The big challenge is this: How are investors like us who are not backed by a billion hedge fund who are investing money from our own pockets? How do we buy, sell, and invest in the properties we believe in, yet still make a profit without risking all of our own money? That is the challenge. In this podcast, we'll give you the answers. My name is Nate Armstrong and welcome to the social media blueprint.
All right, welcome. Welcome to the podcast, the social media blueprint podcast. Today we are covering why military members Excel in real estate investing in particularly why they're excelling inside of the social media blueprint. Okay, so we've got some active member military folks in our program and we additionally have a lot of veterans in our program. And so we went on this little case study. We noticed the common thread, number one, they are kicking button ticking names like they're doing better than a lot of the folks in our program.
(00:54): And even with zero experience coming in. So we had to do our own miniature case study to figure out what's going on, why is this happening? And we're going to unveil those results today. We're going to be covering some of the topics that we figured out, like the real commitment of a serviceman or service woman, a veteran on there that they believe service is a virtue. Okay? The other one that we're going to be covering is that success is built on habits, not talent. Okay? The other than we're going to cover is that there is an optimistic mindset and habit. Optimistic, like always forever positive thoughts with most folks that are veterans or active duty military. And we're gonna be covering those and we're going to be covering in unveiling why they are doing so well inside this program and so well in real estate investing in general.
(01:44): Okay, cool. So let's go ahead and jump into it. Number one, service is a virtue is a number one like motto was so to speak of military members. Think about this. Who on earth, besides Jesus Christ, who died for the sins of the world, who on earth besides him is so committed to something, to a cause that they would lay down their own life. Military men and women veterans. They're the only folks I know that would literally lay down their own life in service for other people. Wow. Why is that important? Well, number one, when you start working with sellers and you start going on site with them, we've been, if it's by phone right now, we're doing a lot of them by phone, but if you go on site with a seller and you truly show up to serve them first, not get selfish, not get greedy, not try to buy a house for a dollar and take advantage of anybody.
(02:36): I'm not talking about that kind of stuff. If that's the mantra that goes through anyone's mind, we would definitely wouldn't want to work with them at all. We want to go in with a service mindset. We want to serve them first and when you go in with that mindset, what happens is the seller can feel it. They completely open up to you. They tell you everything. I have a seller right now that she's told me everything her life. And I remember a handful of years ago, I got this one seller that literally his name is Chris, sold this house to me in Woodbury at the closing table. He says, Nate, you know I had an offer for 10 grand higher than yours. And I also had another one that was supposed to be coming that would have even been higher than that. And I said, Chris, why did you take mine?
(03:19): Why'd you go with me? And he said, Nate, because you, you just felt right. You're letting me come back with my sisters. See, this is an estate situation where his mom had died. It was his childhood home and he had heard it through the estate and for him and his sisters, he was trying to sell it and kind of move on. And, and I had promised him that we would allow him to take as much time as he wanted to clean up mom and dad stuff. Anything left over, we would donate to the salvation army. And additionally they could come back and take pictures after we were done with the renovation. And he said that back to me. He said, well, Nate, you did these things, these three things, and that meant more to my sisters and I than the money itself. And I said, wow, Chris, thank you, thank you.
(04:01): And I just remember that like Chris taught me a bigger lesson that day than many of the deals I've ever done. Chris taught me so much. Thank you Chris. I hope I get to reconnect with you someday. We actually did get to reconnect when we finished the renovation. We actually didn't do the renovation. I wholesale that house to somebody else. But as part of the wholesale agreement, we had the buyers sign that they would allow us to come back and take pictures with the original family. And they were all for it. They loved it. And I remember when we walked the house with the sellers, one of the sisters, she was crying, she was in tears and she said, this is how mom and dad had it when dad was alive. And that was really cool. Well, here's the thing, Chris taught me that sellers can feel you.
(04:40): They want a hundred percent Ken and I believe that a big reason that our veterans and this program kicked button take names as real estate investors is because they put service for services of virtue for them. Okay. Now, interesting stat, and I'll put this down in the show notes. If you go to national service.gov you can see the breakdowns or the makeup of who volunteers in this country and you're probably not going to be surprised since we're talking about our veterans, you're probably not going to be surprised that up to 42% it's broken down state by state. Every state's different, but up to 42% of veterans volunteer every year. Imagine that that's almost half, almost half of the veterans volunteer. Now when I go through and I think about almost any segment of the population, I try to think like even my own group of friends, out of five friends, do half of them volunteer?
(05:33): No. Out of five friends that I can think of right now, one volunteers, the other four don't. And it's like that across most different breakdowns in the country. And yet our veterans and our active duty military folks, they volunteer more. So service is just part of what they do. It's so, so good. Now on this whole service concept, I remember like if you try to go in and do anything for yourself, it usually backfires. Like if you're not trying to make a win-win or make the world better in some aspect or some degree, usually backfires. I had a backfire on me. I had a big rehab project out in Maplewood, Minnesota, and I was tight on the budget. So tight that my contractor came to me and said, Nate, we've got to do one thing. We've got a leak down in the basement in that leak down in the basements.
(06:19): It's got to have to be addressed. And I think that we're going to need to dig deep and put in some kind of drain tile system for this. And I'm like, no, no, no. We don't have to do that. There's gotta be a better solution. What about grading? And so we went back and forth on it and he's like, well, I'll do it if you want me to, but I really think you're just going to have to make this house a better house for the next buyer. Like even if you can't make profit on this one, you're just going to have to do it. Those words went through my ear and I'm like, not make profit. No, no. And I said, no, let's do the simple fix. So we try to bandaid, we did grading that was 1400 bucks. Guess what? That didn't do a darn thing.
(06:51): We extended the downspouts and the gutters to try to make them a little bit bigger to catch more in unplugged. One of them, that was another eight or 900 bucks down the drain, didn't do a darn thing. Eventually we had to come back to the idea of drain tile and I finally gave in and I'm like, okay, fine, and then wouldn't you know it? This is where the world got me back. He dug in, he busted under the concrete, got into the house, and he started to do a regular drain tile and then discovered that there's actually a spring, a freshwater spring under the house. So the regular drain tile wasn't going to cut it. So my drain tile budget just doubled all of my profit margin and then some is now gone. I got my buck kicked now, if I would have just listened to him in the beginning and it would have taken the advice of, Hey, let's go down and let's put in drain tile first, I would've saved myself almost three months of dillydallyingK and in the world of renovations, like three months, that's a lot of money.
(07:47): That's you're talking at least a few grand a month and all your carrying costs. So that's probably nine grand worth of costs that I added to the whole equation just by dilly dallying. But because I tried to serve myself and not serve others, I got my butt kicked and butt handed to me. That's life though, right? So I learned, I learned service is something we have to have as part of this business. We need to serve other people first, especially when you're sitting down with sellers and that's a big part of the reason why I believe that our veterans are kicking butt and taking names as successful real estate investors. Okay. Next segment in this I want to talk about is that success is built on habits, not talent. There's this quote from Aristotle. This quote goes like this. Aristotle said, excellence is an art won by training in habituation or to make that word shorter and easier.
(08:40): It's excellence is an art won by training and habits. That's what Aristotle said. Okay? To further convey that point, you've got to know this book by Daniel Coyle called the talent code. Now the talent code like this, the talent code, Daniel goes around the world studying and trying to figure out why and where talent comes from. So the first, the myth that's out there is that talent is something that we're born with while he goes out and just basically does this exploration to figure out where it comes from, and he goes to Brazil, Brazil, because the best soccer players in the world come from Brazil. He goes to Russia because some of the best tennis players in the world come from Russia. He goes somewhere else. I think China for the best pianists in the world to see why the best pianos come from there.
(09:27): He goes all around the world and studies different people from different places, wherever the hot spot of talent comes from and then what he publishes in the book. His findings are amazing. Like I highly recommend reading this book, but he publishes that. It's not that any of these folks, not just athletes or musicians, but like folks, academics, the whole spectrum. None of them were born with this talent. What happens is that they train really hard, like literally the folks in Brazil, these soccer players, they come from favelas, which is another word for ghetto and it's really poor parts of town where they don't have big soccer fields or big parks and stuff like that. Green grass, they play in parking lots that are tiny confined spaces and they can't afford a real soccer ball. So they make these homemade balls that are made out of this big hunk of rubber that's heavy.
(10:18): And so these kids play so hard and like the only aspirations that they have to lift themselves from this favela type environment is the soccer players that they've seen that have become their heroes. So they go out there and they play every single day and they work really hard. And so when these kids move from that confined tight environment where they're practicing their guts out trying to move this giant heavy ball in a confined space, when you put them for the first time on a wide open grassy field with this super light ball and with people that haven't practiced as hard as they have, they dance circles around them. They can literally go circles around. Most of the soccer players that haven't come from that environment because the ball's lighter, they've got so much more space. There used to be in this confined truck. Well. The other thing that's happening is that their skill sets, their muscles are being defined, not just the physical muscles, but the neurons hate.
(11:14): Cold calling, can't stand direct mail. Wish there was a way to have sellers coming to you instead of having to chase them down. Now there is, it's called the social media blueprint and you can get it absolutely free when you go to www.socialmediablueprint.com/podcast inside of our brain when we're sending signals back and forth to different parts of the brain to make different movements happen, like let's just say it's kicking the ball or shooting the ball. You have to have this connective tissue that's called Mylon, M I. L. a. N. Mylon. This connective tissue. Think of it kind of like a thread that goes around firing synapses between the two neurons. This thread, the first time you do something, you might have one thread. The 50th time you do it, you have 50 threads. The 10,000 time you do it. Now you've got 10,000 threads connecting that fired synapsis so tight that you can do it faster than anybody else can do.
(12:17): Your brain's communicating much, much faster because of all of my, it's like a muscle that you worked over and over again to make it big and strong and that Mylon is so strong in the areas of these talented people, but the talent wasn't something they were born with. What he proves in this book is that the talents, the talent code, that's the whole premise of the book. It's not that we're born with this stuff, it's that we work really hard for it. The same thing with these tennis players. They come from one region of the world and they work so much harder and they develop this muscle in their brain to make their synopsis's fire faster. It's impressive. I recommend getting a copy of that book and who better in the world than our military men and women, the veterans, veterans and active duty folks like they have habits like no other.
(13:03): They work so hard from literally the simple things like keeping boots shined and beds made all the way up to the complex things like what to do in a battle situation to protect your buddy that's to your right and left like they train so hard, they've got the best habits in the world and so when I see this like it doesn't shock me that our military men and women are performing the best in this program like they perform as real estate investors. My hat is off to them and if you are an active duty military man or military woman or if you are a veteran, I completely salute you. I just want to honor you for a second. Thank you for your service. If there's anything that we can do as a service to you, we would love to, we'd love the opportunity to help you.
(13:48): This goes for our veterans and our active duty military men and women and then also if there's other folks that are listening to this, we've got, I've compiled literally everything that we've, we're doing right now to help real estate investors get real estate deals. What we're doing right now. I've compiled it over@socialmediablueprint.com slash podcast it's a video. It's put up right now. It's like 50 minutes. You can watch it. You can see exactly what we're doing right here right now. So if you're a real estate investor or you're someone that's trying to really make real estate investing take off and you need a little boost, I'd highly recommend jumping into that training. Right now it's social media, blueprint.com/podcasts it's quite incredible. Okay, next, here's what we're going to cover. I want to cover it. The optimistic spirit that the folks that I've encountered from the military have Cate, the optimistic spirit that they have comes from the training that they've been through.
(14:46): They've been there, done that. I had this boss when I used to work at target named Jeff and Jeff was a retired Lieutenant Colonel from the Marine Corps. This guy had like been there and done that and then some like he was a high ranking dude three weeks into his transfer. Like he got transferred there and three weeks into it he became my boss and I was in charge of the building maintenance and upkeep and conveyor systems and all the stuff to make the functional stuff work in the building. And I had a team of guys that helped support everything and well one day the main conveyor system broke like went down hardcore and the guys called me and they're like, Nate, this is not good because we don't have this part. We're going to either have to custom make this part or we're going to have to special order it and they're going to have to like air lift it in.
(15:34): This is serious. Okay. And when the conveyor systems are down, this means hundreds. Hundreds of people are out of work. Okay. I worked@target.com internet orders were coming in nonstop everyday, all day long and you got to get the orders out and if you don't have a conveyor system to take the product from one part of the warehouse to the other part to ship it out the door or to let people pack it and ship it out, then they're out of work. That's what it boils down to. And so I'm getting managers, my peers from around the building are calling me saying, Nate, the conveyor system. I'm like, I know what's down there. Like it's not looking good. What do I do? What do we do? We've got 50 plus people in my department and then a hundred over here in a hundred over there and we don't know what to do with everyone panicking.
(16:17): So I figured I better go report this to my boss even though he's newer in this position. I got to go report this because this is going to shake the whole building. K if we're sending a bunch of people home, we better go talk. And so I go up there and I'm a little, I'm a little bit overwhelmed, okay. And I just start dumping on him. I kind of puke. I didn't literally puke, but I kinda just puked everything on him. Like Jeff conveyor systems down, blah, blah, blah, this, that blue. I just laid it all out on him and then he looks at me and he says, okay, is anybody dying? I said, no. Did a grenade go off? He said, no. Is anybody at risk right now? And I said, no. He's like, okay, we're going to be fine. And just this cool, calm and collected approach.
(16:58): He said, we're, everyone's going to be fine. I'm just blown away. And he just made me feel comfortable and at ease. And I remember that you could just tell that this guy had been through so much leadership experience that it didn't really phase him in a hard way or a bad way and said it just, he just kinda took it in and he said, you know what, life's going to be okay. He had this forever optimistic attitude. Life's going to be okay. Let's just get through it. And let's keep moving and I was so impressed by that and then we started putting together a plan and life went on. You know what? Nobody did get hurt. He was right and it said, we thought with a clear head and we came up with a plan and we got the plan executed. Okay, now I got this other member of veteran in a group that he came to me.
(17:38): We got a bunch of whole bunch of regular image ad campaigns up for them and the image ad campaigns, we're kicking butt taking names. He did a deal really fast. He set a record inside of our group, someone's that record since, but he set a record to do a deal in three weeks and it was a double digit deal profit margin for him, which was awesome. We try to under promise over deliver, but he came in and he rocked it. He worked really hard and got this profit and then he came back and he's like, okay, with this big of a profit check, I want to take it and I want to reinvest into marketing and I want to really tear it up. Like I want to get a bunch of deals. And I'm like, okay, well you know the next step is going to take some time and this is much more challenging than it sounds like, but it's to go to video ads.
(18:18): It's like, okay, let's do it. And I'm like, dude, are you sure? Because video ads, they kind of suck for most people. And he's like, what do you mean? And I said, well, here's the thing. You have to be good on camera. You have to connect with your audience. You've got to look up at the camera and not down at the camera. Because when you look down with the camera, then it makes people feel like you're looking down with them like their parents. You've got to have a professional microphone, you've got to have a nice camera, you gotta have the right script. I basically bombard them with all this stuff and most people when I do that to them and I just tell them the truth, most people are like, you know what, I'm going to skip the whole video ad, and I do it intentionally because video ads, they only convert if you're really good at on camera.
(18:54): That's it. Like you've got to connect with people. If you don't connect, they just skip your video. There's so much noise out there and so much competition for people's attention. I don't want people to fail, so I shoot the straight reality of people like don't do video ads unless you're really prepared for it. And you know what Michael said to me, he's like, I'm on it, I'm on it sir. I got it. You just gave me that script and I'm going to go get it done. And so I laid on them. I give them the whole thing and I expect like it's going to take them at least a couple of weeks to go by the microphone and all that kind of stuff and then get back to me. No kin. The guy gets back to me the next day and says, here you go, coach. Here you go.
(19:29): I got this done. What do you think? And I look at it and I'm like, wow, it's not bad. Like he just did it, did it with a smile and went out there and made it happen. And that's the final reason why I think that our vets are active duty military men and women. They're so good at being real estate investors. They just, they jump out there with a smile with optimism and they get this stuff done. Okay. So we've covered a lot today and I want to recap a couple of things so that you can really take this away. Okay. Why our military men and women doing so well in real estate investing and so well inside of our program? Well, number one, service is a virtue for them. They sellers can feel that. They know it, they feel it. And if you and I, if folks that aren't active duty or a former vets, if we can learn anything from active duty or former veterans, take that service mindset, take that service mindset and it's going to help you in the business a lot.
(20:20): Okay? The other thing that we covered is that success is built on habits, not talent. It's not like folks are just born really good at something. They develop that as a habit over time. The active duty and veteran, the in our program, like they earn this, they earn it through the habits, years of training to make good habits in them to get there. Okay. The other thing, last but not least is this forever optimistic attitude. We can do this, we can get this stuff. That right there carries them. So even if they get a tough call with the seller or whatever it is, they can get through it because they've got that forever optimistic attitude. All right, so I hope you've enjoyed this one. Next episode, you definitely do not want to miss. We're going to be talking about the 17 different ways to make offers so you don't get rejected by sellers.
(21:08): And I know that that one sounds like a lot. You got to hear this one because most people, they go in and they try to do one offer, a low ball cash offer, and guess what? That doesn't serve the seller obvious. The seller sometimes needs a different option and we want to be able to go in there and give multiple different options. So by familiarizing yourself with the 17 different ways to make offers so you don't get rejected by sellers, you're going to be a better helper, someone that can actually be counted on by sellers and be better in this real estate business. All right, appreciate having you guys. We'll talk again soon. Thanks.
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