Podcast Transcription
Melina: Welcome to “Flippin’ Off,” a purpose-driven podcast about flipping houses and making a difference.
Dave: Well, hello. We are here in the studio again, my wife and I. Hi, honey.
Melina: Hey.
Dave: We’ve got a few guests around the room. We got Frank and Oscar, Tim and Peter, and this is gonna be a totally different podcast today. And, in fact, for the next couple of weeks, we’re gonna do something totally different. We’ve listened to a lot of podcasts out there, and one of the things that a lot of people don’t talk about is mistakes. Oh, boy, fun stuff, right? Yeah. Everybody in the room made some mistakes at some point? Say “I”.
Man: We’re here.
Man: I.
Dave: So, I’m holding in my hands a check for $50,000, hun.
Melina: Yay.
Dave: Are you excited?
Melina: Oh, yes. No.
Dave: So…
Melina: Anti-climactic, to say the least.
Dave: Very much so. I went the other day to pick up an escrow refund for $50,000. And I say refund because it was an earnest money deposit we had made on six properties last year in May.
Melina: Yep, almost a year ago.
Dave: May. So, 11 months, we’ve had $50,000 tied up in an earnest money deposit, sitting in escrow, earning us absolutely zero. Meanwhile, it was borrowed funds, and we’re making a payment every month.
Melina: That’s so awesome.
Dave: Wasn’t it so much fun?
Melina: Oh my gosh, that makes me so happy. You don’t even know. Yes.
Dave: I loved it. Every month…
Melina: Thrilled.
Dave: So, there’s gonna be a bunch of laughing because we need to laugh, we need to be able to laugh at some of these mistakes.
Melina: Yes. Well, you know what I think, I think that what we are going to be talking about today, if…let’s just be completely transparent. It’s a scary conversation to have because we’re putting ourselves in a position of vulnerability. We all know what happens when you make yourself vulnerable, right?
Dave: Yeah.
Melina: You get hurt. You put yourself in a place where people can do and say and make of it whatever they want but…
Dave: It’s very true.
Melina: We’ve chosen to live our lives this way and run our business this way. This is what we do all the time, and so why would our podcasts be any different?
Dave: Yeah, very, very true. So, we’re gonna hit on…tell you a little bit about that story, how we ended up with $50,000 tied up for 11 months. And some things we can look back on now and some red flags and some mistakes, some things that we should have slowed down and recognized sooner. And then, I think we’re gonna work our way…we’ll see how much time permits. We’ll work our way around the room. And I know every one of us have mistakes we’ve made and stories, you know, through those mistakes, and actual deals that we can talk about, deals or maybe even losses. Everybody always wants to call them deals, but deals don’t feel good when you lose money.
Melina: No.
Dave: So…but the lessons. And really, the point of this week and a couple of weeks on as we break this up, we want you guys to really get that we’ve made a bunch of little mistakes. We will still make mistakes. Like, it’s an impossibility if you think you’re ever going to never make a mistake. You will, and we’ve just learned to, you know, mitigate some of those by surrounding yourself with people that can…we can brainstorm with and collaborate with and, you know, the club’s a good resource for that because there’s varying degrees of experience that’s in there.
And, you know, especially if you’re a newbie listening to this or somebody who’s just getting into this business or if you’re in the club already and you’re learning, just a huge, huge, huge takeaway, big mistake people make, especially when they think they got it, you know, oh, maybe they’ve closed a few deals and they get that euphoria, right, that wave you talk about and, “I got this.” And that maybe even…may have been even us in this last deal, you know? We kinda like, “Hey, we got this.” And so, I don’t know, you wanna start off with a little bit of the background on that?
Melina: Sure, sure. So, it was brought to us by a student, and it was a lady who claimed to be a partner in five properties…six properties, actually, in Las Vegas. And they were wanting to…ahe and her partner were wanting to unload them and sell them at a discount quickly. So they were…
Dave: Because…
Melina: Yeah, because…I don’t even remember why, do you remember why?
Dave: Yeah.
Melina: I don’t even remember. What was the reasoning?
Dave: Well, he wants a downsize because he’s older. He’s in his 80s, lives in Southern California, and just can’t back and forth to Vegas to manage the properties.
Melina: Right.
Dave: He doesn’t wanna be outside of California anymore, and just downsize his portfolio because his portfolio is so big. So that’s why he’s wanting to take these at a discount. Further, he bought them at the bottom of the market.
Melina: He bought them right, he bought them great, which was awesome.
Dave: Yeah. So…
Melina: So we agreed to…we looked at them and, on paper, we comped them out. They looked very, very good. The numbers looked excellent. We were taking into consideration every property was rented. Very little deferred maintenance, they were all rented at above-market, cash flowing even at the acquisition price we were looking at buying them for. And so, there was a conversation that we could maybe flip them, we could maybe keep one or two in inventory as rentals. You know, the possibilities were endless. And one of the things that we teach all the time is that you make your money on your buy, right, and you get paid on your exit. So that was what we were thinking, and I always tell students, “You know, how you know you purchased properly is when you can pick a variety of exit strategies,” and that’s the way this was looking. So we went in and we put down all she required.
Dave: Yeah, well, that was part of the…
Melina: It was the number one red flag.
Dave: Number one red flag. It was…so my partner…so, anytime somebody says, “My partner, my partner, my partner,” I think one of the things that I’ve learned is I wanna identify who that partner is. So, whether that partner is some sort of entity, if that partner is a trust, if that partner has some person that somebody is claiming behind them, I wanna know who that person is and what their actual relationship is. This lady represented that she was a partner in these deals, and it turned out later that she had absolutely no equity in these deals whatsoever…
Melina: Right.
Dave: …and had no piece of them.
Melina: We didn’t verify that.
Dave: And we did not verify that. So we did our preliminary title searches and we saw that the houses were free and clear, which is what was represented to us.
Melina: Yes.
Dave: So we took it as, okay, free and clear properties, there’s no liens, there’s nothing. These look decent. And here’s a woman that says, “I’m a partner.” So, what do we do? We draft, we get a realtor in Vegas.
Melina: Yes.
Dave: Right? We didn’t use our California forms for Nevada. We got a realtor in Vegas to drive all the properties, a relationship we had out there. Drove all the properties, they do, in fact, exist. There are people living in them. Sounds good so far. Properties have a little bit more deferred maintenance from the outside from what he’s telling us, but they’re not a big deal. And no problem, that’s part of the negotiation, right? You make an offer, we’ll inspect the properties, and then we have our due diligence period, right? It’s written in the contract, give us the opportunity to inspect it and so forth.
So, the partner says, “I’ll meet you out there in Vegas,” and we’re like, “Well, we don’t really need to meet you, we’ll just…if you could just tell the people we’re coming, we’ll come by with our realtor and we’ll take a look.” “No, no, I have to meet you. In fact, sign the contract and show us that you can even perform because we don’t wanna fly into Vegas,” because she was representing that she was coming from somewhere on the East Coast, working on some of his other portfolio. “So, sign the contract, and a minimum deposit is $50,000 of EMD to go in escrow to show us that you’re serious, that you actually will close,” because we were gonna close with cash. And total purchase was $600,000. So, to them, it was like, “Put in $50,000. That’ll show us that you’re serious about this, and it will be worth our time to fly into Vegas and show you properties.” So, mistake right there. An escrow company we had never worked with, never heard of, and it must be that escrow company.
Melina: Yes.
Dave: So that should have been a red flag to us because what’s the big deal? As long as we have proof of cash and we’re gonna put our EMD in, why does it have to be this escrow company?
Melina: And she insisted on a $50,000 EMD, which is an earnest money deposit.
Dave: Yeah, which is a lot.
Melina: It was, but in the grand scheme of things, it wasn’t that…I mean, it just…anyway, so we did it.
Dave: We’ve never done that big of an EMD before.
Melina: Yeah, we never…yeah. So now, we can look back and go, “Yeah, we did this mistake, did that mistake. Okay.” So, then there was sort of an excitement about the possibilities with these properties. And so we get in the car, we put in our $50,000, we wire it to escrow. We get in the car, we drive to Vegas.
Dave: Hold on, there’s one more part of that. She gave us 10 days in the contract to inspect.
Melina: Yes.
Dave: And then, delayed…we were going out there, inside that 10 days, to go during our inspection, and we get a notice that says, “I’m sorry, I’m hung up in Chicago. I can’t get a flight out there. I’ll meet you in five more days,” which put us past…
Melina: The 10-day inspection period.
Dave: The 10-day inspection period. Okay? Go ahead.
Melina: So we said, “Fine,” whatever. So we met with her when we got there, and it was the fourth red flag. As soon as I saw her, I said, “Hm.” Like, you know, like, I felt like, “Oh, I know her, and…or whatever it is that she represents, but whatever.” So my gut said something is wrong. Anyway, we go forward, we’re there now. When we meet her, we say…oh, and she was supposed to produce the leases at that point. When we meet her there in Vegas, she says, “You’re not gonna believe this. My car got broken into and they stole my leases.”
Dave: At the airport, by the way.
Melina: Yeah, like the dog ate her homework. Anyway, so we said, “Oh, okay.” So anyway, now, we have no leases. So we walk the properties, and every property we walk, there is way more work than needed. I start talking to every tenant. I actually speak to every tenant and I ask them point blank, “How much are you paying in rent,” and, of course, it was not the same amount of money that she represented. So now, we have no leases, and several tenants told us…oh, one guy said, “I have been living in this house for 17 years and I’ve had four landlords, and I’ve never had a lease.” So there was so many things that were wrong.
So the short end of this is that we leave Vegas, we send an email, like, literally on the way. Dave’s driving and I’m typing the email saying, “Yeah, okay. So nothing you represented was the truth. You don’t have leases, there is this, this, and this wrong,” and so we made a new offer on the properties, and said, “Based on all of this evidence, our offer is no longer $600,000. It is now…”
Dave: $540,000.
Melina: $540,000, which was very reasonable. She responds back and says, “Okay. Well, we’re not interested in $540,000 so we will cancel the contract.” And we said, “Okay, fine. Send the cancellation, we’ll get our EMD back and, you know, wish you the best.” And then she came back and said, “What? I’m not giving you back your EMD.”
Dave: We’re not signing a cancellation.
Melina: No cancellation. You can cancel but I’m not giving you back your money. And at that point, I looked at Dave and said, “Yeah, something is not right with her.” So then we did a little bit more research, and so we found the owner of the property and found out that this woman was not his partner. And so I said to Dave, “Well, then she’s obviously a real estate agent.” She was doing licensed activities. And so, a quick check with the Bureau of Real Estate to find out, yes, she was indeed licensed, except they revoked her license. And so, now, she is doing licensed activity when not being licensed.
Dave: Wow, yeah.
Melina: So awesome.
Dave: So we’re out with someone representing themselves to be a partner, who’s really acting as a realtor who had her license revoked or suspended. And by the way, we did a little more research and it was revoked or suspended because she committed a burglary. Kind of a problem when you’re a realtor, have access to people’s homes, and you commit…
Melina: Steal stuff.
Dave: You commit burglary. So, a bunch of problems, right? We’ve got this…I get a hold of the guy who actually owns the property and he says to me straight out, “No, she is just a friend doing me a favor meeting you guys out there,” and, “What do you mean, the property?” He goes, “I haven’t been to the properties in years. What do you mean the air conditioner doesn’t work?” I go, “It’s Las Vegas. How do people live without air conditioning?”
Melina: Well, they were getting ready to move out.
Dave: Yeah, and they were all gonna bounce. And he says, “No problem. Let me talk to my attorney and I will sign the cancellation, you know, as long as the contract says, you know, you guys had the right to inspect,” and everything sounded great. After that, he never took my call again.
Melina: Yeah. So he went through two different attorneys, both who said they were gonna represent him. They looked at the case and said, “We’ve told him he doesn’t have a case. He should give you your money back but he refuses, and so I’m not taking on the case.” So, he went through two different attorneys, and all of this took a year. Well, 11 months…
Dave: Eleven months.
Melina: Yeah, for us to get our money back. So…
Dave: We had to hire an attorney. We had to file a lawsuit. He never responded to the lawsuit. Got a default judgment. And now, we’ve attached that judgment to his properties that, at some point, somebody will sell and pay us off. But meanwhile, escrow refunded our $50,000.
Melina: Finally. So, while we should be celebrating, we’ve still really lost. We’ve lost money because we had our money out for 11 months. That money cost us money and it inhibited our ability to do any other deals because we had that money tied up. Not to mention the stress and frustration and all of those things.
Dave: Plus, we had to pay an attorney, you know? The attorney costs are, you know, close to $5,000 just to go get a default judgment. So, I mean, a bunch of things that were there that we’ve definitely learned from that I will never, ever, ever take somebody’s word for, “I am a partner,” without knowing who that partner is, speaking to that partner, having contact information. We had to skiptrace this guy and find this guy. It was, you know, it was tough. It was tough. So that’s definitely something we wanted to take away from there. What a mistake.
Melina: So there’s our mistake. Now, we get to hear from everybody.
Dave: Yay.
Melina: All right. We made ourselves naked. Not proud.
Dave: So which one of you wants to tell us about one of your favorite mistakes?
Melina: Who’s going next? Okay, Oscar. We’ll just go age before beauty.
Oscar: We call it wisdom now.
Melina: Okay, good, wisdom.
Oscar: Yeah, mine is a little different, kind of, but there is an agent involved. And this was really at the beginning, just at the part where I was transitioning from being a W-2 employee to doing this full time. And, of course, you’re in a spot at that point where your back is against the wall to a certain extent, you’re looking to make some money. So your decision-making process is…we’ll call it fog, for a lack of expletives. So…but…
Melina: Borderline desperate?
Oscar: Yeah, it’s a great way to put it, you know, because you’re…I’m walking away from a really good six-figure job and I’ve gotta make ends meet going forward, right? So the challenge becomes, what do I do? Opportunity shows up. The short side of the story is this opportunity shows up, the numbers make sense, it looks great. I get money ready to go. I’ve got my own money going into it, and it was all based on the word of an agent providing a CMA, right?
Melina: A Comparative Market Analysis.
Oscar: And…
Dave: Can those be manipulated, by chance?
Oscar: Depends who you ask.
Melina: Yes.
Oscar: But absolutely. And so, first lesson was most…there’s several, right? There’s…I mean, I’m getting all sweaty hand. Flashbacks, feel like I was in a war. So the first thing was that I took that agent’s word for the CMA, right? Mistake number one. The other was that I was playing in an area that I wasn’t familiar with. I didn’t know the neighborhood well enough, I didn’t know the surrounding areas well enough, I didn’t realize where that main strip was that really dictated a huge difference in values, so those things all came into play.
And, at the end of it all, it turned out that numbers looked good, again, based on the CMA. I was looking at making 40, 50 grand on the deal. So, got the money, locked it up, did it. Moved forward, got things going, did the rehab, got everything done. Get ready to put it on the market and realized that ARV’s probably not what we thought it was gonna be.
Dave: After Repair Value?
Oscar: Yeah, thanks. You guys are like my glossary.
Dave: Yeah, just in case there’s someone listening to this going, “What the heck is CMA and ARV and…?”
Oscar: X-Y-Z.
Melina: L-M-N-O-P.
Dave: ROI and blah-blah-blah. Anyways, so you put it on the market, and what happened?
Oscar: Turns out that versus making a $50,000 profit, it was actually a $76,000 swing from that to a $26,000 loss. Then, sanity sets back in and clarity starts to…the fog lifts, right, because now, “Oh hell, I’m losing money.” And that’s when I reach out to Melina and have the conversation of, you know, tail between my legs and saying, “I didn’t do what I was taught. I felt I had this,” like you guys said earlier, right? “I got this figured out. I’m in. I got it, ran with it, and here I am. I’m stuck now.” So Melina does what she does, and came in, rescued me out of it and, you know, I still experienced a loss but it wasn’t $26,000. It was more like $11,000. And the lessons learned abound, right, because it’s…I can step back now and kinda chuckle about it. Kind of, right?
Dave: You’re alive.
Oscar: And, you know, the thing is…so the street name is Andover. I was just thinking about this while you guys were talking about it, right? Right? Think about those two words that are in that name, “and over”, right? It’s the beginning and over, right? Or, it’s what Tim just said, right? Get it right and start doing this over and over and over, and doing it correctly. So it became…it’s interesting to step back now and look at it and say, “Man, I could have…” That was the beginning and, quite possibly, could have been the absolute end of anything that I had to do with this business. And to have you guys, right, everybody in this room right now, around to be able to continue to move forward instead of wallowing in my mess is huge. Without that, absolutely, it would have been “and over,” for sure.
Dave: Yeah. So good takeaway from that. So anybody listening to this, this is sometimes how we get people to submit or ask for our help, and they’ll say, “Well, the realtor said it’s worth this, the realtor said it’s worth that.” I’m not here to bash realtors. Realtors are a key component. We need realtors in our business. But you have got to be able to justify your comparables when you look at the CMAs, and sometimes, we see these huge swings, you know. Any time I see where there’s huge swings, especially when somebody submits comps or comparables and asking for help, you gotta be able to justify those swings. You know, why is that, why is there such a big difference, and Oscar said it’s the real key.
I’ve been on areas where I’m like, I don’t even know where I’m going, GPS got me here. I don’t know where I’m going and I don’t know the first thing about that neighborhood. I don’t know anything about the school district, I don’t know anything about, you know, is this side of the street good or that side of street good? I don’t know all that stuff, and you’ve gotta be able to get in there and figure those out, and not take someone’s word for it in that, “This is what the house is gonna sell for,” because, I mean, at the end of the day, that realtor makes their money off of selling you that house. Once that house is sold and you spend the next three, four, five, six months flipping it and sitting on the market and so forth, they’ve moved on. They made their money and they’ve moved on. And not all realtors are bad or anything like that, I’m not saying anything like that. You just have to be able to look at it and justify it. There’s not a time that I’ve ever purchased a house…like, even when you just said we drove to Vegas…
Melina: Yep.
Dave: We didn’t take the realtor’s word for it who took pictures and sent us that stuff. We got in the car and we drove to Vegas and looked at every single property.
Melina: Yeah, and it’s not only looking at the property, but it’s looking at the comps. That was the biggest thing, and that was, I think, probably the biggest mistake that you would agree you did, right, Oscar?
Oscar: Yeah, absolutely. It’s definitely a lesson learned that…I drive the comps now. If possible, I walk them whatever access I can get to it, and I check out the neighborhood, right? Are the neighborhoods similar now? It’s kind of weird when you drive in one neighborhood and there’s no sidewalks when there’s one that has sidewalks. Okay, really? Are they comparable? It’s not horse country so…right, what’s really happening? I think that’s why we always say, “Trust, but verify.”
Melina: Right, absolutely. That’s a good one.
Dave: That’s a good one. You know, this is…we’re gonna talk for hours, sit and go around this room, mistake after mistake after mistake. I think we’ll do…let’s get one more and then we’ll call it a day, and then we’ll come back and we’ll share some more. So I know we got all you guys here but there’s not a possibility we’ll be able to get all these in here, so which one of you got a short and sweet one you wanna tell us about?
Melina: I think we pick Tim.
Dave: We pick Tim? All right, I guess Tim’s up.
Melina: Yeah, because it’s a little bit of a…I think his story is…will try to hit all ends of mistakes.
Dave: You hit ’em all?
Tim: Well, which one are we talking about? Which mistake?
Dave: You mean you made more than one? No way. Go ahead. What do you got for us, Tim?
Tim: Probably my biggest thing is, have…it’s been in choosing partners, I think. You know, I can think back to probably the first partnership that I got involved with and it was…you know, there was a couple of us, there was three of us. We got together, and we were very close as far as…like, we had a relationship, we knew each other for a long time, and…
Melina: Great friends.
Tim: Great friends, great friends, and…
Melina: Friends don’t make great partners, you mean?
Tim: Not necessarily. I think they can, depending. But sometimes, friendship is not the thing to look at for your partnership, I think. And what ended up happening is that we…first of all, we didn’t put anything in writing. We just kinda said, “This is what we’re gonna do. We’re going to…you know, we’re gonna move forward, we’re gonna take on this business, we’re gonna, you know, go market inaudible 00:25:48]…
Melina: Take over the world?
Tim: We’re gonna take over the world and make, you know, world-changing decisions. And at the end of the day, what ended up happening was two of us actually worked and one of us didn’t. And I think it’s funny because, as I was thinking about this a little while ago, it depends on who you ask which two of us actually worked because I can guarantee you the person that I’m thinking that did nothing and took a fair share of the profits, if you ask them which one of us didn’t do any work, it wouldn’t be them. So I think that, again, my biggest thing has been in choosing partners and making sure that it gets put down in writing, that…
Dave: The expectations?
Tim: Yeah, expectations, who’s gonna do what, what happens, frankly, if a partner doesn’t come through, because that was something that never was discussed at all. Like, we talked about great big things, but we never talked about, like, what happens if, you know, as a team, we make $60,000, $80,000 and it all comes from one person’s activities, and other partners walk away with a lot of money for having done very little, you know? And frankly, what comes out of it is…what came out of it is fractured relationships, you know, which are probably more painful than anything.
Dave: Yeah, and you feel…you know, it’s interesting because there’s other partnerships where you could say that and it’s okay, so…that’s happened in our business as well, like, “Okay, well, we’re doing this, and that’s making the…our group or our partnership whatever amount of money, but our partner is working on something else,” not, “That partner is kind of hanging out, waiting for you to close that deal,” is what you’re really saying, right?
Tim: Yeah.
Dave: So there wasn’t really the synergy. It was, “I’m doing everything. I feel like I’m…actually, I know I’m doing everything, and the deal wouldn’t happen unless I was doing everything. And then, on top of it, I have an agreement that says we’re gonna split this profit X number of ways.” The deal gets closed and you’re writing checks, going, “How much money did I just give away?”
Tim: Yeah, that’s essentially what it was. It was doing deals with partners where, again, I paid out way more money than I ever kept, if that makes sense.
Dave: Sure.
Tim: Because I had partners and, you know, they…you know, in hindsight, they weren’t the right partners for me to begin with, but I learned a lot.
Melina: That’s actually a good point. That’s actually a really good point because…did you get…I feel like there’s a common theme with all of this, because I know when you came to us and told us what you were doing separately, both Dave and I shook our head and said, “Why did you do that,” because we knew…oh, and so did Frank. So…
Tim: Oh, yeah, I forgot about that.
Melina: Yeah. So I think that’s an important piece of information. And I kind of…I feel like that is the common message here, is there is power in numbers, there is power in relationships with other people that have no vested interests in what it is that you’re doing. And I believe that is the power in the club. And that’s actually how I keep Dave in line, too. I make sure that he writes down everything that he’s gonna do. When he doesn’t, I hold him accountable. I’m just kidding, none of that’s true.
Dave: I was like, “Huh?”
Melina: I had to lighten it up a little. No, I do think that it’s important that there’s so much power in having relationships outside relationships that don’t have a vested interest in what it is that you’re doing other than your own success. So I can look at Oscar and go…I could have…you know, and Oscar said, “Hey, I came to Melina afterward.” Well, I had no vested interest except for my love for Oscar and my desire, my sincere desire to see him succeed, right? Same thing with Tim, right? You know, we all love Tim and we want the best relationships for him and, but the one thing he didn’t do was come and have a conversation with other people. There is so much wisdom in having many advisors.
Dave: There you go. I think that’s a proverb.
Tim: So one of the things that I just got was, first of all, I think what I have is that I did come and talk to you guys. I just didn’t freakin’ listen. You know what I mean? Like, I remember…
Melina: Is that right, Frank? Is that what happened?
Frank: He’s correct, 100% correct.
Tim: Absolutely. Like, so that’s what I got. Like, just now, I’m like, you know, you can have this whole…I mean, this, you know…
Melina: Mastermind.
Tim: …mastermind that’s in this room right now, and you could sit down and you can get all of this great feedback, but if you go with you, if you don’t take the advice of the people that, frankly, know more than you and have been there, then…
Melina: I feel like there’s a definition, there’s a word for that. We all know the word.
Dave: Yeah, we won’t say it, though.
Tim: We won’t say it?
Dave: No.
Tim: Dang it.
Dave: Just in case.
Tim: We’re gonna call this podcast that. How’s that?
Melina: Oh, that would be great. So there is a word, and if you come to the club, it’s in the glossary.
Oscar: Oh, I forgot that.
Melina: It is. It’s absolutely in the glossary.
Frank: So, for me, right, there’s another side to this as well. There’s the, “I’m not gonna go ask because I got this.” There’s the, “I’ve asked but I’m still gonna go do what I wanna do,” and there’s the ones that won’t ask because they’re pretty sure they’re not gonna get the answer they’re looking for, right? And it’s the trifecta of crap, really, what it boils down to, because…
Melina: Dumbass-ery.
Frank: Dumbass-ery, yeah, great. It’s what happens, though. It’s us as humans, right, screwing things up and getting in our own way.
Dave: Well, sometimes, you know, I think our egos get in the way, especially…you know, we do have a lot of successful people in our club, right, and then we have a lot of the newbies. And I think, you know, even the newbies, the people who…the learning curve, and I’m sure everybody can relate to, you know, you wanna be that rock star that’s killing it and got deals all over the place and, you know, that kinda thing. But what people forget is that you had a learning curve as well. You know, like, you had to go through a learning curve in order to get there, and I think they wanna skip all that. So then they look for ways to force deals, right, instead of doing, like, which is we find every reason not to do the deal, and then when we’ve exhausted all of them and we can’t find any reason not to, then we pull the trigger and we move forward. And people wanna skip those steps. And I think it’s just human nature, right? I mean, at the end of the day, we all wanna be successful, we all wanna close deals, we all wanna be able to do that, but, you know, skipping the…and really taking for granted what we have in the club is probably a big key, and I think we’ve all been there.
Melina: Yeah. Well, I think the final thing to say is this, that the power is actually in the journey, not in the destination. That is where everything happens. That’s where your character is built. That’s where your success actually lies is what you do inside of the journey. So if I was gonna say there’s one thing to take away from this podcast, it is, yep, you’re gonna make mistakes, and I believe that it is what you do with the mistakes that makes or breaks you. So, I am unbelievably grateful that we have a room full of people like this that we can just turn to each other and say…we can laugh at our own mistakes, we could be honest about our own mistakes, but ultimately, work through them together to come out on the other side, and that’s where character is built.
Dave: Right, right. Well, we’re going to…let’s call that a wrap, and I can’t wait to hear some of our great mistakes as we do Part Two of this next time around. So, we’ll catch you guys later.
Melina: This is the Boswells, along with the Key Mastermind Group. We are flippin’ out.