Welcome back to another episode of the REI Mastermind Network! I'm your host, Jack Hoss, and today we have a fantastic guest joining us - the incredible Ace Hagerty. This episode is filled with wisdom and insights about the power of finding the right people for your real estate team.

Ace shares their journey of building a successful real estate business, emphasizing the importance of having the right individuals in the right roles. From an amazing assistant who keeps their life organized to skilled project managers who ensure everything runs smoothly, Ace knows the value of a strong team.

We dive deep into Ace's experiences in flipping houses, turnkey rentals, and ground-up developments. They share inspiring stories of turning run-down properties into beautiful units, increasing cash flow, and achieving substantial profits. But it's not all smooth sailing - Ace also reveals the mistakes they've made and the lessons they've learned along the way.

Plus, Ace opens up about their personal transformation during a 100-day challenge, which led to the creation of an empowering book. We'll discuss the importance of maximizing our skills, setting clear goals, and focusing on specific niches. And let's not forget, Ace is also committed to making a difference in the world by supporting a nonprofit organization, Operation Rescue Children.

Get ready for a jam-packed episode filled with real estate insights, personal growth inspiration, and valuable advice on building the right team. So, grab your notepad, sit back, and let's dive right into today's episode with the incredible Ace Hagerty!

Connect with Ace Hagerty: SuperHerobyDesign.com

Key Topics and Bullets:

Importance of Finding the Right People for Your Team

• Role of an amazing assistant in organizing life and handling bookkeeping
• Importance of having the right people in the right positions
• Negative impact of a project manager who wasn't a good fit

Book Recommendation - "Who Not How"

• The book emphasizes the importance of finding the right people for success

Real Estate Investing Journey

• Success and profit from a quick rehab on a property
• Exploration of different real estate strategies
• Turning a run-down property into beautiful units for increased cash flow
• Transition to a turnkey rental business and ground-up development

Learning from Failures and Mistakes

• Mistakes made when flipping houses in Nashville
• Loss of significant money on a flip due to wrong contractor and lack of oversight
• Realization of the importance of sticking to prices and effective communication

Overcoming Challenges in Real Estate Investments

• Challenges posed by COVID-19
• Current success despite difficult times
• Smart pricing strategies in the face of a high-interest loan market
• Comparison with a nearby developer who had to drop prices and lose money

Focus and Setting Clear Goals

• Importance of focus in achieving financial freedom
• Determining a niche and type of real estate investing
• Need for creativity and standing out from the mainstream
• Achieving goals faster through specific targeting

Real Estate Investing Journey - Finding Strengths and Partnering

• Finding strengths in construction and fixing issues in the field
• Need to find people who are proficient in sales and marketing
• Development partner focused on finding deals and selling
• Speaker focuses on their strengths and responsibilities

Making a Meaningful Change and Giving Back

• Support of Operation Rescue Children, a nonprofit organization combatting illegal sex trafficking
• Efforts to rescue slaves, provide help, and assist in reintegration
• Desire to make a change and give back to society through book sales

Current Real Estate Market Conditions

• High-interest rates causing a slowdown in the housing market
• Panic-driven price drops and fire sales
• Holding firm on prices and betting on the quality of the product
• Successful sales and contracts for full asking price

Personal Growth and Empowerment

• Writing a book as a personal growth journey, not just for publication
• Love for comic books and belief in everyone's inner superhero
• Experiences during a 100-day challenge, including extreme activities
• Lifestyle changes and realization of the power of the nervous system
• Book providing personal tools and principles for transformation
• Motivation behind the podcast and sharing inspiring stories

We have Ace Haggerty here with me today, and you can learn more about

what Ace is up to by heading over to

SuperHeroByDesign.com. And I'll

make sure to have that as a clickable link in the show notes, but Ace

has been in the real estate business now for 10 or more years.

He also has a podcast of his own. So, again, head over to

SuperHeroByDesign.com, and you'll find some links to that as well.

But, Ace, I really appreciate your time here today. Hey, Jack.

The pleasure's all mine. I really appreciate being on your show. I've

listened to your show. The guests you have on are fantastic.

They just give such good information to your audience

and you yourself are phenomenal as well. So I just hope

that today I just show up and add some value.

I think you can add some significant value because when before we hit

record, you mentioned that you are

about to become financially free after 10 years of doing

this. And It sounded like there was a

winding road to this. Can you talk a little bit

about what changed and

the trajectory here. Yeah. No. I appreciate you asking that. That's a

phenomenal question. It has been a windy road as

being an oprenuer being a real estate investor.

There's that joke. It's something like the shiny object

syndrome where you see a shiny object and you run straight

towards it, and that's how I was for a really long time.

I started off in the business. Let me back up real

quick. I'm a structural engineer by trade. So I went to college,

got my degree. I got a couple degrees, and

went into consulting and then jumped into construction

being a project manager and running crews and still doing structural

engineering. But about 10 years ago,

a realtor buddy of mine came up to me and at that time,

there were just a lot of us going on and he found

somebody who was interested in doing a short sale. They were about

to go bankrupt, give up the house, everything. So we did a short sale

deal and he was like, hey. I've got this deal. Do you wanna fix it

up? We can go in 5050, and we can flip

it and sell it. And at that time, I didn't know much about real estate

investing other than what Chip and Joanne gains did on fixer

upper. I was like, oh, so we could do like a fixer upper type thing.

And -- And it only does it's only done in 30 minutes. Right? Yeah. Exactly.

Exactly. And they're using some of my crews that I had at the instruction company

I worked for and some subcontractors that I had met over the

years. We did pretty much a lipstick

rehab on this property, got it done within 3 months. And the

only reason it took 3 months is back then when you're doing a short sale,

when you bought the house, at least this wasn't California where I was

born and raised. That's where I started all this out at you had to

wait 3 months. So within 90 days, we got it rehabbed. I did a lot

of what people would call sweat equity. I did a lot of the work

myself. with my guys, and we got it ready and flipped

it. And we made after paying everybody and

everything, we netted $90,000. So we split

45,000 each. My first flip, it was a lipstick flip. And

you would have thought at that time, with that kind of money and that

short amount of time that I would have been like, oh my god. This is

my golden ticket to creating the

life that I've always wanted to create, but me being a structural

engineer, I'm very conservative. I'm conservative with money. I'm conservative

with my approach. And so I didn't learn

from that first flip. And so I started off

very slowly doing a flip at a time. then

came across a property. How about we refinance this,

pull all the money out that we put in, and get some tenants in back

then, there was no burst strategy. And but I was

like, this is a really cool strategy. Like, I could put some of my

money in Purchase it, fix it up, refi

it, get renters in, or, sorry, get renters in, refi. That's

it. and rinse and repeat. So I started doing

that one at a time. I loved Airbnb's. So I

was like, let me let me start working on Airbnb as well.

And so I ended up doing that as well. Instead

of making it a long term rental, I made it a short term rental.

And so you could see that I'm getting interested in all

these different things, these different avenues because I was just excited. I was a

young entrepreneur. I still had my w 2. So I

was moonlighting at nights, weekends, and I the one

thing I can say about myself is I'm a really hard work.

I grew up in a blue collar family. So work ethic is

not anything that's foreign in my family. And so

it's not the best being a business operator instead of a business owner, and

that's one of the other things I I struggled with over the years. But

You could see as my progression went through

real estate, I was trying different things. I was being creative, being an engineer.

I'm a big problem solver. And so I was always big on

just different strategies. There's something that I think the bigger pocket guys

talk about a lot now. It's not long term. It's not short term. They call

it, like, midterm or middle term rentals month to month.

And I had a project in Georgia that I did where it was

an 11 unit complex, 1 bedroom, 1 bathroom

units, almost like efficiencies, and they were making about $700 a

month and they were really crappy. Maybe, actually less than

that $500 a month. And people didn't like it. It was

infested with bats and roaches and just nasty stuff. And I was like,

what if we did like an Airbnb thing? But instead,

we go on to a website like furnished finder. and get nurses

in there. There was a lot of hospitals in that town. I never had done

it before, and this was a few years ago as well. And we

turned those 11 units into these beautiful they look

like Airbnb's, but we rented them out to nurses, and it was

Cash flow was insane. They went from $500 a

month to $1200 a month, and we ended up selling

the property making a boatload of money off of that. And it

was just we had this problem with this problem property

And it was like, okay. Let's take this prop, and

let's try to get creative with a solution. Let's not just

fix it up half ass. Yeah. Sorry for cussing. I don't know if you have

cussing on your let's take this really

rundown property in fested nastiness,

and let's make it something beautiful and get some

tenants in that would absolutely love this and work with their schedule. And

then, yeah, now I I know the bigger pockets guys push it a

lot, but that's, like, the new sexy big thing. And

It was just me trying to, at that time, just solve problems, and that's what

I love doing. And I know I'm going on about

this, but a business I started, I thought it was gonna be a fix

and flip business, and then it becomes a turnkey rental business.

We're fixing these places up We're getting them rented

out and that now we're we've found a connection that the business

partners and I have people who can offload properties very quick and

easy to investors as turn keys. And so we started a

turnkey business. As of today, I'm in Nashville,

Tennessee, I love this town. It's a booming town. It has

been. I've been here for the last 5 years. And

more recently, I had purchased some land development

is huge here, and I was interviewing contractors.

And I have 15 years of engineering and construction

experience. And I was interviewing the contractors, and I was like,

man, they're expensive. And the workmanship

in this town for the majority of the builders out here isn't very

good. In my opinion, I'm very conservative, and I build a very

good product no matter what I do. And I remember one of the

contractors told me he's, hey. Like, he was joking because I

was doing some engineering work for him. He was joking. He's yeah. You

probably know this stuff better than me and could build it better anyways. I was

like, thinking in my head, I was like, 1, that's not a very good sales

tactic. But but, 2, like, his fee for this development

was a 125,000. I was like, Man, that's like

half of what I make doing my engineering business every year.

Like, why don't I just do this myself? And then COVID hit

And I was like, I'll just take my test and start

building myself. So fast forward to the last

year. That's what I've been doing. Now I'm a ground up developer

building single family residential homes, multifamily

townhouses and all of that. So it's been a

pretty long journey for me. And I know I

think Robert Kersaki talked about him becoming

financially free. I think he said it took him 10 years. And so I'm about

to follow that path, but I know this in this day and age,

it can be done a lot faster. And I feel like it was a

long windy road for me but

I gained a lot of knowledge. I learned a lot about the different parts

of real estate investing and I

learned a heck of a lot of lessons because I didn't make a lot of

mistakes. I did have a lot of failures on this journey, but

I feel like it has made me it's gotten me to where I am

today, and it's definitely made me a better investor, a better

person, a better manager of people,

And I don't recommend it to everybody because it was a hard

road, but at the same time, that's what I

went through. That's what I had to go through. Yeah. Before we hit

record, you alluded to the fact that, you know, what is the old saying? You

if you chase multiple multiple rabbits, you won't catch any.

Right. Is that the situation there? You mentioned

that you think it could have been a lot shorter? Was it because you've

you were pursuing so many avenues that you think that

Yeah. If that was the downfall there? Yeah. It took me a while

to quit my w 2, so to speak, and go

into real estate investing full time. I was still very

conservative, and I didn't wanna just jump feet first

into it even though that first flip you

would have thought, oh my goodness, but you hear a lot of people's stories. Like,

they get that taste and then that insatiable taste of

real what real estate brings to you when you pick up

that property or you sell that property, like that feeling is so

amazing. And one of the biggest lessons I

learned in the past 10 years is

really the importance of focus.

What is it you want? What is it that you really

want? And then figuring out whatever that is,

how to get to it and also obviously having to why to back that up

and really reverse engineering it. You would think maybe in an engineer,

I this would have been second nature to me. Where do I wanna be? So

when I talk about being financially free, what does that mean in in

terms of dollars? how much money do I need to be bringing in

on my investments so that I can be

financially free and and then reverse engineer that.

Okay. if it's single family homes, how many do I need? How

many what's the typical net that you're gonna be bringing in

on the type of residential home. So is it what classes it

is it in? What part of the country? Is it long distance, short

term? And really just taking those steps and evaluating, okay, what

do I wanna be doing as well? Do I wanna be doing single family? Do

I wanna be doing commercial? And then learning everything

you can about that niche that specific

part of real estate investing because I always tell people, I

one thing I love about real estate in general and real estate

investing is you're only

as good at real estate investing as creative as you can be.

The more creative you can be, the more likely you are to

break yourself away from that herd because as real estate investing gets

more popular and mainstream and you get bigger pockets and chip

and Joanne and all those people making

everybody think that they can be the next big real estate investor.

It is just vital to

know what you wanna do and where you wanna go.

And so I think, yeah, the biggest lesson for

me over these past 10 years is I should

have and hate to use the word should, but I

really feel like if I had focused on something

more specifically, then this 10 years would have been

condensed a lot a lot more, and I would have gotten

to where I am about to be a lot faster. Yeah.

I have a buddy who recently said to

in order to get multiple streams of income, you you must

1st master 1. Yep. And that's very true.

And the more I've been doing this, the more I every like

you said, every entrepreneur has this where you're constantly fighting

the urge of change chasing the next shiny object.

Yeah. It's just it's a curse if you it's much more than

anything else. When I was doing my turnkey rentals, so I'm in

Tennessee, and we started down in, like, middle

Georgia. Columbus, Georgia specifically. And

we started buying rentals there, fixing them up, had a whole crew down

there, started selling them to investors. Then we moved to

Cincinnati, Ohio after that. Me being the hands on

person that I love to be, and that's it

gets to a point that it's actually a detriment. I was driving down to Georgia,

which was about, I think, 5 a half hours and then driving

up to Cincinnati, which was another 4, I think, 4

hours and doing that about once or twice a week in

addition to running my engineering business, which was me

because I'm the structural engineer doing it all. And then starting these

developments at the same time, you can see yourself, and that's been

a repeating theme throughout my history as well. It's not only I was going for

different things and not focusing. I was stretching myself way too

thin. I was being the business operator rather than the

business owner. And I had employees.

I had contractors. So I wasn't literally doing all

the work myself, but my time management wasn't

where it needed to be I think that's a huge aspect too is once

you focus on something, you gotta figure out what

your time management is gonna be, what you're gonna actually spending

your time on day in and day out, and are you maximizing your time?

Are you maximizing your skill set and then everything else

can go to somebody else. And that was something that I had

learned over the years as well. Sure. You

just a minute there. You said that, you know, That's

something that I've always struggled with too is that you frankly, you

nobody you employ seems to care as much as you do. So you it's hard

to let certain things go What type of strategies have you

used to learn to rely on more of a team?

One strategy I learned is finding the right people my

assistant right now, she is absolutely amazing.

One thing I learned about myself, even though I'm an engineer, I'm not a very

organized person, And so my assistant organizes

my life. From my calendar, she does most of my bookkeeping. I have

an accountant and a CPA, but she does, like, the day to day stuff. so

that she can keep me in the loop with what's going on

with where we're spending because I'm doing 1,000,000 of dollars of

development right now. And if I didn't have the right people

in the right place, it would have blown up at this point

and shoot from what I'm learning development, it's

hard enough. without all of this. So it's, I think,

finding the right people, but not only finding the right people, making sure

they're in the right place. because not everybody is gonna be a great

assistant. Not everybody is gonna be a great project manager. I had a

project manager for that turnkey business who was a phenomenal person, a

hardworking person, but he wasn't a great person

manager, and it all just fell apart eventually because He hit

what's called the Peter principle, and he got up to a certain

level that was his ceiling, whether he realized it or I

realized it or not. And so finding the

right people. There's a book, who not how. It's finding

the right whose and making sure they're also in the right

position. Yeah. You're not the only one who's brought up this book recently,

the this concept. And just to remind everybody, again, it's

superherobydesign.com. Take a look at ACE's

book and the links there for his podcast. It it

actually sounds like you've taken the concept of niching down

not only on your business level, but your personal level, where you're

you finally have realized where your shortcomings are

and filling in those gaps with those appropriate.

Who's? Yeah. Yeah. 100%.

What happened in this past year. So you had mentioned the book. I wrote

a book back in January from about it I did this thing called the

100 day challenge. And it's for anybody listening, if

they know Andy forsella and 75 hard, take

75 hard, and put it on steroids, and this is what the

100 day challenge is. So for a 100 days, what I ended up

doing was I did everything from waking up at 5:30 in the

morning to taking cold showers to exercising 5

days a week to really getting my

diet in line the project I wanna do to do was write a

book in a 100 days. I've never written a book before. I've tried, and I

failed. This time I wanted to complete it. So I did all these

things and I just was just up early,

stayed up late and just got at it for a 100

days as far as my business was concerned. I

stopped. I took myself out of the engineering business. The

turnkey rental business, I my partners and

I made the decision to buy me out. And so I was

focused solely on 1, the 100 day challenge and

everything had to do then, but from a business standpoint, I was

focused on the development business, and it's

crazy because from January, 2022 to

today, January 2023. Interest rates

are absolutely insane. and the housing market

is slowed significantly because of that.

Now from the outside looking in, it's, oh my goodness, doomsday.

worse thing possible. What the heck's going on? And

I'm finishing up my developments. I've already had ones that have finished a

couple months ago. We put it on the MLS. Everybody

else around us. Not everybody else, but a lot of people were dropping their

prices because they were freaking out. Fire sale so to

speak. And my partner and I, we looked at each other where, like,

construction costs have gone through the roof. these developments

have taken a lot longer than we thought they would have taken.

What are we gonna do? And I was we looked at each other, and we're

pretty in sync with our values and our mindset. We're like, we're gonna bet on

ourselves. We're gonna keep our price hold to our

price and loan behold, some of the houses we've

built have sold already or are under

contract, for full asking in a market that

most people are terrified at, but we knew the

product. Like, I'm gonna say this again. our product is so

important to us. We want the best product for what

we're working on. And so they're

not the cheapest houses around. They're actually higher end,

not country music star, high end, higher end houses, and

we bet on ourselves And these developments, I'm gonna keep

some of them. I'm gonna sell some of them. This is the vehicle

that's gonna make me financially free because I've been able to

focus on one thing as far as real

estate's concerned and also

really just bet on myself and

make decisions from a position of

power rather than a position of weakness We had a

just for an quick example, there's somebody a block away from

us. Same exact house, a 1000 square feet more.

than ours. He dropped his price. He's losing money on

that development. We were priced $30,000

more than him a 1000 square feet less.

He sold his. We got under contract and sold ours

for our price because they went through his

house, didn't want it. It was a duplex. Ours was a duplex, so they

went through the other available unit. And even though it was a 1000 square

feet more a block away, gorgeous finishes, the guy

did a great job, but they wanted our house.

and that was a testament to us standing strong

to what we believed was right and what we believed was a

great product and that was priced appropriately. We did

not need to play the game of take it down and just beg for

somebody to take this off because the interest payments right now are ridiculous

for these construction loans. Anyone that knows about construction loans, they are

heavy at the end because they the interest is based off of the money you've

used that you've taken out of the loan. So all the money has been spent

and more. And so at this point, we're paying a ton in interest, and

that's where investors really lose their money at the end of a project for a

development like what I do. But, yeah, we held strong, and

that's what we're continuing to do through this crazy time right

now, and it's getting me all the

results that I never got before even though for the last

10 years, things have been going great with real state

minus COVID hitting for a couple months, but everything

else just keeps going up and up for the last 10 years.

And now in what has been the hardest time in the last 10

years, I'm seeing the best results. It's interesting that you

remind me the concept that, you know, acting out of

confidence in the value you bring versus acting out of desperation.

Yep. And typically the when you have that type of stance,

it's almost I hate to use the word, but repulsive in a

way. In this situation, you gave the example where that

fella had a house, bigger house, maybe similar

accommodations, but him doing dropping the

price and doing some of that, there's some signaling there to the marketplace

that there might be something else wrong with the house. There might be something that

that they're just not privy to, and you staying

strong in the value that you bring. it it

really is telling us to how that can impact

a sale. Yeah. I think it's one of the things I've learned in this past

10 years is setting the right on the front end. One of

my biggest mistakes that I continued to make over and over

again is I wouldn't set up the right expectations with my employees I

wouldn't set up the right expectations with my subs and how you

do that. It's a quick conversation. You could literally say

I expect this and this. or you could just present yourself

in a certain way, bring that confidence and say, alright. What's the time

frame for this? What's the budget for this? Okay. I expect you to do

y and z, and it's very and then all you have to do after that

is just follow-up and make sure and be like, hey. Remember that

conversation we had a week month ago, however long,

let's just stick to that. It doesn't have to be a fight, an argument,

anything like that, but if you're presenting yourself in a strong, confident

way, And at the same time, you're setting the right expectation for everybody

around you and the right expectation for yourself and upholding that

things tend to work out a lot more than they don't once

you do that. Yeah. That's a great lesson. Setting expectations.

We've even got to the point where we set expectations even when we're

going to a property and and talking to the distressed seller. It

just having those they know the next step and what's

gonna come out of it is it's meant to change the world when

it comes to doing that type of work. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. And you hit

on something too. Like, we're talking about strengths and weaknesses.

almost for a full year within that time frame,

I was I had this goal to get a house on my

own. because traditionally, I would find my flips through a realtor or

a wholesaler or somebody like that. So for a year, I was like, I'm

gonna get my own deal myself. So I

studied. I practice sales and marketing and talking

to to clients and all this and that. And,

one, lack of confidence back then. I'm sure the people could see it when I

approached them. I wasn't confident in my offer or anything like that. But, 2, I

wasn't very good at that. I was very good at the construction side

of it. picking the right finishes, making sure things are structurally

sound. If there's issues in the field, I could fix

them immediately. That's my superpower. is

the construction, not the front end or the back ends. Over the years too, I

would find people and be like, front end people

that are able to do what I am not really good at

and back end people selling the property things like that. So my development

partner, he's really good at the front end, finding the deals, finding the

land, and he's fantastic also at selling the

product. But then my strength is in the middle,

and that's where I need to be. And once I did that as well, got

in my own lane, so to speak, and let my partner be in his own

lane and understood who was responsible for what. That changed

everything as well. If you wouldn't mind, let's just spend

a little time on your book and what you did regarding this 100 day challenge.

I was glancing through the table of contents here And it almost

reads like you you're another I shouldn't say you're

another. You it almost reads like you're doing something

like Tim Ferris if you're familiar with him. Oh, yeah. -- these

extreme challenges just to see what results he's gonna get.

because you're looking through this and you got you talked about

sleep, breathing, dopamine,

cold water immersion, thoughts, anchors, healing, prayer,

habits, and rituals, there's a lot to uncover here.

It's a relatively it's a relatively short book. It's

would be easy to digest for most people. Out of everything you

experienced during those 100 days, what was a

couple of those things that you found were the biggest benefit. The best

part of writing the book, and I told myself at the beginning of this,

if I wrote this book and I never published it, That's

fine because just the exercise of

the countless hours that I put into research, the countless hours that I

put into writing this thing, I did this thing in a 100 days. I was

writing about, I think, 600 words a day, minimal, and

I was doing about an hour to an hour a half research every day, 7

days a week for a 100 days. So I told myself at the beginning, you

know what? Worst case scenario, I never published this book,

but that's That's not my mission. That's not what I'm here to

do. And so the book essentially,

it does a couple things. 1, it catalogs my life

prior to the 100 day challenge, who I was before that,

my journey in the 100 day challenge, and then who I became and what

I'm doing after that 100 days, So it talks about personal

stories of my life at that point when I

was younger and I tie in the whole

super superhero aspect of it because I grew

up a comic book fan. I love watching Marvel

movies. I grew up watching the X Men movies and Spiderman and

Batman just love those. And I also have

this belief. I've had this for years that people have

this inner superhero? Why are people like Tim Ferris able

to do these incredible things with their lives?

And I've all I feel like everybody is born with a special gift and a

special ability. We just need to know how to find it and how

to train it and how to design it. That's why the book and the

podcast actually are called superhero by design that

we're able to design ourselves from the inside out

of the type of life we wanna have and who we wanna be. So as

I was going through this 100 day challenge, I was doing crazy stuff too.

Yeah. Cold water immersion. So ice baths, cold

showers every day. I was a big fan of the ice man,

Wim Hof, and learning about the Wim Hof method, his breathing

techniques, and what it does for is breathing techniques

keep you from they boost your immune system. They keep you from

getting sick. And so I was doing all this crazy

stuff. I was working out 2 hour workouts 5 days a week. I was with

a trainer, not even a local trainer. I did a teletraining from a

guy in Miami, and I was taking in only

1800 calories a day while doing all this

exercise while stay getting up early, staying up late, cold

water. I wasn't getting sick. I had tons of energy.

I kicked. I wasn't doing any bad habits anymore, so I stopped drinking

alcohol. I even stopped drinking caffeine. And so I went

with through caffeine and sugar withdrawals. At the beginning of the challenge, I did

a I started with a 10 day cleanse, and I was able to do all

this extreme stuff to prove I I

didn't realize that at the time, but I was proven to myself that you can

do a lot of things in such a short 100 days

sounds like a lot. And when you're in it, it's a lot. But a

100 days just goes by like this. We just finish this year. That's 365

days. This was only the 1st 100 days of 2022.

And so I did all these incredible things. I wrote this book and as I

was writing it, I found what is the ultimate

superpower of anybody and every chapter breaks down

the same basic superpower, and that's our nervous system.

So I started listening to guys. Amazing podcast, HubermanLab,

Andrew Huberman, He's blown up recently this past

year. Great neuroscientist. And I was like, all these superpowers,

breathing, cold water, neuroplasticity, habits

rituals, and you could read books like atomic habits as a phenomenal

book about micro habits. and all of this

stems back to our nervous system. So once I realized that and I

started leveraging and using the tools that's that are

already inside of me. All this stuff's free. All this stuff is at our

fingertips. We just need to know how to use it and to take the day

that's the great thing about the 100 day challenge. It's daily discipline

doing all of these things. It was an incredible journey.

in the past, in a 100 days, I completely turned the script on

my life. And now I'm living a life that is completely different If you

had talked to me a year ago, you couldn't you wouldn't even write you'd recognize

actually, I was £45 heavier. So you might not even physically

recognize me, but you wouldn't recognize the per and who I am today. In

this book catalogs that it teaches people the tools that

I used personally, but it also teaches them the principles of our

nervous systems there's tools that haven't even been created yet that people

can figure out for themselves. And so this is a great

book. There's a lot of good stories about it. And then from that sparked the

podcast. The buddy of mine who has his own podcast was like, let's sell the

book. You need to build an audience. So why don't you start a podcast? And

I was like, a pod what? I know Joe Rogan does

this show online from time. I didn't know what a podcast was.

And so I started a podcast and you know what? Starting

my podcast has been one of the single greatest things I've done in my

life. I'm really proud of the book and the book that I wrote, and I

think it's gonna add tremendous value to anybody that

reads it, but the podcast itself has become a passion project

for me because I get to interview people that I

consider real life superheroes that are just doing amazing things.

It's not a real estate podcast. but it's a podcast to hear

good inspiring stories to empower people

and just really promote people taking control of their lives and

taking control of their destiny and learning a lot of cool things

that they can do to become a superhero and really just change the

world. Yeah. I've had some people ask me, I don't run

very many ads on the podcast, and it's really for a

reason. Most people ask, why do you continue to do this? like, why?

What are you getting out of this? And it's I find it a main

the mindset getting out of it equals strictly

some sort of cash transaction that

they the you there's a lot more value

in talking to somebody like you and

making this connection, building the network, learning from each other,

and having this conversation that's worth far

more to me than any kind of direct

monetary gain that you may or may not get. I agree with

you a 100%. I had said this from day 1 when it

comes to the book that anybody that purchases

it a portion of the proceeds goes to a nonprofit

that I support and am a part of. I've become a part

of recently in the past few months. It's called Operation Rescue

Children. And, essentially, it is an

501c3 nonprofit that

trains seal team 6, the Texas Rangers, like,

not just the elite groups, but the elite of the elite groups, and

even down to local police officers and all that. Yeah.

They train all of these people to go into these op

these illegal operations for sex trafficking,

and they bust up those operations free these slaves.

And then get them the right help that they need to get them back

into society and get them jobs and and all of that. So it's

just it's something I never thought I would

specifically be a part of and do, but now

that I'm in it, I can't see my life without being a

part of something like this. I have no experience with sex trafficking. I was not

trafficked. I don't know anybody that was traffic, but it is a huge problem.

And for years years, just like becoming

financially free and all of that, I I there was always a part of me

that wanted to do more and give more, but then I looked at the 1st

38 years of my life. And I was like, I provided. I worked hard, but

really did I give back? Did I do something meaningful? If I

died today, is there something that I could point

at and say that I really made a change in this world that this world

is now different after I'm gone, then when I first got

here, and the answer was no. And that

scared the hell out of me. And so part I love

working with ORC, but part of what you were talking about,

the book, obviously, I want to sell a lot of books, not for

money, because that's not important to me. What's really

important to me is changing people's lives. I know this book can do it, and

so that's why I put the money where my mouth is and every book

that's sold, a portion of those profits go directly to ORC.

Oh, that's awesome. It's coming full circle. You're in the trenches

now helping the actual superheroes among us. I

appreciate you saying that it There's 2 pillars that I

live by in my life now, and that's

growth and contribution I love

learning. I've always loved learning. I'm a structural engineer by trade. Like, I went

to crazy universities and studied my butt off

because I absolutely loved it. but then I got caught in the 9

to 5 and the w 2, and I lost that love of learning. So this

past year too, being able to learn about the nervous on being able

to learn from all these amazing people in the world has just

reignited a fire. And so part of my daily rituals

are to study every day. I read more now than I've

ever read before. I'm going online. It's so cool today because you could watch

YouTube videos you can listen to podcasts. And

so I'd love the nonstop learning,

and I also do it for the second part because if I can be more

then I can do more. And I feel like

learning is great, and it makes me feel great, but now I can transfer that

to other people. And since I've transformed my life,

people have been coming to me asking for my help,

and I've been able to empower, inspire, and help other

people. And that, to me, game over. I'm

living the best life. ever, and it's because of my

growth and my contribution. So, well, that's just so great

to hear. I just wanna remind everybody one more time,

SuperHeroByDesign.com for links to

the book and podcast and a few other resources. Check out

Ace's podcast, superhero by design. I'll make sure to have

all of those direct links, clickable links in the show notes.

But to hate to do this to you, Ace, but we're gonna close out with

some of those rapid fire questions I warned you about. I love it.

Bring it on. So first off, what is a real estate

investing myth you'd like to bust here today? One of the myths

that I had, and I would call it a

limiting belief as well, is when I first started out in real

state. I thought you had to have money to make money in real estate. So

all the deals I was putting my own money in, I was

never borrowing money, I was, yeah, other than, like,

bank loans. But from the turnkey

property, the turnkey business that I was in, I didn't put any

money in. We raised money,

and we had happy investors. and

we were able in just a span of 2 years by, I believe,

over 150 houses, not using a single

dime. I did put some money in eventually, but what I had

learned was the power of other people's

money. And the cool thing is you can get as creative as

you want. Like, when you have private money, you can

really make the terms whatever you want as long

as it works well with whoever's lending you the money.

And I'm also a very moral person too, so I'm never one to

take advantage of anyone, but I had these limiting beliefs that borrowing money

from other people was bad, but you know what? We made money. They made

money. Everyone was happy. And once you start doing that,

your mindset completely changes and using

the power of leveraging other people's resources, whether it's

time, money, doesn't matter. Like, that accelerates

the growth of your business and your mission. It it

was absolutely incredible to break that old mindset. What book

would you recommend, or what are you reading right now? Alright. I'll give you

both right now. Literally right next to me. I'm reading

David Goggins new book, never finished. Love that guy to

death. I want I don't wanna be him because

I don't wanna run ultra marathons. but his tenacity with how

he attacks life, I respect so much and

me doing that 100 day challenge. I feel like putting myself

in the fire every day is makes

life come alive. One of my favorite books of all

time is the compound effect by Darren Hardy.

And that's that that goes back to the 100 day challenge too. Just

small incremental changes every single day. atomic

habits talks about that as well, but I love the compound effect

and the principle behind it of that accelerated growth at

first. Every day, it might be mundane. You don't wanna do it, and you don't

really see any changes, but man, that exponential curve he

talks about, those results just shoot you into the moon

after that. It's absolutely an incredible book.

Yeah. Goggin, you would bring up Goggin. He he has a fluidity

about his cursing that is unraveled and just unbelievable.

Yeah. I I love following him on social media too. Every other word is a

mother effort. It's he's an incredible, credible person. Yeah. But

his mindset is unbelievable. What is your biggest real estate

investing mistake and what did you learn from it? I think we

got we went over quite a few mistakes that I've made. I would say one

of the worst I came to Nashville thinking I'd be the

next big flipper, and I picked up a property within the

1st month and a half And I just made so many

mistakes because I had flipped houses in California before I moved here and I was

very successful. Never lost money. And so got

into this flip. I found the wrong who's wrong

contractor, wrong realtor, I didn't know my

numbers. I didn't do enough research to figure out my numbers well

enough. Shoot. I didn't even know the right formula

for flipping at that time because I relied on my partner in California

to figure all that out, but now it was on me. So I didn't know

my numbers very well. I didn't have enough oversight. I

didn't set the right expectations with my crew my contractor and

my realtor on the front end. And during the

project, I didn't keep track of my numbers as well as I do now. I

didn't have my assistant keeping me organized. And so I

lost a significant amount of money on that flip. I did the scared

thing because choice of weakness I

the realtor was like, let's drop it. Okay. 2 weeks later. Let's

drop it. Okay. And I sold out of weakness And

the worst part of that selling out of weakness is the people that bought

it were pissed off at me because there were some floor sloping that went

on. And we did some foundation work that I ran and engineered,

and we did some phenomenal foundation work on that house, but it was

still sloped and they thought that I had sold them a

poor house, and they were telling me they wanted to sue

me They were saying some pretty horrible things behind my back

to my contractor friend who was out there trying to help me

fix the situation. And you know what? If I had stuck to my guns, didn't

reduce my price, said this is the price. This is what you're gonna pay.

It's worth this is a good product because it was I would

never have had that backlash at the end. It I never thought about that

till now until we talked about this earlier as absolutely insane.

what people think they buy depending on how you sell it to them. That's

a really interesting perspective. So what if you could

go back in time and give your younger self one piece of advice, what would

that be? It would be focus focus. I wish I

would have focused on something accelerated my growth,

accelerated my expertise. Like you said, what you said earlier was phenomenal. Focus

on one thing. get that going. And then you can add something else

in, but until you get that dialed in, don't just try

3 or 4 things at the same time and give them partial focus because that's

what I've been doing the last, not 10 years. I guess the 9

years prior to that, and it was showing mediocre results

for a ton of work, a ton of stress, and it was

not worth it whatsoever. Okay. You have 60

seconds. You gotta give everybody a tip or trick that they can

implement in their lives today. What would it be? I would say there was a

documentary that doctor Dre had done That was phenomenal.

And the lesson learned from Doctor Dray's career

is he always bet on himself. And at the end of the day, you said

it earlier, no one's gonna care about your business

or what's going on with you more than yourself. You gotta be

looking out for your interest. And then when it

comes like my development example I gave where we got

our price we were betting on ourselves, and that

changed everything. So if you don't bet on

yourself in life, by default, you're already telling yourself you're not

a winner because why would someone not bet

on a winner? So if you're betting on other people to help you get

to where you need to go. That is the wrong way of approaching

life. Business doesn't matter. So bet on yourself because

you are a winner And once you start doing that and making

your own reality, everything's gonna follow

that. Please, this was a great conversation. I hope you come back

again sometime. Again, it's superherobydesign.com,

but is there a question or concept you wish we would have covered here today?

Oh, man. I I think we covered it all as far as, like, mindset and

and potential miss. I know there's a lot more mistakes out there, but I've made

a whole slew of them. but it's, like I said, I wouldn't be

here today if I hadn't gone down that journey. It would have been nice

for it to be a little more condensed, but you know what? I'm not in

control. There's already a plan set out. I just gotta follow the

path. Thanks again. This was great. You're welcome back. I hope

you'll take me up on that. Last time here, superherobydesign.com.