Welcome to the Real Estate Masters podcast, where we interview the top names in the Real Estate game. If you want to grow your Real Estate business, see more podcasts or give free resources – Go to www.REMmastermind.com. The only podcast that allows you to directly connect with the guests and many of the highest level names in the real estate game.

You are in for a treat with our next guest. Do me a favor, subscribe to the podcast, leave us a review, and don’t forget to go to www.REMmastermind.com to connect with some of the highest level Real Estate professionals in the United States through our community and through our high-level masterminds. Let’s go.

Itunes – www.TonyJavier.com/itunes 

===================================================

Guest Bio: Chris Arnold is a master of Radio Advertising. He has done close to 2500 deals and has done a lot of them from his radio program. Radio has very little to no competition and is a marketing channel you need to explore.

More about him – www.TonyJavier.com/chrisarnold

===================================================

Show Transcription:

Tony (00:04):
Are you there? Okay, I thought you were afraid you were so still, I thought you were frozen. That’s cool. All right. Today we have Mr. Chris Arnold on the line. I’m excited to have this gentleman full of energy, full of life. He is a real estate investor that invests in Dallas, Texas, but he lives in the Caribbean and invests virtually, which is awesome. He’s done over 2,500 deals in his career and does a lot of his deals through radio and he’s going to share some of the things that he does through radio and that he does with his business. What is going on today, Chris?
Chris (00:44):
What’s up man, glad to be hanging out.
Tony (00:46):
Glad we could finally connect, man. You’re in the Caribbean. Last time we tried to do this, your internet could not connect, which is, you know, one of the things that I guess happens in some different countries, but I’m glad we could get it back on and, you know, I’m glad we could reconnect man, and get this going.
Chris (01:04):
That’s just a part of paradise, man. Not everything runs like it does in the US but you know what? I’ll trade the beach and the sunny weather and all that for the occasional power outage that I can handle.
Tony (01:15):
It’s a good trade, man. It is a good trade, so well, cool man. Well, let’s jump into it. So 2,500 deals, you’re doing it virtually. You’re living in the Caribbean, you’re living the life. Tell us how you got started. What you’re doing, just what kind of value can add to our community today?

Chris (01:31):
Yeah. So people always kind of want to know a little bit of the backstory like how’d you start out? What’d that look like? So I’m actually a seminary graduate, believe it or not. So people are like, man, should you be like a pastor or something like that or on the mission field? and I’ve always had a passion for people, but I’m just not conventional like that. I was not really going to operate in the church world. So I always viewed business as simply just a vehicle, a delivery system for me to be able to live out what I saw as valuable. Both for me personally and what I wanted with my life and my family as well as kind of legacy and impact and so for me, it’s just straight been a vehicle from the beginning and so how I got my feet wet man, is I just went and got licensed as an agent. I didn’t know any better. I didn’t have any business sense at the time again, I have a degree in theology, but you know, that’s not going to help you on the business side of the whole lot and so I started out at century 21 and so what I did was I grew the brokerage model. I understood that model ended up running out and having an independent brokerage which I still have today and then transitioned once I got that up and going and running without me, then I built the investment side doing fix and flip and wholesale and you know how it goes, and then you want to move into adding value. So I launched multipliers brotherhood, which is a mastermind for top real estate entrepreneurs in the country. And now I coach nationwide helping people to utilize radio. That’s what I love though, Tony about real estate is there’s a lot of ways in which you can maneuver and add things on over time. That really makes sense. And I think that’s why real estate is a super cool industry to be in.
Tony (03:09):
Yeah, yeah, for sure, man. So one thing I really appreciate, we, we met or talked probably for the first time, about a year ago and you connected, you stayed in good connection with me for the last a year, just off and on. And one thing I appreciate about your two things, one is I just loved your energy. And number two, you never asked for anything, you just wanted to connect and see how we could add value to each other and it just came from a standpoint of just wanting to help and connect and see how we could grow together. So I really appreciate that about you. And I can tell that you’re the kind of guy that just wants to give value and you know that once you give value, it comes back in return, whether you ask for or not.
Chris (03:48):
Totally agree. I have found, you know, being in the visionary role, which is where everyone that’s listening, you know, they didn’t get into this to own a job. They’re building their real estate to have a business and what that means is you really want to elevate out of it, be able to work on it, not in it to be in the true visionary role. And I have an incredible team a lot of the reason I was able to elevate out of the day to day and live in the Caribbeans because of my team. But as a visionary, one of my favorite things is to connect with guys around the country. One of the highest and best uses of my time is to call like you Tony, and be like, now, what are you working on? What’s going on over there. Right? And we just exchange ideas. And then I bring that information back into my organization and I pass along to you or whoever I’m talking to stuff that’s valuable. So that’s a cool thing about the visionary roles, the relationships you just get to really focus on a lot of networking time.
Tony (04:40):
Yeah. It’s good stuff, man. Good stuff. We shared a lot of good stuff with each other. You gave me an idea like I said, last week when we talked about something that I’m working on, it’s just that, you know, there’s conversations you have with high level people. That’s like, man, you just start triggering ideas and you start figuring things out when you have those good conversations. So let’s jump into the real estate side of it. So radio, that’s something you guys are big and you’ve done 2,500 deals in the last 15 years. You guys crush it on radio, jump into that and kind of give us a little rundown on how you started radio. Anything else you want to share with us that could help give value to listeners?
Chris (05:15):
Yeah. If you’re listening and you just heard the word radio you’re going, huh? This is interesting. What I will tell you is radio is the marketing channel that everyone knows about, but nobody’s using. And so I want you to just ask yourself the question: who in your market right now is utilizing radio to find motivated sellers for whatever your exit strategy is, fix and flip, wholesale, build your rental portfolio doesn’t matter. And you’ll realize that there’s not really anyone doing it. And so, you know, Tony I’ve been doing it now for 10 years. I got into radio because I was looking for something that wasn’t saturated. you know, if you look at things like direct mail and cold calling or RVMing, text blasting, what makes a marketing channel not work even if it does work is over-saturation. And the great thing about radio is literally there’s nobody that’s doing it. It’s wide open. So that’s kind of been my history with radio. It’s been the best marketing channel I’ve ever put in place without question.

Tony (06:16):
Yeah. That’s interesting because I think that’s how we got in touch when your business partner contacted me about TV. He wanted to pick my brain about TV because he was doing radio. And he said, well, can I do the same thing with TV? So I feel the same way about TV. There’s very little, very few people that are doing it. The ones that are doing it, if they do it right they do it. Well, there’s some guys that just throw money at it and don’t, you know, track their numbers. And there’s a lot of things they don’t do. Right. But if you do it right, you have a system, you can do it very well. I believe that with TV and you feel that way with radios. So tell me I don’t know if you want to share numbers or….
Chris (06:53):
Absolutely let’s add value, man. So let’s get down to the nuts and bolts.
Tony (06:57):
So tell me the difference between radio and the numbers you see with radio compared to some of the other marketing mediums you have.
Chris (07:05):
So I’ll give you like down to our dollar per dollar return, all that type of stuff. So a few things about radio as a characteristic, number one, it’s really consistent and steady. So the dollar per dollar return that I’ve seen year after year has stayed consistent. Versus again, we’ll pick on direct mail a little bit. I’m not saying direct mail doesn’t work. We still do it. Something like that can shoot up and down. You know, in 2018 we had a really big direct mail. I’ll call it crash in Dallas, I can only speak to my area in North Texas. And it went down to like $2, um, for a dollar dollar return when we used to be one out of four. So radio, and if you’re new, you’re like what’s dollar per dollar return. We’re saying for every dollar you put into marketing, how many dollars are you getting back? And for radio it’s somewhere between three to four, that means that you do somewhere between a triple to quadrupling of your initial investment. So let’s take me as an example in Dallas Fort worth, which is one of the most competitive markets in the country. It’s like Phoenix so we get a $3 and 50 cent return consistently month in and month out. as we’ve done that over the last years. And again, I know Tony, you know this as well, people throw out all kinds of numbers. That’s what makes real estate tough is all the fluff. And they’re like, well, I got one to eight on this and one to 12. And if you’re listening and you have a marketing channel, that’s consistently bringing you a one to three to one to four return. That is a great marketing channel. That is nice. And it’s healthy. And that’s what I get off of a spend in Dallas, which is about 27,500 per month. And again, we do big scale with radio. You don’t have to start there, but that’s where we’ve ended up over time.

Tony (08:47):
What would be…. We’ll get back to radio in a little bit. What would be your second pick over or actually right after radio?
Chris (08:56):
Yeah, for us, digital marketing right now has been the strongest for the last year or two for us again, I’ll give you my marketing channels, right? It’s radio, it’s digital marketing, being anything online. Then we do very focused, direct mail. Um, just not like what we used to when we’d send out like a hundred thousand pieces a month, it was insanity. It worked, but now it’s like really much more of a sniper, small level approach. And then lastly, as our outbound piece, not inbound we do a lot of cold wholesaling or JVing. You might call it. Right and those four things right there create all of our lead opportunities.
Tony (09:35):
So one thing about tracking radio and TV is that it’s a little bit tougher, right? Because if someone hears your radio commercial, they may Google you and you may see that they came through Google or they may tell you they came through Google, right? So you say three to four times return. But I know for me, TV is probably higher because they, and we’d have to figure out how to allocate that because they may have gotten a postcard and said, Oh, I saw you on TV. And it built that credibility. So you say your return is probably higher based on the fact that your radio commercials build credibility for you because you’re on the radio and then when they receive something else that….
Chris (10:17):
For sure, could you argue that there’s some, you know, unsourced deals there for sure. Is there a ton? No. I feel like we’re pretty close, but I do agree with your argument there for sure. But the two things that you’re hitting on, which you cannot measure, which in my opinion are the most important aspects of radio is celebrity status and instant credibility. The problem you have, if you’re doing a marketing channel like RVM and or bandit signs, let’s say you’re not building your brand. Um, you’re actually hiding your brand because you’re spamming people and you don’t want to put your company name on there because you’ll be aided with radio, just like TV. It plays with the psyche of the human mind. This is where celebrities come from. Why do celebrities exist? Because they’re on TV and because they’re on radio, that’s it and so you get that for yourself and your brand, which is like, how could you measure the value of that? It’s huge. Think about competition, right? Tony, you go up against somebody that happens to reach out to that same seller in a different way. And you guys are going head to head on an appointment. You walk in with celebrity status and that other wholesaler didn’t, you’re going to walk away with that contract sign. And then the other thing you get is instant credibility. And that is if you advertise on radio or in your case, Tony, you know this TV, well, you must know what you’re talking about because the only people that advertise on the radio or TV, know what they’re talking about. People who just like jump to that conclusion. And so that’s not measured, but man, it’s highly valuable. One of the most important things in utilizing something like radio or even TV,
Tony (11:58):
Right. And you’d have a coaching program now that you coach other real estate investors, how to use radio. So how has that been, have you seen, cause it’s obviously market specific, like something that works in one market may not work in another. I guess tell me about that. Have you seen other markets? Like what, what do other markets look like when they implement radio in their markets?
Chris (12:20):
I can tell you, I mean, at this standpoint, we’re over a hundred students, which means that’s markets across the country. So that’s a lot of data at this point. So I can tell you, and again, we’re East to West coast, North to South, because the way that our program is set up is we preserve it by limiting people in markets, right? So this is why we’re so spread out in the sense of our coaching because markets are sold out and we focus on other markets in the sense of bringing those people in what I can tell you, my experience so far is it works in 95% of the markets. There’s about 5% that are so small. I mean, small, small, small that they don’t work. But all the other markets that are what I would call traditional small to midsize, to large, they’re working for every student and each of those markets have different pros that the other don’t and the sense of values or benefits of why maybe a smaller market is better than a big or a midsize, etc. But man, we found across the map that it is a plug and play in almost every market across the country that we’ve done so far, which is great, which lets you know, that radio is pretty universal from the standpoint of work.
Tony (13:32):
That’s awesome. So in 2005 I started TV and I kicked myself because I did three months worth of TV. I didn’t get one deal until the end of my third month. And that one deal paid for the three months, but I got scared and I turned it off and I didn’t start TV again until like seven years later, I think it was like 2012 when I started TV and we gave it more time this next time and we just absolutely crushed it with TV and we still do well with TV. So touch on that a little bit. So like how long does it typically take for a campaign, a radio campaign to work once you start implementing it?
Chris (14:11):
Yeah. So, and this is, I’m going to use general. It’s not, there’s always anomalies, right? But generally speaking with radio, you have to remember you are advertising to a community. That’s not on a list. The reason why everyone is bumping into each other on most of the methods is because everything is list dependent. So I don’t care if you’re cold calling or RVM or texting, everyone’s fighting over trying to list stacks and create the most customized list. Right? So radio has nothing to do with the list it has to do with a large listenership. So what we find traditionally is when we launch on a new station, our students, they are literally getting phone calls within the first week, maybe two weeks max and they are on most part executing deals within the first 30 to 60 days. Generally speaking, this is why students are so happy with radio. Because again, I’m going to compare it to cold calling cold calling works, but you’re looking at about a six month commitment before you see a real return. We know that, uh, you know, even, even Brent Daniels with TTP will tell you that it works great. There’s a great return on it. It just takes time to really get that follow up built up. You know, radio’s on the other side of the spectrum, the calls start coming in immediately cause that listenership has never heard it. They don’t have a postcard in their mailbox and that’s when they call in, which is great.
Tony (15:36):
So tell me, tell me the spin. Because a lot of people look at radio and TV and they think.
Chris (15:41):
The biggest assumption right here, man, this is why people stay away. And this is miseducation. So radio, here’s the two biggest misconceptions I can tell you why? Cause you’re listening, going, what radio is so great. Why are more people not doing it? I’ll tell you the two reasons why number one, if you’re listening, you automatically assume that your demographic. And what I mean by that is you look at yourself and go, well, I subscribed to Spotify. I listen to Pandora. The problem you don’t understand is that your avatar, your demographic is primarily over the age of 50 and people over the age of 50 have two habits that have not changed. They watch television and they listen to the radio. This is why it works. TV works for Tony. This is why radio works for us. You’re completely missing your demographic by thinking that they listen to Spotify. Cause they don’t, they don’t download Spotify on their phone. The second assumption is that it’s not affordable. Most of the students that we have in REI radio have been in real estate less than probably one to two years. Most of them are starting with budgets of $1000 to $2,000 a month. My initial budget was $1,500 a month and yes, you can start radio for $1000 to $2,000 a month. But most people are like, well, I’m not going to do radio because I’m new and it’s going to cost me at least 10 grand to get started. Nope, it’s $1000 to $2,000 a month in any market because we’ve done this so many times in any market. And that’s where most of our students start and people like, Oh my gosh, I can’t believe this is affordable like that.
Tony (17:21):
Yeah. And then I’m guessing that they increase it once they see results, right? They go with, you know, start at a thousand. They increased a, probably two, three, four thousand pretty quickly once they started to…
Chris (17:30):
Correct. But you have to realize we’re negotiating at such a discount. When I tell you $1000 to 2000, that means to literally advertise a hundred times on a station. So we go to a station, we advertise 100 times, we start with a hundred ads per month and we stay there. Then just go to another station and pick a new one and do another a hundred ads. So when I’m telling you, they’re spending $1000 to 2000, you’re doing the math. I can see you right now. That means that we’re running 62nd spots that are 10 to $20. Yes. And that is what I’m teaching, how to buy radio like we buy our real estate at a deep discounted price and people are like, Oh my gosh, I can’t believe I’m advertising on a 62nd spot on a radio station for 10 20 bucks. And again, this is not just one time that we’ve done this. We’ve done this again. And again and again with student after student after student.
Tony (18:27):
Awesome. So do you use a media buyer or do you go directly to the station?
Chris (18:33):
We go direct.
Tony (18:33):
Cause I’ve got a media buyer for TV and the reason I do that is twofold. One is supposedly to save more money because he’s bulk buying, which I think is the truth. Cause I have priced it separately in the past. I haven’t checked lately. Two is I don’t have to deal with five. See, I think we’re on like at least five or six TV stations. I don’t have to deal with all of them. I can just give them to him and he can deal with it. So, um, why do you book, why do you buy directly instead of through a media buyer?
Chris (19:02):
Because no media buyer will get the price that we get. If you went to a media buyer and told them about the pricing we get, they would probably tell you that you were a liar straight up. And I know because I’ve had media buyers in the beginning, the first several years, everything I was doing was through media buyers. Um, and so what I found in that world is we are coming in at such a deep discount that even the sales rep that works for the station will tell us initially, like I don’t think that we can accept that price. But what I’ll tell you is that our students across the nation, they’re being told by their sales reps, that they have literally the best rate out of anyone on that station. And again, media buyers, in my opinion, would not take the time to discount and negotiate the way that we do it, nor do I think that most of them have that approach. So they’re buying closer to retail. let me say it this way, it’d be like, here’s my analogy. It’d be like you asking me as an investor why I don’t use a real estate agent to buy properties. Right? And I would tell you, because an agent does not understand how to buy a property at 60 cents on the dollar. They know how to buy it retail or a little bit below. It is the exact same thing with the media buyer. It’s a reason I don’t use an agent or a media buyer because they just are not trained to.
Tony (20:23):
You’re saying you go to a radio station, they may say it’s 30 to $40 a spot. You go on there and say, here’s my budget. Here’s what I’m willing to pay. Take it or leave it 20 bucks a spot. And you know, typically stations, I’m guessing from your perspective are willing to negotiate.

Chris (20:39):
Yes, but we’re also doing it based on raw data, meaning that we pull raw data on the station and we justify our price by saying we know everything about you. We know how many people listen to your station. We know how many listen, hour by hour. We know how many people own homes versus rent homes. We know how many people listen to your station that are over the age of 45. So fundamentally what we’re doing is going down and literally just slamming them back with data and saying based on this, there’s a very particular formula that we use. So it’s not like my students are coming in at different pricing. We all use the same formula, but our formula is justified by data. And here’s what I’ll tell you. All of our students will come in. It’s pretty amazing and say, my sales reps will tell me that I am the very first person that ever came in and negotiated like that because here’s what everyone else does. They call up TV and they call up radio and they ask for what’s called a media packet. And that is about the most backward approach to negotiating that you could. And so we’re teaching something that’s just not been done. And again, I’m not saying that I’m the genius here that figured this all out. I paid a lot of money myself to be coached and learn how to do this as well. So this is just 10 years of trial and error and figuring this process out.

Tony (21:56):
Nice. Nice. So you said you have been doing radio for 10 years now and you have over a hundred students that are doing it as well that have tested and proven for….

Chris (22:08):
We’re in the pipeline. Not all are set up. Some are newer, but yeah.

Tony (22:12):
Yeah, but you got a lot of data, so that’s good man. Cause you’re right. There are a lot of people that talk numbers and they throw numbers out there. But when you have, may not be quite a hundred that are all doing it, but I’m sure you have a good number of those that are, that are plugged in and have some good data, so,

Chris (22:24):
And great success with it. Um, so again, I still argue and again outside of TV, in the sense of the quality of lead that’s generated, I have not found or come across a lead, you know, channel that matches it. And if I do you trust me, I’ll be utilizing it. But the reality is I just don’t know anything else out there that runs at that level. And I know you sitting on the outside here, the closest thing you’re going to get to radio is TV, right? They’re about different, but at the same time, they’re the closest. And I know you experienced it as well. It’s a high quality lead.

Tony (22:58):
Yep. You’re right. Yep. The thing about TV is it’s 30 seconds. So we have less time. So that’s the thing I did like about radio. We looked into it several years ago and you’re kinda making me want to do it again. I probably will test it out, but 60 seconds is a lot of time to get your information over and you have a, probably a fairly engaged audience because they’re in the car. They’re probably driving for the most part. Most people that listen to the set on the radio, I imagine are probably driving. You can tell me if I’m wrong and they’re not doing other things, right. Whereas if you’re watching TV, there’s a commercial that comes on. You go into your kitchen and go grab something. So the audience may not be as engaged in my am I hitting the right spot there or am I little off there.

Chris (23:45):
There is some truth. Like, do I know statistically how many people flip channels versus stay? You don’t know, but what you can are, again, I don’t have data on this, but if I listen to classical, I’m over the age of 50 and that’s the type of music I listen to in love. I’m probably not going to be jumping a lot of stations because younger people might jump stations more but older people, particularly a demographic are not going to do a lot of station jumping. You know, there’s a certain type of music that they listened to and that they liked that they were raised with. And so I think you definitely get a little bit more focused from someone over the age of 50 versus your kid that changes this channel. Like your teenage kid. Who’s probably changing it so much. It’s driving you crazy. It’s just a different demographic and avatar behavior.

Tony (24:30):
Right? Good stuff, man. Anything else you want to talk about? Radio? Maybe we’ll dive into something else. Any other ideas?

Chris (24:36):
Yeah, I think a couple of last things, a couple of my favorite things about it, number one, it’s set it and forget it. It is the lowest maintenance I’ve ever seen on a marketing channel because the radio station does all the work direct mail as an example, it works, but it’s a pain in the ass, right? I mean, you’re tweaking your list and your postcard and dealing with the mail company. Radio, all you gotta do is pay your bill monthly to the phone when it rings. So this is really important if you’re listening and you’re a solopreneur because you might be working a nine to five right now, really trying to make that dream jump over to being a real estate, or you might be more seasoned and going do my time is the most important thing. The great thing about radio is it just doesn’t eat up your time. And I don’t find that with some things like cold calling or things like that, they just constantly have issues coming up as you’re trying to manage and outsource them. And then the last thing I would say is it’s something that you can be proud of, cause it’s not sleazy. You know, I think we’ve done spam approaches. I don’t know how you feel about it Tony. They work, you might do them, but I can tell you, the people in your company are probably not proud of the fact that you send out, you know, 30,000 text messages bothering people every month. Let’s just be honest with radio. There’s never a sense of guilt and shame. When I talk about it, like I know other people too, when they talk about putting out bandit signs and costing the County X amount of dollars to pay someone, to go pick them up all the time. And literally let’s just be honest, right? No, I love radio because we’re proud of it. It’s sophisticated and it’s professional bottom line. That’s what I would leave you with for sure.

Tony (26:15):
Well, cool man. So our TV ads, we do a phone number and we do websites. We have, we track both of those. I’m guessing you just do a phone number on the radio so you can track…

Chris (26:29):
Yeah, no, no URL, separate phone number on every station. So that’s why our tracking is so automated and how we know what’s producing a return. Yeah.

Tony (26:39):
Very nice. Very nice. Well, cool man.

Chris (26:42):
So if anyone’s listening and they’re like, man, I love this thing. I know we’re going to transition topics, but you know, go to www.wholesalinginc.com/reiradio/ again, wholesalinginc.com/reiradio book a call. See if your market’s open and do what I do. Do your due diligence, ask questions, see if it’s a good fit for you. And it might be something that you’ve really been looking for. That could be a game changer for your business.

Tony (27:07):
Good stuff, man. Good stuff. Appreciate you sharing the radio with us. So what else, man? What other good stuff do you have? You’ve done a lot of deals. You’ve got a partner that you know, you work with in Dallas, you guys do a lot of deals. What other good stuff can you share with us on how to run an operation? Like that’s doing just a lot of deals.

Tony (27:27):
Yeah. I mean, you know, a lot of that comes down to leadership, um, and philosophy and perspective. And so I think one of the most important things I understand is centralized versus decentralized leadership. Most people out there have centralized leadership. And if we were looking at an infographic, that means there’s a picture of me as the leader and all arrows are pointed at me. And the reason that people get stuck in that model is fear and ego. I like the fact that everything is dependent on me, cause that makes me feel good. And that’s where I get my identity from. And I have a fear of letting things go and giving up control because nobody can do it as good as me. So all of a sudden you have a ceiling and the bottleneck is the leader and Tony, I don’t know how many times you’ve seen this, where you find someone that never even gets out of production. They’re still running a business 18 years later and they’re still doing deals. And it’s like, how have you not elevated out of that to the visionary role and decentralized leadership is I’m not the smartest guy in the room. I’m going to empower my people, not diminish them and I’m going to really create a business that’s not dependent upon me, but them, I love Liz Wiseman she says, are you the genius or you the genius maker? And I definitely hold to a philosophy of making geniuses, not needing to be the genius. And so if you have that, then you can build a team and a team is what allows you to scale and get the freedom.

Tony (28:59):
Yeah, for sure. That’s one of the things that I have, I’ve been in the business 20 years now. It was about 10 years in business where I finally started getting myself more and more out of the business. And that’s where the magic happens when you’re able to empower people to do the job and not be over their shoulder, looking at them and saying, Hey, why aren’t you doing this? Why aren’t you doing that? And just doing weekly or monthly checkups to keep them course corrected. That’s where the magic happens. You know, so many people get caught up in so many little details trying to make them all right. And when you do that, you, like you said, you deep power or whatever the word is disempower, I guess the people that are working for…..

Chris (29:41):
Diminish.

Tony (29:42):
Yeah. And so you give them that responsibility, let them take ownership of it. You know, things are going to happen without you and you don’t have to be there anymore. So it’s good stuff.

Chris (29:51):
I agree. Let the inmates run the asylum. That’s the principal, let the inmates run the asylum.

Tony (29:57):
Well, cool. So how long have you been in the Caribbean?

Chris (30:00):
Been here,now for three years. Full time,

Tony (30:02):
Three years now. Cool. Is that a hard transition going from being kind of in the business, around the operations too? Because I did the same thing about five years ago. Like it’s maybe been six years now and I had a struggle for the first, at least three months. I’m like, I felt detached. It was kind of like, I guess it’s kind of like quitting smoking or whatever, you know, however you want to say it. It’s like you kind of have that withdrawal, but then after a while it’s like, okay, this is kind of cool. How, how was it for you?

Chris (30:28):
I kind of overstayed my time in Dallas, meaning my company was already primarily virtual. We still had an office, but man at that point, you know, we only had a couple people that were in the office. Like we had worked so hard going everyone in office to out of office that I kind of looked around one day and I’m like, why am I still here? And my team is virtual. They, again, most of my team don’t even live in the state of Texas where we do deals and they’re looking at me going, I was kind of wondering when you were going to leave, like why are you still there? So I think I overstayed my time a little bit, probably maybe by a year. So when I transitioned, like I was out, like it was overdue, I was tired of the city. I needed to change. I needed a new environment. I wanted to be around new people. And so man, I was just really craving it when I made the transition.

Tony (31:20):
And for me it was like, you know, I was, I was in the operations of the business. So when I, before I left, I was still doing acquisitions. I was doing some project management. So actually I take that back. I had hired someone for acquisitions. So I think at that point I wasn’t quite doing acquisitions. I was still doing some project management, so I was slowly getting out of it. And it just, you know, it, for me, it just took a while because it was like, I was so ingrained in what I was doing. So for me to get out of it. But once I got out of it, I realized how many small little decisions that I was making that I was, that I was neglecting the big decisions. I wasn’t looking at the high level operations of the business. So me being out of it, I was forced to look at the overall perspective cause I couldn’t be there, you know, saying, Hey, why wasn’t this being done? Why wasn’t that being done? So when you look at it from that standpoint, I was forced to look at the high level perspective of the business. So…..

Chris (32:20):
I think that’s well said. That’s a great point. Very well said.

Tony (32:24):
Yeah. So for anybody who is looking to move and don’t think that they can, as long as you have a pretty decent structure in place to do that, it actually forces you to look at the business from a higher level perspective. So that’s what I love about it.

Chris (32:38):
Yeah. And I think too, the Other key is you gotta have a strong number to call him an integrator call him a chief operating officer, really the ability to step out of the day to day to get that true freedom of, you know, working on it, not in it, even the freedom of location, not to necessarily need to be there physically. The key to that really is the right chief operating officer. Once I had that in place, then that is what made sure that there was the glue to keep everything together and that the wheels didn’t come off. So that’s an important piece. I would remind people of that. That’s a key role,

Tony (33:15):
Your partner, the integrator, or see the visionary.

Chris (33:18):
Oh no, no. Uh, you know, we’re literally wired the same which is good and bad. Um, it’s, it’s good from the sense of, you know, being able to kind of see the world the same, it’s dangerous from the sense that we’re, don’t really, what’s the word I’m looking for? We’re not uh, like what is it marriage when someone’s different than you? We always say that person what you are

Tony (33:41):
Or opposite or um, like opposites attract kind of thing. Yeah,

Chris (33:45):
Yeah. Whatever, there’s a word I’m looking for. I’ll drop it. Um, but anyway, with Scott, we had a blind spot because neither of us were integrators. Compliment. That’s what I was looking for. So we didn’t have someone that complimented our differences cause we were so much of the same. So all that to say, that’s why for us that role was really critical. So I didn’t have that with a business partner. We had to hire that.

Tony (34:10):
Yeah. And you said it a couple of times and I’ve talked about it, in many things that I do with masterminds and in training that I do and podcasts. So if you’ve heard this before, it’s like, you have to like, if you’re a visionary, which most entrepreneurs are, you have to have an integrator. So you’ve touched on that a couple of times. So just to expand on that, if you didn’t find, understand that visionaries like to know where they want to go, they’re like Bill Gates, they’re Steve jobs. They’re Ray crock, but you have to have an integrator to take care of all the details. Because usually a visionary is not really good at the details. And I think that’s why it’s better for us to live away from our operations because we don’t want to be in the details and we’re not good at it.

Chris (34:49):
We shouldn’t be, it’s not, it’s not the highest and best use of our time. It’s not our genius zone. It takes away from the genius zone. We shouldn’t have to worry about details. You know, everything you do is either energy drain or gain, bottom line. And the problem you have in the way that you can look at your business and everything you’re doing to know if you’re on the right track, is, does this task bring energy gain or does it drain me? And what you’ll find is it drains you, you shouldn’t be doing it. So my deal is, if it doesn’t bring energy gain, then I’m not going to touch it. It’s got to energize me because if it’s energizing me, that means I’m actually, that’s like my body and my mind and my psyche and my spirituality telling me that I was to do, I’m doing what I was born to do. I’m doing what my body and this machine has been created to do.

Tony (35:41):
Yeah. At the end of the day, if you’re drained, I mean, it could be a lot of other things, but typically it’s probably because you’re doing things that you don’t love to do and you shouldn’t be doing right. Cause like I told you, when I was doing acquisitions and project management and all that man at the end of the day, I was done even at like five or six o’clock if I stopped, usually I worked later than that. But man, I was so drained and now I do things like this and I, you know, run events and masterminds and just some other stuff that I just, it lights me up that I love to do. It’s now at the end of the day, I can be tired sometimes at the end of the day, but I’m usually more lit up and then in the morning I’m ready to go and even more energized because I’m doing those things that I love to do as a vision .

Chris (36:21):
I totally agree. Going back to a good CEO knows that and is the gatekeeper to make sure you stay on the side of things that bring you energy gain.

Tony (36:31):
Cool man. So one last question. I typically ask this on most of my podcasts, if you had $10,000 to spend and it was your best return on investment, doesn’t matter what it is. What would you spend it on yourself? Or what would you recommend? Other people spend $10,000 on providing the most value to their business with their life.

Chris (36:52):
Education man, again, you give me $10,000 the first question that comes to my mind is who can I give this $10,000 to? That would give me the greatest return of knowledge and wisdom straight out. I believe that coaching calls it mentorship, coaching discipleship. I don’t care what label you throw on it. You will get further and faster with a mentor and a coach than you’ll ever get by yourself. I totally believe that. So for me, a good chunk of my money always goes into the investment of knowledge because I’m going to pay that person that’s going to give me the thing. I didn’t even know that I needed to know. Does that make sense? So the reason I’m not spending the 10,000 spending myself is because I’m smart enough to know that there’s probably a better place I could spend it. I just don’t know. So who can I pay to show me to be able to do that, to make that investment right. Moving forward with future money.

Tony (37:42):
Yeah, that’s good stuff, man. That’s so powerful because people have done it before us. And there are people that are a lot smarter than us. And so I wish I would have learned that the first few years of my business, even the first 10 years, I honestly, the first 10 years of my business, I spent money on like books and like a lower level education. If there’s such a thing, but the power of like coaching and mentorship and masterminds and being around just people that have done some high level stuff. It’s so motivating. It’s inspiring you to learn from the mistakes and you can have one conversation with someone where you’re like, Hey, I’m implementing this marketing strategy and they can give you one tip. And all of a sudden it just changes the trajectory of what you’re doing.

Chris (38:25):
Totally agree. Iron sharpens iron man. So I think that people change people the most more than anything in your life, more than a book, a seminar, you will look at your life and tell Your story. It will always boil down to two or three people that came along and made a significant impact in your life. So I want to do the best I can to get in front of those people cause I never know who it’s going to be. What coach that’s going to be, what friend that’s going to be.

Tony (38:50):
Yup, absolutely. And I didn’t want to diminish books. I said lower level education. I just meant higher investments. But usually the more money you spend, I mean obviously podcasts and things like that. You get some great stuff there free, but when you invest higher levels of money for higher level people, like you can just get that much more so. Well, cool man. Well, good stuff. It’s good having you on. I think you’ve inspired me to go back and test radio again. You know, I’ve done TV and I’ve done it at a pretty high level. I think adding a radio to it could be pretty, pretty awesome. So. appreciate it and hopefully people reach out to you and get to know you and know what you’re doing with radio and we’ll touch base again soon, man.

Chris (39:28):
Awesome, man. I appreciate you having me on. Thanks so much. All right. Talk soon

 

Thanks for listening. Now go to www.REMmastermind.com to connect with today’s guest. See our high-level masterminds, and to get free resources. Don’t forget to share this with a friend and leave us a five-star review. We’ll see you in the next episode.