Episode 216: The Phoenix Investor - From Extreme Success to Failure and Finding Success Again in Real Estate

This is the story of Roger Blankenship an experienced and highly successful house flipper turned educator, we take you on a  journey through the world of real estate entrepreneurship.

Roger shares invaluable insights, proven strategies, and real-life stories of triumphs and challenges from his own remarkable career. With a passion for teaching and a knack for breaking down complex concepts into actionable steps, he empowers aspiring house flippers with the knowledge and tools they need to succeed.

Whether you're a novice investor looking to dip your toes into the world of house flipping or an experienced pro seeking fresh perspectives and advanced techniques, this episode is a go-to resource. We discover how to avoid common pitfalls and learn from Roger's own failures and triumphs, gaining a competitive edge in the dynamic world of house flipping.

Awareness Plug / Links and Resources:

Flipping America Podcast with Roger Blankenship
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/flipping-america/id1449888255
Personal LinkedIn
https://www.linkedin.com/in/rogerblankenship

I made some ribs recently and I get asked this all the time for my rib recipe, so I figured I would go ahead and share it here.  Basically, all I do is smear.

Yellow mustard all over the ribs. You tried to trim up the ribs, ribs a little bit. You know, think of the ribs as needing to be aerodynamic so that the smoke flows over those ribs. So trim them up a little bit. And then yellow mustard. And then I do a mixture of, uh, two parts, pepper. Uh, it's a black crushed pepper, and I, I crush up my own, uh, fresh pepper.

Uh, and then the third part is salt. Uh, you. Push, uh, uh, sprinkle that all over the top, give it a good coating, and then go ahead and place that on the smoker. Uh, and then once an hour, I will spray it with apple cider vinegar. And then, um, about three hours. So, so every, every hour you're spraying these things.

And then in about three hours or so, go ahead and wrap them in foil. When you wrap them in foil. Um, take your favorite barbecue sauce and dilute it with. Apple cider vinegar and then spray that on top. And what ends up happening is that bubbles and creates this great, wonderful. Uh, um, you know, juice inside of the foil.

So you hook that for maybe about another two hours or so on the grill, on the smoker. Uh, and what I like to do is I like to smoke them with hickory wood, so that's pretty well about it. These ribs are gonna be fall off the bone tender. Uh, so, so good. They create a great juice, a great, uh, a great sauce right inside of there.

Uh, you don't even need barbecue sauce with them. Hope you enjoy.

 On invest in square feet, we unlock the secrets of wealthy entrepreneurship. I'm Matt Shields and my mission is to help business owners just like you, protect your wealth so that you can invest passively into multi-family real estate. Today we're going to be talking to Roger Blankenship, who has a long history of real estate investment.

Roger also hosts a very, very popular podcast called Flipping America on Flipping Real Estate. The one thing that I learned from this episode that I think is really interesting is Rogers. Thoughts on entrepreneurial success and what it takes to be able to get there. So we are gonna get right into things and start learning from Roger.

 I. Did pretty well as an investor for many years.

And, uh, then I know this, you're gonna find this hard to believe. I got cocky and I, uh, felt I was feeling bulletproof. Everything we had done had worked out well, and so I decided, uh, I either gotta decided to retire or go large and we decided to go large and I went out and got a big line of credit and I started buying properties all over the southeast.

Long story short, bad hiring decisions and uh, mainly it was just bad hiring decisions. We followed a thoughtful process that I got from my coach, but uh, that business imploded and we lost everything 2014, not in the crash, years after the crash, we made all of our money during the crash years. And then while I was trying to pick up the pieces and start all over again and rebuild confidence and so forth and try, try to figure out what went wrong and uh, and so forth.

I was on another small business talk radio show. And, um, you know, my background is I've been an educator and a public speaker and, um, I only got into real estate out of sheer desperation and a lack of communicable job skills. But, um, So I did this interview with this guy on his show and afterwards he said, you know what, man?

You ought to have your own show. I said, nah, nah, nah, I'm not understood. He kept on bugging me for three months straight and finally he convinced me and um, we decided to call it Show Flipping America. And um, the first show we did, Had 2000 listeners, and then by the end of the first month we had 20,000.

And, you know, just a few months ago, we had in, in, uh, January of 23, we had 1.2 million. Wow. And so without any intent on my part, it's sort of become the tail that wags the dog. Um, And how do, how has that affected the investing? Well, it's giving me contacts around the country that I wouldn't have had before.

And you know, the other thing too, Matt, I. I have had the opportunity to talk to so many people. We're in the 600 s now on episodes, and I've talked to so many brilliant people with great ideas. And, uh, you know, I've sat here during interviews just taking notes, writing it all down, and transferring that to my computer and putting it in my brain.

And, and I've learned so much from the people that have come into the show and I've. I've been privileged to meet some of the top players in the industry and, and watch what they have done to build businesses without that massive failure in the middle of it, you know? Mm-hmm. And, um, uh, I even got to interview Tillman for tida, the owner of the Houston Rockets, who is a, uh, billionaire casino owner and so forth.

And, uh, The, that interview didn't go the way he expected because I wanted to talk to him about business failures. I was still trying to figure out my own life. But, um, these conversations have brought a whole nother level of education to me and opportunity, um, as the word get got around, you know, people started coming to me with opportunities and some of the things I'm into with the auction houses, and now we have bought properties in 28 states.

Wow. And, um, uh, it's been, it's been a pretty wild ride. And yeah, the, the story's not over flipping America. We've got some big things on the near horizon. That's, that's 

amazing. That's amazing. Um, so I, I, I wanna go back to so many different things. I, I, let's go back to the failure of, of the business in 2014, and you said that it was basically attributed to hiring mistakes.

Right. Yeah. Do you, was there, was it hiring, the hiring unscrupulous people where they were stealing from you? Or was it, you know, you didn't have the right, no. Leadership that was going in place. What, what do you 

attribute that to? Uh, good people in the wrong seats. Um, mainly, and, uh, I'm not gonna say his name, but, um, the, the contractor who had worked for me almost exclusively for the previous, I guess.

Four or five years. Uh, we made the decision to expand in 20, in 2012, late 20 11, 20 12. But the guy that had worked for me, he had rehabbed, uh, something between 350 and 400 houses for me. And we had been thick as these, doing a hundred houses a year. Um, between him and uh, some of the houses I could run myself with just subs.

Um, And we had become very good friends. Uh, I, and when we, when he did his, when he completed his three on his rehab, we kind of stopped counting, but I gave him a motorcycle as a thank you. And, um, and all this to say he had become a good friend. Mm-hmm. And when I decided to expand, I made, and, and he's the same age I am.

None of us are getting younger, but, uh, we're getting up there. I said, look, man, why don't you come and be our project manager? We're gonna be hiring contractors in Metro Atlanta, in Macon, Savannah, Augusta. And as we branch out into other, uh, States, I need somebody to run point and, and hire those contractors.

And he said, man, I'd love to. I'm tired of crawling around on my knees and crawl spaces in the mud and getting up on roofs. He said, I never wanna do that again. I said, okay. Turns out he wasn't very good at it. In fact, he was not. That's, that's putting it mildly. He didn't hire good people. He didn't have a a, you know, he himself was a good person, but he, he didn't have a sense of what a crooked contractor looked like, and he hired a bunch of crooks and then he didn't run 'em well.

We had a few good people that he just drove crazy because, He had his opinion about how things ought to be done. It differed from theirs and, um, no conflict management. Um, no real sense of project management. Uh, he could manage his own, but he could not supervise 20, and it was a disaster. I waited too long.

We were bleeding cash. Uh, to the tune of about a hundred thousand a month in interest spans on this big line of credit. Mm-hmm. And when I finally set him down, are you familiar with the Peter principal? Peter Peter Drucker, business management leader. Uh, the principle is everyone rises to their own level of incompetence.

You see this in organizations. People do well, they get promoted, do well, they get promoted, they finally get to a level where they don't do so well. Well, unfortunately what companies do is they get rid of 'em. What they really should do is move 'em back down to where they were doing well. So that's what I tried to do with this guy and, uh, wanted to just put him back in charge of one or two projects like we used to do.

And he steadfastly refused. He said, I'm never doing that again. He got mad. Stormed outta my office, quit and holds a grudge. I didn't know he could hold a grudge like this, but it's been 10 years. He still won't talk to me. Wow. And uh, of course what he's doing now is exactly what he said he never wanted to do again.

But that's a different story. Um, in the meantime, we are hurting. And for the first time in my career, we're losing money on projects. Loans are expiring with no end in sight for the rehab work because it's been sitting there and this is all very difficult and it was really all due to one hiring decision.

One one really bad hiring decision in extremely critical position. Mm-hmm. What, and 

what, what would be different today have, how do, have you changed how you look at people or interview people or place people today? Any, any thoughts of what you've learned since 

then? Well, yeah. Um, I've taken some time to reflect on those lessons, but probably the most helpful thing that I've read on the subject is, um, in the book Traction, getting A Grip On Your Life by Gino Wickman.

He talks about getting the right people in the right places and, um, . \ , I, I sat down and made a list of questions and, you know, he talked about, uh, hiring good people who are good at what they do and who also have the capacity to do what you need. And so I developed a, a long list of questions that I've used in hiring, and it's been sort of my guide ever since.

Yeah. Yeah. It's, it's amazing when you start to put those types of repeat, um, processes, not really the right term, but you know, you, you keep doing the same thing. You putting the same people or putting people through the same process. It's amazing how you'll be able to start seeing like, what bubbles up to the top and Yeah.

That one is, that person is so much more different than anyone else. Yeah. Who we've, who've hi hired for that position or 

interviewed for that position. Yeah. And, you know, I knew some of the, I I had known this gentleman long enough that I knew some of his personality shortcomings, but I, I, I willfully blinded myself to them and put 'em in a position of responsibility that I put him in a position to fail.

And so that in the final analysis of the whole thing, I developed what I now call the, we call it the Flipping America Pledge. And we say this at all of my live events. And it starts off by saying, when I look in the mirror, I see the reason, the cause of my successes and the reason for my failures. And it goes on from there.

It's a little meditation I wrote for myself. Um, you know, when things go well, it's because I chose well and led well. When things don't go well, it's because I didn't choose well and I didn't lead well. I am the reason. It's a matter of taking personal responsibility. That's a hard thing to swallow. Um, 

out of curiosity, have you read, um, extreme Ownership by Jocko Willick?

No, I haven't. Oh, that's, that's a great book.  It's all about, he, he tells it from the perspective of Iraq, Iran. He was, I don't remember exactly what, what he was. Sergeant, well, well up there, captain. I'm not quite sure what his rank was, but he basically came to the exact same conclusion that you just mentioned, that everything comes back to me and I need to take extreme ownership.

There was, you know, our teams had friendly fire. That was because I. You know, screwed something up. I screwed up the navigation, the comms went down. Just really, really interesting. And he applies it to business perspective, uh, to AA business perspective. And then gives, you know, CEOs that same type of mentality where I.

Something's not going right. It's because it's because of you. It's not because that person screwed up, it's because you weren't giving, you know, direction well enough for clear enough direction or, you know, yeah. All of that. So really, really, really interesting, really, really interesting book. Yeah. Um, so you, you had amazing.

Attraction with your podcast pretty well right off of the bat, and I know, I personally believe that a podcast is something that pretty well every business owner should have. I mean, I, I, I completely resonate with everything that you said that you are getting from your podcast. Um, how, how, what do you attribute the success so quickly?

Two. How, how did you generate such a following so many listeners? So quickly, was it just the, the name, do you feel that resonated with people or, 

Hmm, I don't know. The, what were your thoughts there? The name was a happy accident. I had, I had, uh, kind of fallen into leading a, a meetup group here in Atlanta called Flipping Atlanta, and I didn't even really wanna do that, but the leader disappeared and I didn't wanna let the group fail.

Just fall apart. So I was leading this group and then when I got, I agreed to do the show, I had to have a name. So I thought, ah, well, it's called Flipping America. And that's all the thought they're winning in that. No market research, no testing or anything like that. Wow. Um, But, uh, it turns out it's a pretty good name.

I do have to clarify on the show we're not, you know, although, uh, we do talk about flipping houses, we talk about a lot more on the show besides flipping houses, we talk about any way that you can make money in real estate and, you know, I think that, um, you know, when we started this show, at first it was also in radio syndication.

And I think that that syn indicator did a lot to help. And I also believe there was a matter of the timing. You know, we start, we launched a show in 2017. There weren't that many real estate shows out there then. Um, it, you know, it seems like everybody I talk to now has their own real estate podcast. Well, that's great.

There's plenty of room for everybody. Um, do you know, the other thing is, and I don't want to alienate, alienate half of your audience, but I realize what I'm about to say might do that. I heard Rush Limbal say one time, and that that name right there is going to, that's alienating already. Yeah. Just one bunch of people just turned it off.

But he said one time my goal was to take something as boring and mundane as politics and make it as entertaining as possible. And I thought, oh, there we go. Okay. So, you know, I, I have engaged in a little bit of wishful comparison. Why can't I have as many listeners as you know, that sports podcast over there?

Who, who's got all these? Well, real estate doesn't have the same appeal. It's a, it, this is a niche thing, so, all right. I, it is not that I'm trapped into it, I enjoy doing it, but while I'm here, and this is kind of what's been put in front of me to do, I'm gonna take real estate and real estate investing and I'm gonna make it as entertaining as I possibly can.

And that incu includes appropriate humor and, uh, poking fun at some of the silliness. And so that's what we do. 

I love it. , so on on our show, we like to say that we unlock the secrets of wealthy entrepreneurship. Any, any, anything come to mind when I say that?

I think that the secret to successful entrepreneurship is not passion. It is not creativity. You know, I've met people who are passionate about, uh, degenerate sex acts that's not gonna, you know, are passionate about, uh, shoplifting. You know, it's not passion and it's not creativity. Um, the real secret of entrepreneurial success is meeting a felt need.

And a consistent pattern of good decisions till it becomes habits. Uh, if you have good habits, and you and I I, one of the things that I say is consistent persistency, you have to be persistent and you have to be consistent in your persistency. And what you need to be consistently persistent in is good decision making.

And if you're, if you're combining that with something that is a proven money-making path, you're going to be okay. Um, this is a little bit of a surprise and Matt, it may take you by surprise. I am not particularly passionate about real estate. Mm-hmm. For me, it is a means to an end. And if I find a better, more sure means to my end, then you won't hear me talking about real estate anymore.

But I've been looking for a long time and I haven't found it. So here we are. Mm-hmm. 

Mm-hmm. Yeah, so, so, so it, it's great that you have that type of perspective, you know, as well, where you recognize, cause I, I feel like that's, again, another one of those traits that a lot of people will say, you know, this is my industry and I love it, and I'm so passionate about it.

And it's, it's interesting that you have that perspective where you're willing to admit that, you know, it's not what I'm passionate about, it's not what I, you know, live for. Um, and, and you're open to those other, those other options, those other avenues. Uh, any you wanna know what I'm passionate about? We, I was just gonna ask Yeah.

What, 

yes, I'm, first of all, I'm passionate about my wife and family. Um, and I know that sounds like a cliche, but, uh,

Diana is. The best thing that happened to me since Jesus and I am, I am so in awe of her and creating the life with her is why I do everything that I do. Because I want to give her the life that I think that she deserves and, and wants. And, uh, I want to be everything that she hopes that I am or believes that I am.

Um, The other, I guess the other passion, the other thing that drives me is making the world a better place. I enjoy talking to people. I enjoy helping people. Uh, I enjoy real estate. I, I like the process of it fine, but, uh, what I really like is making a positive difference in the world. And. We all spend a pretty good amount of time trying to figure out our place and that whole thing.

Um, I've been put into a position where I can train other people in this industry so I can, you know, I teach people how to flip houses and to acquire rental properties and to build a real estate fortune, but that's not an end in itself. Most of the people that I teach. Want to have disposable income because they have a foundation or a charity or a church or some pet project in mind that they think is gonna make the world a better place.

So it has become, this is something I'm passionate about. I want to help a a thousand people become real estate millionaires before I quit. The reason for that is, 990 of those people will end up giving money to a charity or a cause that they believe in. And, um, that will, you know, in, in small ways, make the world a better place.

So if I can have a part in 900 or 990 other people making the world a better place, 

Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's, it's that ripple 

effect or that's what, that's what gets me up, and that's what, that's what cranks my engine every day. 

Yeah. Are you familiar with, with the, uh, butterfly Effect? Have you heard of that?

Yeah. Before, yeah. Yeah. Very, very applicable there. I love that. I love that. Um, so you mentioned before too that there's some, some big things coming up, uh, on the show. Uh, anything that you can share right now of, of, you know, some of the, some of the things that you have percolating. 

Uh, yeah. Yeah. There's a couple things that I can't share about what we're, what we're gonna be doing, what we're working on to expand our audience even more.

I can't talk about that one, but I can tell you this. Um, I have an interest in, in, of course in helping real estate investors. And so we have been working on a trading platform. We're calling it The Flipping America Network, or the fan for short. And um, you know, you're familiar with wholesalers, right? Sure.

All right, so wholesalers, they have two jobs. They have to find deals and they also have to build a buyer's list. And as a cash buyer, which is where I really came into it, uh, on the buying side, I would network with wholesalers as a part of my, you know, lead generation. And, um, frankly, is a lot easier deal with a wholesaler than it is to try to create your own leads direct to the seller.

That's a different story anyway. Um, When I, from the first day that I started this show, I had to dream of creating this platform, and it's about to become a reality. I mean, we're literally just less than two months away from, uh, usability testing and then, uh, a release in the south. And then, um, uh, in fact, the call I was on right before this we're staggering the release and pinpointing areas, so we make sure that we're fully operational and supporting.

But here's the idea. If you're a cash buyer and you're looking for real estate properties, you go create a free profile at the fan and uh, just tell us the zip codes where you wanna buy. Then you download the app on your phone and sign in and so forth. Now you can look on the platform for properties. You could search all the search functionality will be there, or you can just wait then if you're a wholesaler.

Or it just somebody who owns a property and you wanna sell it it. It could be an owner or wholesaler. Use the app on your phone. Take the pictures of the property, fill out the information, and click submit. As soon as you hit submit, every cash buyer that's indicated an interest in that zip code is gonna get a text message that says, look what, just hit the fan.

Mm-hmm. No, that's awesome. They can click on it. Yeah, that's my wife's favorite part. They can click on it, they can look at the property. There's a chat function built into the app, so you can talk directly with the seller or wholesaler, and if you agree on terms, you can go to contract right from your phone.

DocuSign is integrated into the whole thing, and you go to contract, and when you go to contract, then the buyer. Will pay a $250 technology fee to the platform. The seller never pays anything. Wow. Wow. And, um, we think it's going to really change the way, uh, investment property gets bought in solds definitely gonna impact it anyway.

Mm-hmm. Um, There will, in future versions, um, there will be a platform for, uh, vendors, people who sell products and services to investors, you know, home inspection, title companies. The whole range of products and so forth will be available on the platform. But, um, the buyer and seller piece is about ready for release.

We're in the final stages now and, uh, we'll, we'll have a, um, Kind of a soft rollout, probably by late summer. That's 

incredible. So, yeah. And have you, have you built any software before in the past, or is this the first foray into that industry? That realm? 

Um, What I've done in the past, I don't know if you quite counted, I hired a couple of guys to take, years ago I invented something that we now call the Flipping America property grade.

Um, you basically, you put in your details about a property and ranked the property with some intangible things like the difficulty of rehab and, and, uh, the quality of the neighborhood or the heat of the market and that sort of thing. Um, things that are not easily quantifiable. And then I, I wrote an algorithm that allowed that to come up with a numerical raw score.

And then I used the range function in Excel to give it a letter grade. So we took that and, and. Train turned it into an app, but that was just a very low end, cost me 800 bucks. Mm-hmm. And, uh, we gave it away the Flipping America property grade app. Um, but it cost me about a hundred dollars per platform.

Google in Apple to keep on updating the app every year with the new compliance standards for privacy and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And you know, I just got tired of spending that money on something I was just giving away. So. But this is a whole different animal. This, yeah, this thing is extremely detailed.

I mean, it's quarter of a million dollars in development so far. That's, that's amazing. Amazing. Um, but what I did was I partnered with a, um, a guy who, this is what he does. He has a technology company that builds these things, and now we have become close enough friends that when we get this deal done, I'm, I'm buying his company.

Oh, 

interesting, interesting. Yeah. So, so you have, you have intentions of being more involved in, uh, technology and being involved in 

that industry? Yeah, yeah, yeah. We've got more apps in the works. Um, one of them, uh, is, it's tentatively titled Flipping America Go. We've already kind of, uh, tried to partner with another provider on that.

Uh, it's not working out so far, but, uh, here's, here's the dream of it. You type in an address and it goes out with an API call and pulls up all the information about that address, and then uses a, an automated valuation model from one of the providers. And we're considering a few different people there.

And to give you, uh, comps and like a comparable value of the property. And for single family, it's just an arv, you know? Um, And then, but the, the, uh, the, the brilliance of this is when you register, we're going to look at several possible exit outcomes for a property, whether you want mm-hmm. Buy and hold, whether you want to buy and flip, whether you want to, uh, lease it, uh, or seller financing options, that, that sort of thing.

And in there you describe. To the platform, there's some default choices made, but you describe what you consider a good deal. Like I want a 30% gross margin on flips. Some people will operate on a 20. Okay, whatever you like, put it in there. And then you get your rate and term from your favorite lender for whether it's a buy and hold or whether it's flip, and you put the rate and turn information so it's already in there.

So all of these things can be calculated and the the loan, constant debt service coverage ratio and all these things can be automatically calculated behind the scenes. You just put in the information about the property and if you wanna hold it, what you, uh, plan to rent it for. And this thing spits out little meters, you know, red, yellow, green mm-hmm.

Um, or some sort of indicators telling you whether it's a good deal for each of your exit strategies. Mm-hmm. And of course the tagline's gonna be, see it gonna be when you see a green light. Go. 

It's a deal analyzer, but it's built into an app. 

Yeah. Um, and, and, and I I love that it, it pulls in, you know, real data, real information from wherever the location is that you're, you know, that you're focused in on.

Yeah. 

So that's, but before that, uh, and probably before the fan gets released, uh, I've been working on something now for, uh, the better part of a year. You know, I have the coaching program and we put people in a room for, for four days and we overwhelm them with information that they're not going to remember, and they still need guidance out there.

And after a while we realized, you know what? We're just wasting all of our time spending four days here. You're not gonna remember this. And, um, and they're even saying, I'm not gonna remember this. I tuned out yesterday. I, my brain is full. I can't take anymore. So I started years ago creating online courses and, um, We haven't tried very hard to sell the online courses separately.

They were really designed to supplement the coaching program, but when the pandemic came, we sort of stopped doing the live events and coaching and just went to online courses and, um, you know, mixed results. Okay. Best I can say. One of the consistent things you'll hear if you listen to my show is I'm pretty hard on the hotel room gurus.

Mm-hmm. Um, I don't think anybody should spend 50 or $80,000 learn how to flip houses. They're only charging you that because they can get away with it. Um, and, and I don't even care if somebody charges $50,000. What I care about is they, they show you how you can borrow from your 401k or increase your credit limits on your credit card so you can pay, and then.

Be hammered with interest rates or repayment obligations and, and you're basically stealing from your own future. They'll take people who have no business, not an entrepreneurial bone in their body, they'll borrow from their 401k to set up a really, uh, this business that they are in no way mentally and psychologically equipped to run for the long term, and they're ruining people's lives.

That bothers me. Mm-hmm. So, Of course alternative. Why spend 50 grand when you can get started for 50 bucks? Uh, we're launching, uh, scheduled launches in mid-July. I don't know when the show's gonna air, but, um, mid-July, we're launching the Flipping America Academy and you can join for 50 bucks a month. And in our inaugural launch period, which will probably take the rest of this year, um, when you join, you get all the benefits of the next level of coaching, which is 250 bucks a month, or the next level is called the coaching level.

Um, so. You get, um, Well, there's a weekly newsletter. You get a search tool that allows you to search all the archives of the Flipping America Show, 600 plus episodes. Um, you get a discount at Home Depot, but also you get access to all nine of our current online courses and the others as they come online.

Um, and we give you a roadmap to tell you which order to take the courses in and which ones you can skip depending on where you are. Some people don't need to go from A to Z, some people just need to start at E A D and go to Z. Um, And so with all of that, combined with a weekly coaching group coaching experience, um, you can learn what you need to about real estate investing for 50 bucks a month.

Yeah, that's fantastic. And again, it goes back to why you're doing all of this, to be able to create those thousand millionaires. Yeah. You in the industry to create your, create your ripple. I love it. Yeah. I love it. If people wanna learn more about you, we, we've mentioned flipping America many, many times.

Are there any other resources or any other things that you would suggest to go and check out, to be able to contact you or again, learn more? 

Well, flipping america.net is the website. That's pretty easy to find. Um, You know, you, you could always go to Amazon and get my book house flipping, flipping houses in 10 days and, uh, help keep that sales going.

We, we achieved international number one bestseller status for that book, and we got a little. Badge stuck on the cover of the book because of it. That's great. I think honestly, between you and me, I think that happened for like 15 minutes on a Tuesday afternoon. 

It's there though. You, you can, you can claim it.

Love it. That's right. We got the screenshots. Yeah. That's fantastic. But, uh, yeah, if, if you wanna flip houses, you, you can, you can come spend 50 bucks a month with me, but also you can get a long way to the finish line by spending 20 bucks on that book. Yeah. Yeah. 

And I love that you, again, you, you are a true entrepreneur.

You have all of these different, different things going on, these different projects, ideas in the pipeline, and, and it's not just, you know, this one thing I, I do real estate. Right. But, you know, podcast, software programs, flipping all, all of that stuff. So, yeah. Um, kudos to you for. Like we mentioned early on, sticking, sticking to it and sticking through things and persevere, learn and, and keep on going.

You know, you've had your setbacks and struggles, but here you are still, still pushing along. So kudos to you. Love it. 

Um, you know, the, the path to the mountaintop is not always a straight line. Uh, it could be that when you're standing here and you're seeing that mountain, you wanna climb that goal that you're trying to get to.

What you don't see are the valleys in between the, the near peak and the far one. Um, it, it's, it's not, it's not gonna go the way you want. Nobody builds massive failure into their three year life plan, um, or health issues or other things that happen. Um, so the response to that is, um, whatever is in front of you, do the right thing with that.

Over and over, whatever is in front of you. Do the right thing with that over and over, and you're gonna get there. Yeah. 

 All right, so let's recap what we learned today from Roger. One of the most important things that we all should take away from today's episode is that we need to pay attention to the people that we're placing into our companies. And I know that that sounds obvious, but when you're in. The moment. And when you're in those situations, you feel like it's, it's going to be so much work to try to replace them and then, and then I'm going to have to retrain people.

And there's just so much to do that to, to that entire process. Right. But if you don't do it, you can absolutely take your company down and cause a huge, huge ripple effect that. Can create a lot of problems. So many times it's best to jump onto these situations, and if it means parting ways with someone or if it means repositioning them into some other type of role, chances are they're probably also going to feel relief as well because they, they, no one wants to fail.

No one wants to be put in a position where they feel like they're failing. So being able to relieve that pressure from them where you know they are not performing up to what your standards are, they probably feel the exact same thing. So there's going to be an element of relief there. So always. Always, always take that step to replace people when necessary.

Roger also mentions that there's plenty of people out there that are talking about, you know, following your passion and passion is the reason for this success. But what Roger has found that is that if you can find some type of a problem that people express a true real need. For the solution. That's what is going to be so much more successful than following some type of passion.

So, and, and obviously it's best if you are passionate about whatever that solution is, but don't just say, this is my passion. I'm moving to go for it, look to solve some type of problem and hone in on that problem. And what I've personally found in my life is that when you can be very specific, With the type of person or the type of industry or business that you are solving that problem for, it solves so many problems, right?

If you are. Focused on everyone and trying to solve everyone's problem. You're not going to be able to speak to any one type of market. So niche it down, hone it into one specific type of thing that you are doing for one particular market or industry or vertical, and then you'll be able to start speaking their, their language.

You're going to understand so much more about their business. And then once you get that foothold established, Out, grow out from there. And this is the final tip that I really liked what Roger had to say. He said, be consistent with your persistence. Right? So a lot of people will give up before they establish something, or they'll see another shiny object and they're going to go and jump.

Into that direction. Success takes time. I mean, there's obviously a few outliers to that. There's a few stories out there where people found quote unquote, instant success. The chances of that happening are very, very slim. It takes a long time and many, many entrepreneurs have had to just. Keep grinding, keep hustling, and I know that grinding and hustling is something that everyone talks about as well, but really the persistence to be able to keep going, keep moving forward no matter what's going on, is really, really, really key in order to be able to achieve that success that you're looking for.

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