and we tell them like you know, you have to give, you have to share something. They send in their presentation in advance and then they come there and they hear a couple of other presentations and they’re like, I need to revise my presentation because I need to take my, I need to give more than I was planning to give because I’ve gotten so much, I just feel like I need to step this up. And so that’s a pretty common thing and it’s, it’s like we had to orchestrate that early on and now it’s just, it’s part of our culture that’s woven into our organization. 

Josh: I love it, I love it. And sometimes within an organization like we’ve got to find we’re kind of searching right now even with my organizations, like what are we doing this for? Other than more profit, more money, bigger balance sheet, you know, everyone getting bonuses, whatever. And I keep coming back to like we’re in the house business or we’re in the apartment business, we’re in the private money business. And I keep coming back to, for some reason right now around these holidays as we’re recording this and keep thinking about Habitat For Humanity and everyone could use a great property to live in, right? So taking some of the profits of the businesses, getting my team and staff on site building houses for someone. Maybe it’s in Haiti, maybe it’s here locally, I don’t know. We’re kind of still working through that. 

Josh: But then people know, like if we do well in business, maybe instead of building one house we can build four, you know what I mean? It also only comes a little bit of a competition and that way we can kind of pull it all in. So, you know, I think it’s something to kind of ebbs and flows in a business. Like you hit certain goals, you’re like, this is what we’re, this is what we’re passionate for today. The business doesn’t change. But five years later it could be, you know, passionate for something else and giving money away to different organization or different cause. But you got to be a giver. That’s really great. How about Mike, number five. 

Mike: So number five is that they invest in themselves, like continuous personal improvement. Of course, even joining the mastermind like us has an expense tied to it, but you know, I am, I don’t know about you, I’m a bit of an education junkie. I mean, I sell coaching and stuff and the truth is I spend tens of thousands of dollars, sometimes over a hundred thousand dollars a year just on education and experiences that I know will help take me to another level. A lot of people that operate at a high level do that as well. They’re not willing, they’re willing to invest in themselves because they know that it does. You know, for when you’re operating at a high level, if you hear a little nugget, it could literally, like, you could see that on the P and L like I went to this thing, it cost me a few thousand bucks. I heard this little tip and I had generated $100,000 from that. It doesn’t  Page | 8 take much when you’re operating at a high level to hear a little nuggets that move the needle six months ago. 

Josh: I love what you just said, Mike, too. It was and I want you to expand on this is education and experiences. A lot of people are investing in education. They go to a seminar, they sit there for three days or they go to a mastermind and sit there for two days. But what I love about what you said was education and experiences and you and I had enough and have been around a long enough to know that the education is important but the experiences with other high level people and creating that bond is really where it’s at. So tell us more about that. What do you do experience wise? What are you trying to get out of it? 

Mike: Yeah, I mean it could be going to a totally different event. It could be something that’s not even real estate based. Like you just, when you get around other entrepreneurs are you positioning yourself to be in the right seat or the right room, there’s nuggets that you pick up that you can apply back to your business or back to your personal life that kind of enriches you, that causes you to elevate your game. 

Mike: And so I think, you know, I’ve been at events before that are not real estate related at all. I actually struggle a little bit with pushing myself because I’m so real estate focused. It’s so easy to look up and I’m like, I haven’t done anything outside of my industry for example. But there are things that I’ve done before that were not real estate based at all, but they had huge implications for me back in my business. And it wasn’t, it’s not even, the interesting thing is education in getting around people, like sometimes you learn based off of exactly what they said. Like they said something, Oh, let me write down exactly how to do that and I go do it. Sometimes I just hear a nugget and it’s not even what they said. It just jarred something in my mind and made me think differently about something. 

Mike: You know, I don’t know what you call that, but it’s real, right. So, you know, experience- wise, interestingly enough, we’re doing this trip, uh, right now we’re doing this trip. My  wife and I did a trip last year. We took a few friends with us to Yellowstone in the winter, so we go snowmobiling and dog sledding in Yellowstone crazy. So we actually, just started, it’s not really a mastermind, we call it Bucket List Boardroom, but we just told every sorry to tell people yesterday that we’re doing this trip and we’ve got like seats for 15 couples. So there’s a couple things. One is for the first time ever we’re doing something around that’s couples based and part of the reason is just because my wife and I want to be around other couples. Like this industry is kind of guy heavy, you know, and as a guy I’m okay with that. 

Mike: But like from my wife and I standpoint is she’s usually behind the curtains and she, you know, she’s kind of the operator side our CFO and stuff like that. We just want to be around other people like us. And so we’re like, well, and we love to travel. So we’re like, well, let’s start a travel group for like accomplished investors. And so we’re going out there. It’s not really real estate based at all, but we’re requiring that you’re a successful entrepreneur and that you like to travel and that you’re somebody we want to hang out wit ultimately. But even though we’re going to go out there and not necessarily be real estate based, there’ll be some discussions out there that probably changed some lives  Page | 9 or get people to kind of come back and apply that to their business. And so anyway, there’s a number of things that I do. I’m in some marketing things because again, I’m a marketer, but I do some marketing stuff that’s even outside of real estate because it allows me to learn in different industries and kind of apply it back into my life.

Josh: Right? Yeah, and you’re in, like you said, and number two, you’re in the marketing and operations business, so even digital marketing, different types of social media marketing. If you do it in other ditches, it’s going to help you in your real estate business. You’re like, hey, I can pull that in. I can apply that here because it’s working over here. It might not translate apples to apples, but you take a nugget or two, like you’ve talked about many times, take a nugget or two from that pulling it over here and test it and see how it works. That’s fantastic. Mike, so let me just cover back to the five and see if there’s anything else we want to mention. 

Josh: So number one was they’re all in, right? They don’t question whether real estate works. They certainly could question themselves on a daily basis, but they don’t question whether it works. They’re all in their building their portfolio. Number two, they realize they’re in the marketing and operations business and real estate, just the widget that they happen to be improving or buying or selling. Number three, there’s no badge of honor for hustle, right? It’s not just about the hustle, it’s about results and building a business that you can run and still hustle, right? But there’s no badge of honor. Like I’m just out here working for crazy hours just because. Number four, they’re givers. They give to each other, they give to organizations, they pass things along, pass along their knowledge often for free. 

Josh: And number five, they invest in themselves. And again, the piece that I like was education with experiences at this point, Mike, because that experience is so important to me. Like my wife and I don’t talk about giving each other gifts anymore for Christmas, birthdays, anniversaries. What we talk about is what can we buy each other as far as a ticket to go somewhere, whether it’s an event, whether it’s a play, whether it’s a game, whether it’s like going to Yellowstone, like you’re doing with your wife, a trip to Europe, let’s go experience something because when we’re old and dying and gray and can barely move, we’re not going to remember the diamond necklace or the watch. We’re going to remember the experiences. So we started kind of agreeing to just focus on that now so that we have tons of experience with each other and with our kids, which is amazing. 

Josh: So Mike has, we run kind of third and head for home. People will probably go on and get more information about the FlipNerd podcast, which is awesome. Tell us about that. And also for people who’d be interested in the Investor Fuel mastermind and connecting with you, where can people get more information, connect with you and reach out to you on those two items? 

Mike: Yeah, we have a, so FlipNerd is coming up here on our sixth anniversary. Hard to believe that. But we started it early on and again, that’s pivoted a lot of times. I used to think that FlipNerd was something very different than what it is now and now it’s largely just a free resource with you know, over 1,500 podcasts over the last six years on real estate investing. They’re all video based as well. So a lot of great content that’s on there from  Page | 10 anything you could possibly imagine in this space. We’ve probably covered it now because you know, that’s just over the period of time you cover everything. Lots of great information that people can go to FlipNerd.com and learn more there. Investor Fuels is our mastermind. So you could go to InvestorFuel.com and learn more about that if you’re an experienced investor and you’re looking to be around a community of givers and people that share a ton, I mean you can just check out our testimonials. 

Mike: It’s not common for people to say that this is the best decision I’ve ever made in my life was joining Investor Fuel or this tripled my business in nine months. Or like things like that kind of happen all the time so you can learn more there and we’re very selective so you have to kind of interview for an invite into the group there. And other than that, you know, I’m on social media, I’m probably more of an addict than I should be. So you can find me on Facebook and Instagram primarily. We’re putting a lot of attention on actually growing our social media platform here pretty significantly as we move ahead. So that’s where to find me at. 

Josh: Fantastic, Mike. Well listen, thank you so much for showing up and playing all out with  me today and…

Mike: Thank you buddy.

Josh: Really so much appreciation, gratitude for you taking the time, sharing these five traits of elite investors really been phenomenal. Thanks so much for being on today. 

Mike: Hey, thanks for the opportunity. 

You’ve been listening to Josh Cantwell and the Accelerated Investor Podcast. Leave a comment on our iTunes channel and let us know what you want to learn next, or who you’d like Josh to interview. While you’re there, give us some five star rating and make sure to subscribe so you can be the first to hear new episodes. Follow Josh Cantwell and his companies, the Strategic Real Estate Coach and Freeland Ventures on all social media platforms now and stay up to date on new training and investment opportunities to start your journey toward the lifestyle you’ve always dreamed of. Apply for coaching at JoshCantwellCoaching.com.